THEATER: Eugene O’Neill’s early one-act plays get a rare blast of daylight in The Pioneer, a new production that stages four of his nascent gems plus a whimsical monologue O’Neill wrote from the point of view of his dog. The plays boast O’Neill’s signature assortment of furious, flailing characters that would come to dominate his full-length work. Writing for the Times, Rachel Saltz notes that the plays range from “interesting” to “wonderful” and concludes that......

THEATER: Jude Narita's one-woman show, Walk the Mountain, is about the hellish effects of the Vietnam War. In the wrong hands, this might make for an unbearably ponderous evening, but the Times review puts us at ease: “In dramatizing unspeakably horrific events, must an artist end up brutalizing her audience as well? [Jude Narita] reminds us that it's possible for a performer to treat both her material and her audience with respect.” For Walk the......

Hyper-important must-see event of the month, first: Tomorrow (Jan 19), The Hold Steady play Mercury lounge. Ticket available through TicketWeb. This is no joke, everyone. Ten dollars. Such a great band. So much fun. I just wrote those short little sentences and sentence fragments without the expletives that were thrusting through my fingertips. Calmly: See this show. Send thank you notes here. What do they sound like? You know that fun, awesomely written, rock and......

CMJ is here. For New Yorkers, you've probably already seen many of these bands. Everybody plays here. But the number of shows and the number of people crammed into the clubs for these shows is greater than normal. Be careful out there. - The Donnas and Dogs Die in Hot Cars play a late show tonight at the Bowery Ballroom. The show starts at 1:15am. - Earlier in the evening, the Bowery hosts The Decemberists,......