The new home of the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill will open its doors for the first time on Saturday, Nov. 10, the museum announced this week.

   Roughly 12,000 square feet of the building, still under construction on the 14-acre site off Montauk Highway, will be used for exhibitions. In all, the long, low structure, with about 34,400 square feet under twin rooflines, has three times the space to show art than the Parrish’s current home in Southampton Village. The new building was designed by Herzog and de Meuron, a Swiss architectural firm, and had a construction budget of $26.2 million. Ben Krupinski Builders of East Hampton is the general contractor.

   About two-thirds of the new museum’s gallery space will be dedicated to the Parrish’s 2,600-piece permanent collection, which includes work by William Merritt Chase, Childe Hassam, Fairfield Porter, Jackson Pollock, and dozens more. The building’s placement on the site, at a diagonal to Montauk Highway, was intentional, designed to provide ideal illumination for the art on display.

   “The idea is to give the works the same kind of light for viewers that the artists were experiencing when they were making them,” Terrie Sultan, the Parrish’s executive director, said in an interview last year.

   The remaining third of the gallery space will be used for revolving shows.

   A performance space in the new building is intended to make the Parrish a leading cultural center for the region. In addition to storage rooms and administrative offices, the building will also have a store, a cafe, and a space for general use.

   The Nov. 10 opening will be preceded by a series of invitation-only visits by Parrish donors and public officials, and school trips by students in the Southampton and Tuckahoe School Districts.

   A show of Malcolm Morley’s works on paper will be the inaugural exhibition, on view through Jan. 13, 2013.

    Brian D’arcy James and Ana Gasteyer “go way, way back,” Ms. Gasteyer said in an interview on May 16. “We’ve always loved each other.” Putting them together for an evening of song was the brainchild of the Bay Street Theatre.

    Ms. Gasteyer and Mr. James will take the theater’s stage on Saturday night at 8 in “One Night, Two Voices, Three Cheers,” an event she described as a “fun, easy summer night, to get everybody in the mood and celebrate the kickoff of summer.” The two vocalists will perform tunes from Broadway and the American songbook, including musical theater favorites, with some Barbra Streisand and Neil Diamond thrown in, she said. “Mostly we’re going to have a good time.”

    Both Ms. Gasteyer and Mr. James have earned rave reviews for their work on Broadway. Mr. James has appeared in such productions as “Next to Normal” and “Time Stands Still,” and he was nominated for a Tony Award for his performances in “Shrek the Musical” and “Sweet Smell of Success.” Ms. Gasteyer’s Broadway debut was as Columbia in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” Since then, she has also appeared in “Wicked,” “The Royal Family,” and “The Threepenny Opera.”

    She loved working on Broadway, she said, for its regular routine, its artistic and musical challenges, and its “perfectionism.” It is the opposite of television, she said, where everything goes as quickly as possible.

    Having created some of the most famous “Saturday Night Live” characters in her years on the show, as well as impersonations of Martha Stewart, Celine Dion, and Hillary Rodham Clinton, Ms. Gasteyer is enjoying television again in a much less stressful workplace. Without the pressures of delivering “laugh after laugh,” her new starring role in “Suburgatory,” a single-camera ABC series, is “easy and fun,” she said, thanks to a “great writer and creator, Emily Kapnek.”  The show delves into interesting family dynamics and issues such as American affluence, she said, and working on it is one of her “favorite jobs ever.” The “cast is stupendous.” The finale aired on May 16, and the show has been renewed for another season.

    Ms. Gasteyer started as a voice major in college in Chicago, the birthplace of improv comedy. She later dropped out of music to focus on speech, but picked it back up again in New York. She loves to sing, and said, “I have my own cabaret act.” As for combining singing and comedy as she did on “Saturday Night Live” with Will Ferrell as Bobbie Mohan Culp, a high school music teacher, she said, “You use what’s in your trunk.”

    With homes in Brooklyn and on Fire Island, Ms. Gasteyer has spent “quite a few off-season vacations” in Sag Harbor visiting close friends and is looking forward to spending Memorial Day in the village for the first time this year.

    Tickets to Saturday’s show start at $65, with the option of $100 tickets that include an after-party with the stars, and are available at the box office or online at baystreet.org.

    The Bay Street Theatre’s first play of the summer season is Geraldine Aron’s “My Brilliant Divorce,” starring Polly Draper. This will be the American premiere of the play, which will start in previews on Tuesday and run through June 24.

    The production is directed by Matt McGrath, one of Bay Street’s artistic associates.

    The one-woman show tells the story of Angela, an American living in England whose British husband leaves her. She’s left to cope with a disapproving mother, a shifty attorney, and a bad case of hypochondria.

    Ms. Draper is best known for her role as Ellen in the 1980s television series “thirtysomething,” for which she received an Emmy nomination. Her Broadway credits include “Closer,” “Brooklyn Boy,” and “Crazy He Calls Me.”

    Ms. Aron was born in Ireland and spent her adult life in Zimbabwe and South Africa. She wrote the play for Ireland’s Druid Theatre Company, for which she has written several other award-winning pieces. She is also the author of 12 produced television and radio plays and two screenplays.

    Mr. McGrath, the director, also directed Darrell Hammond last year in “Tru” and has appeared as an actor in several of Bay Street’s productions. He was the recipient of the Bienecke Fellowship from the Yale School of Drama in 2007 and also received an honorary master’s degree from the American Conservatory Theater.

    Previews run through Friday, June 1, with the first one, Tuesday, offered on a pay-what-you-can basis after 2 p.m. at the box office that day. Tickets for all performances of this production are $56 and $66. Up to 20 tickets will be sold for each summer performance for $20 at the box office after 2 p.m. the day of the show, based on availability. The $20 tickets will not be available on June 2, July 7, or Aug. 11.

   The Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons will open its thrift store doors on Saturday night for a preview cocktail party to showcase the work of several prominent New York designers who will transform its inventory of gently used treasures into rooms worthy of a style doyenne.

    On Sunday and Monday, the 10 rooms put together by Jeffery Howard Brodersen, Nancy Corzine, Gary Crain and James Alan Smith, Michael Grim, Gigi Mahon, Jeff Pfeifle, Scott Salvator, Rob Southern, and Tony Urrutia will be open to the public for a suggested donation of $10 with children admitted free. Nothing purchased from the rooms will be removed from the store until after the weekend concludes.

    The event is chaired by Sandra McConnell, with Peter Hallock and Lisa McCarthy serving as vice chairs. This year’s honorary chairwoman is Betty Sherrill. All proceeds will benefit ARF and its shelter animals.

    Almost a fifth of ARF’s annual operating budget comes from money raised by the Sagaponack thrift shop. Last year, the building was renovated and expanded allowing the organization to accept more donations.

    Last year’s designer showhouse, which inaugurated the new space, was a great success and the organization plans to continue it as an annual event.

    All the designers who are participating are animal lovers who are donating their time and expertise to help the shelter. Each room will feature thrift shop items and pieces donated from the designers’ own collections. Unlike traditional showhouses, every item in the ARF designer showhouse will be for sale. 

    Over 200 guests drawn from the design world and the South Fork social community are expected to attend the preview cocktail party. Cocktails. including wine, will be donated by Channing Daughters Winery and hors d’oeuvres will be donated by the Dancing Gourmet.

    Designers such as Ms. Corzine and Mr. Salvator will design bedrooms and Mr. Brodersen will create a men’s dressing room. There will also be fanciful interpretations such as Ms. Mahon’s animal celebratory tea party and Mr. Pfeifle’s doggie luncheon at the beach. Other rooms and tableaus will feature garden themes.

    Special guests will include a number of ARF dogs and cats who are looking for new homes.

    A preview hour prior to the cocktail preview begins at 5 p.m. and costs $300. The party begins at 6 p.m. Tickets cost $150. All purchased items will stay in place until Tuesday, at which point they will be available for pickup. 

Erica Jong was angry at times on Saturday night when she spoke at BookHampton’s East Hampton store. 

   An appreciative capacity crowd of some 75 to 100 people — predominantly women, most over a certain age, and a few with husbands or daughters in tow — filled seats, jammed aisles, and trailed out the door. Ms. Jong was there to lambaste the bestselling book “Fifty Shades of Grey” by E.L. James and point out that its popularity comes at a time when women’s rights are under attack by conservative politicians in several states and on a federal level. “Thirteen states have laws that challenge things we thought were settled. Things we thought we had won.” She was referring to new limits on abortion and to ultrasounds through vaginal probes prior to abortions now required in Virginia.

   At the same time, with a crowd of her peers in attendance, she addressed the positive changes that have happened since her book “Fear of Flying” was published in 1973. Changes in race relations and a younger generation that sees nothing remarkable about gay marriage were hopeful signs, despite efforts to turn back the clock on such attitudes in some quarters.

   Ms. Jong’s book, which caused a sensation in the United States when it was published, was written all through her 20s. “I wrote it for a long time. I had to get the voice right.” She said her goal was to have a heroine who was “very smart, very sexual, and attracted to men.” She wanted someone who had a professional and intellectual life as passionate as her domestic and intimate life.

    It has since been anointed as a classic by institutions such as Columbia University, she said. It has also given her cachet as the person to go to for reactions on the sexual zeitgeist.

    Her feelings about “Fifty Shades of Grey,” which features erotic scenes of bondage, dominance, and submissiveness, are that “it’s a reactionary fantasy for a reactionary time.”

    Her own description of the book was ripe with disdain. Anastasia Steele meets “a master of the universe in true 1980s style, Christian Grey. He says ‘Don’t get involved with me, I will hurt you. I’m a bad guy.’ . . . After five very boring chapters in which nothing interesting happens, he takes her to the Red Room, where she’s bound and gagged and he dominates her.”

    It is not just the fantasy that she finds questionable, it is also the writing, which she described as execrable, “which doesn’t matter. As Ezra Pound said, the reader of best sellers can’t be distracted by nice writing, and that seems to be true.” She pointed to passages where, during the loss of her virginity, the heroine says “argh” and during orgasm “holy cow.”

    She attributed much of the buzz in the press about the book to its $5 million movie deal. But she said that it was likely that a movie of that book will never be made. “It’s not going to sell to 12-year-old boys in Asia,” which she said is the primary Hollywood movie market at present.

    “Unfortunately, the people reading this book don’t know we have a rich tradition of erotica by women,” she added, mentioning “The Story of O” by Anne Desclos under the pen name Pauline Réage and “Little Birds” by Anais Nin as examples. “Your fantasies don’t have to be politically correct. I don’t negate the fantasies” of Ms. James’s book, “but I wish they were better, better executed, and not so diminishing to women. It seems to fit together with the reactionary war on women going on.”

    A woman in the audience who described herself as a psychoanalyst and educator praised the book for providing an outlet for young women to talk about their sexuality more openly. She said that the heroine in “Grey” doesn’t end up as his object and, while not great literature, it did increase people’s willingness to talk about sexuality in different arenas.

    Ms. Jong accepted the viewpoint and conceded that “not every book has to be a classic or a great book. We don’t give ourselves enough pleasure in this country. We have the shortest vacations in the world, we’re always on diets, and we don’t read enough that gives us pleasure.”

   The Montauk Music Festival, a free live-music showcase, is expected to bring thousands of fans to town from next Thursday through Sunday, May 20. They will be able to choose from 200 performances from 100 bands, sprinkled through 30 Montauk venues both indoors and out.

    This marks the third year that local musicians will join those who travel from places such as New England, Florida, and California to promote and share their talents. Genres include alternative, rock, folk, pop, reggae, blues, jazz, bluegrass, hip-hop, country, and metal. The artists were selected either from live performances or submissions on the Web sites sonicbids.com or reverbnation.com.

 The music director and co-organizer was Lawrence Cooley, who will also perform with his band.

    The musicians receive no pay for their performances. Kenny Giustino, co-organizer, said he has not profited from the event either, which is made possible by motel and restaurant sponsors, who appreciate the business on a preseason weekend.

    “It’s nice to get paid,” said John Kneeland, the lead singer, songwriter, and guitar and trumpet player for the Realm, “but that’s not why I play music. I love playing in front of a lot of people.” Organizers asked the Realm to play at Gurney’s Inn after hearing them at the Montauket over the winter. The band has never played the festival or Gurney’s, said Mr. Kneeland, but is happy to help local businesses and looks forward to playing in front of new audiences. “We don’t get a shot just on our name,” he said, “but when people hear us, they love it.”  The reggae, ska, surf rock band is almost booked solid for the summer, with repeat gigs at M.J. Dowling’s in North Sea, La Superica in Sag Harbor, Sloppy Tuna in Montauk, and the Chequit Inn on Shelter Island.

    The Montauk Project, an up-and-coming band with a recording studio in Montauk and lifelong local members who have played together since their teens, will also join the festival for the first time. The band plays original music only, written collaboratively, which Mark Schiavoni, the lead singer, described as a modern twist on classic rock.

    The Project will play three shows, two at the Montauket and one out at the Lighthouse. “It’s going to be fun to play outside,” Mr. Schiavoni said, despite the acoustic challenges. In preparation for the festival, as well as a performance at the Stephen Talkhouse tomorrow night, the band has written five new songs, he said. Tomorrow’s show is planned around their new “Montauk Project,” an extended play (more than a single, but too short to qualify as an album) that is due for release this week.

    “I feel there is a lot more music lately,” Mr. Schiavoni said. “Everyone loves that there is music going on, the genre doesn’t matter.” He said it would be great if Jim Turner, who has been playing locally and abroad for over 20 years, and who taught him and another member of the band how to play the guitar, were to be a special guest of the Project, perhaps with his harmonica. “I think Jim Turner is cool,” he said.

    John Havlicek, lead singer, keyboard player, and songwriter for the Blue Collar Band, will perform “as many of my songs as we can get away with.” He said many places that book the band favor familiar music, so they have been putting their stamp on some covers. Blue Collar is looking forward to the festival, he said, although “It’s always a lot of work.”

    In addition to longstanding local favorites such as Alfredo Merat, who has toured internationally since the age of 17, diverse acts heading into town include Swamp Cabbage, a “raspy singin’ combo of fatback blues and trailer park funk” from the Deep South who will perform twice at the Coast, and the Prophets, a hard-core underground hip-hop group from upstate, who will play at the Point. Other venues include restaurants, motels, and outdoor areas such as the Memory Motel, Navy Beach, Gosman’s, and the village green.    Mr. Giustino, who “was around back in the day, when Jimmy Buffet and the Rolling Stones would hang in the village,” wants to bring that vital musical culture back, and is happily supporting a workshop for musicians to be held at Gurney’s on Friday, May 18. Experts in the music industry will offer help and answer questions about engineering, mixing, promotion, booking, entertainment law, sound recording, and copyrighting.     

On the same day, Introduction to Folk Music, an after-school workshop for elementary-school children, will take place at the Montauk Playhouse, designed to stimulate interest in instruments. The kids will get their hands on banjos, small percussion, a mandolin, and more, ending with a music session.    There will be a $35 charge for the kick-off party next Thursday night at 8 p.m. at Gurney’s, including a three-hour open bar, appetizers, seven bands, and special guests including Jonathan Fritz, Joe Delia and Thieves, Mick Har­greaves, Dylan Jenet Collins, Betty, Kawehi, Lawrence Cooley, Otis, and Oogee Wawa.

    Rooms are still available in Montauk, according to Robert White, the owner of Harman’s Briney Breezes, who said that the festival is “good for the businesses.” He is offering special two-day festival pricing, he said, on recently renovated efficiency rooms.

    The festival’s Facebook group, filled last week with posts about an East Hampton Town Board hearing regarding entertainment law, is starting to buzz again with announcements and videos posted by musicians. The Web site, themontaukmusicfestival.com, has downloadable schedules listed by date, band, or venue.

Show Tunes

    Music for Montauk will close its season of free, top-quality programs with the Gilbert and Sullivan Players of New York’s “I’ve Got a Little Twist,” a selection of favorites from the American musical theater, at the Montauk School on Saturday at 7 p.m.

    David Auxier wrote and directed the show, which weaves in show tunes by Rodgers and Hammerstein, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, Lerner and Loewe, Meredith Wilson, and Jerry Herman. He also performs, along with a five-person ensemble. Mark York is the arranger and accompanist.

    Music for Montauk was founded 20 seasons ago by Ruth Widder, who remains the organization’s chairwoman. Its simple goal was and is to bring a range of live music performances to the farthest end of Long Island in an off-season almost entirely devoid of such cultural events.

Afternoon Opera

    Opera fans have been invited to a Sunday screening of Verdi’s “Ernani” at 2 p.m. at the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton. And on Wednesday at 2:30 p.m. there will be a live simulcast of the ballet “La Fille Mal Gardée” at the Parrish by the London Royal Ballet.

    Tickets for the Sunday opera film cost $17, $14 for Parrish members. Admission to Wednesday’s ballet screening is $20, $17 for members.

    One of Verdi’s early operas, “Ernani” tells a tale of a 16th-century love triangle in Spain. Roberto Aronica, Ivan Inverardi, Ferrucio Furlanetto, and Dimitra Theodossiou star.

    The production of “La Fille Mal Gardée” is a 1960 adaptation by Frederick Ashton of a more-than-200-year-old tale about a mother who wants to marry her daughter off to the simpleton son of a rich neighbor.

Songs of the Sea

    Sea chanteys will be performed and what they say about images of manhood in the days of sail will be considered Saturday at 3 p.m. at Canio’s Books in Sag Harbor. Stephen Sanfilippo, a Stony Brook Ph.D. whose dissertation was on the Sag Harbor whaling fishery, will sing, talk, and encourage participation by the audience.

    Mr. Sanfilippo will include chanteys by Richard Henry Dana Jr., Herman Melville, Jack London, and Eugene O’Neill, each of whom served as a seaman under sail.

Beethoven Lite

    A shortened preview of a planned marathon performance of each and every one of Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas will be at the Watermill Center Monday. To start at 6:30 p.m., Stewart Goodyear, a Canadian-born pianist and composer, and Melati Suryodarmo, an Indonesian performance artist, will take to the stage a portion of a commission by Toronot’s Luminato Festival, which will be staged in June. In all, the sonatas span 103 movements, in the order they were composed, and will take more than 10 hours to perform.

    Ms. Suryodarmo’s work is characterized by slow, almost static sequences. She has performed around the world both indoors and in locations such as alongside a sub-Arctic fjord.

    An opportunity to ask questions of the performers will follow. Admission is free, but reservations are required at melati suryodarmo.eventbrite.com.

‘Extremities’ Onstage

    HITFest and the Naked Stage have another theatrical production coming to the Bridge performance space at the Bridgehampton Community House — tonight, in fact — in the form of “Extremities,” William Mastrosimone’s 1982 play. In it, a woman thoroughly turns the tables on a would-be attacker.

    Directed by Tristan Vaughan, the production stars Joseph De Sane, Lydia Franco-Hodges, Molly McKenna, and Minerva Scelza. Performances are at 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays and at 2 p.m. on Sundays, through May 27. Tickets cost $20, and reservations can be made online at extremities-hitfest. eventbrite.com.

New Lightning Round

    Next Thursday at 6:30, the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton will present Lightning Round 3, an evening of 10 rapid-pace presentations by members of the visual and performing arts, farming, fishing, writing, design, and publishing communities. Limited to seven minutes and only 20 slides, the presenters will have to move fast and get to the point.

    The presentations will be followed by a reception with wine, beer, and D.J. music by Mister Lama. Tickets cost $5 for museum members, $10 for nonmembers. Taking part will be Vesna Bozic, Sherry Dobbin, Liz Joyce, Sunny Khalsa, Bennett Konesni and Edith Gawler, Albie Lester, Dennis McDermott, Tripoli Patterson, Andreanna Seymore, and Paul Vogel.

Shakespeare Auditions

    Auditions for August performances of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” will take place at the Bridgehampton Community House beginning on Saturday from noon until 3 p.m. The play will be performed outdoors on the grounds of the Bridgehampton School from Aug. 1 to Aug. 19. Rehearsals begin on July 9. Joshua Perl, the founder and artistic director of the Hamptons Independent Theatre Festival, known as HITFest, will direct.

    All roles are available. Actors must have a strong vocal and physical presence and enjoy performing outdoors and building a company. Collaborative and constructive energy is a must, the organizers said. The production is also looking for crew members, interns, and staff. Those interested in acting should take a classical monologue. Some pay, profit sharing, and a few Equity contracts are available. Participants must have housing on the East End.

    Appointments can be arranged by e-mailing [email protected]. Additional auditions will take place on May 19 and May 26 at the same time and place.

Composers Concert

    The Southampton Cultural Center Chamber Players will perform the center’s annual Composers of the East End concert on Saturday at 7 p.m. The program includes Eleanor Cory’s “Ehre” for solo violin, selections from “Musical Journeys” by Stephen Dickman, Katherine Hoover’s “Trio,” and George Cork Maul’s “Long Ago.”

    Tickets cost $20, $10 for students under 21 with ID.

Coffee House Blues

    Coffee House Blues, a concert from 2 to 6 p.m. on Saturday at what the Water Mill Museum describes as its “pop-up cafe,” will benefit the Hayground School and the Clay Art Guild. Joseph Behar and Friends will perform along with Digger T on harp and guitar.

    A $25 donation includes coffee, tea, and snacks, as well as coffee mugs handmade by the clay artists. There will also be a bake sale and raffle prize baskets.

    On Saturday, the 74th Guild Hall artist members show opened with scores of works in almost every possible medium, all submitted by South Fork artists.

    Lilly Wei, an independent curator, essayist, and critic who writes for Art in America and ARTnews, determined the winners, among them Mary Ellen Bartley, who took best in show honors for her photograph “A Road Divided.” The distinction entitles Ms. Bartley to a solo show at Guild Hall at a future date.

    Other winners included Ann Brandeis for best representational work, Zoe Breen for best abstract painting, Michelle Cooke for best sculpture, Barry McCallion for best work on paper, Patricia Feiwel for best mixed media, and JoAnna McCarthy for best photograph.

    Honorable mentions went to Bonnie Tepper, Tom Edmonds, Philippe Cheng, Rosa Hanna Scott, John Hall, Susan Barnett, Eric Ernst, Jim Malloy, Daniel Pollera, Christa Maiwald, Lindsay Morris, Joe Pintauro, Sara Douglas, and Bonnie Wylo. The Catherine and Theo Hios Landscape Award, which comes with a $250 prize, went to Mark B. Terry. Kyla Zoe Rafert was awarded best new member artist.

    The show will remain on view through June 9.

    It’s a bold risk to dismiss the 360-seat capacity of Guild Hall’s John Drew, ignore over $10 million in renovations, and turn the 80-year-old gem into a black- box theater, but Stephen Hamilton’s production of Anton Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya” pays off. In an intimate and powerful theater experience, the audience (55 seats total) is placed right onstage, only inches from the action. 

    First staged over a century ago, “Uncle Vanya” is incredibly current, thanks to Paul Schmidt’s contemporary translation. Instead of muddling through Russian accents and antiquated phrases, the language gives the audience an instant point of contact. Lines like “People are freaks” and themes of conservation and deforestation remind us that the human experience hasn’t changed much in 100 years. 

    The sparse set design and sharp costumes help root the story in the waning days of 19th-century rural Russia. The characters are idle and bored, and most of them long for someone they cannot have, which in other productions might have led to an idle, boring show. Despite their melancholy roles, Mr. Hamilton and his actors bring out the humor Chekhov intended in this dark play and create a rich, three-dimensional portrayal of human experience. 

    Astrov, an overworked country doctor haunted by the death of a patient, shows the most depth. As he becomes captivated with Yelena, Mr. Hamilton takes Astrov through a full arc of emotions, from jovial and hard-working to increasingly drunken, serious, and depressed. A skilled actor as well as director, he is definitely having fun with the role.

    Vanya is presented as a shell of a man with three emotions: scorn for his brother-in-law, lust for his brother-in-law’s second wife, Yelena, and despair for himself. Fred Melamed (“Curb Your Enthusiasm,” “A Serious Man”) plays Vanya as a blubbering has-been; a man who has wasted the better part of his life serving at the mercy of his brother-in-law, Serebiakov. Now, infatuated by Yelena, Vanya does nothing but pine for her. He doesn’t even manage the family estate anymore, instead leaving all responsibility to his niece, Sonya. It isn’t until Vanya confronts the professor in the third act, that we truly see the extent of Mr. Melamed’s ability as an actor.

    Herb Foster construes the role of Serebiakov as an incredibly self-absorbed, aging blowhard. Everyone else is ancillary. Since he talks at and not with the other characters, even when he is sympathetic to his wife it always seems to be about him. That same narcissism offers some nice comedic moments later on.

    Yelena, the object of Vanya’s and Astrov’s affection, is the most bored of all. Rachel Feldman presents Yelena as indifferent to almost everything, especially Vanya’s incessant doting. With glassy-eyed stares and measured speech, her cold lack of interest in country life and country people is apparent. It is in stark contrast to the energy of her stepdaughter, Sonya. There is a light there. Sonia is bored, she is overworked, she is plain, but Alicia St. Louis creates a young girl whose crush on Astrov is sweet and real. During Astrov’s speech about deforestation, St. Louis fills with excitement. She beams. 

    Telegin (“Waffles”), played by Daniel Becker, and Marina (“Nanny”), Janet Sarno, are skillful in their supporting roles, creating layered characters in only a handful of lines.

    The sets are bare — a heavy wooden table, a handful of chairs, and a backdrop of lifeless, grim trees — echoing the theme of deforestation. The design is the right balance between the greatness of the estate and the decline of the people who live on it, and the cackling of crows at the start of the show is a great portent of the bickering to follow.

    “Uncle Vanya” is a well-staged, bleak play. Tortured, and longing for something better, the country people are condemned to lives of monotony; the only spark any of them show involves unrequited love.

    The play has been cleverly adapted for this day and age. If there is any moral, it is that in the end we all must get down to work. We must do our job, not get caught up in emotions, not covet thy neighbor (or his wife). We must work.  The entire cast does just that, and in so doing creates a well-developed, adroitly executed evening of theater.

    “Uncle Vanya” is in its final week, with performances tonight, tomorrow, and Saturday at 8 and on Sunday at 7. Tickets, at $25 or $10 for students, can be purchased online at guildhall.org or theatermania.com, or at the Guild Hall box office.

    Christian McLean is the conference coordinator of Southampton Arts Summer at Stony Brook Southampton and the director of its writing workshops in Florence, Italy.

Jong on E.L. James

    BookHampton will host a provocative discussion with Erica Jong on Saturday at 8 p.m. at the East Hampton store. She will discuss the book “Fifty Shades of Grey” in a talk called “Is This What We’ve Come To?”

    Ms. Jong’s 1973 “Fear of Flying” was one of the first popular erotic novels penned by a woman. She has continued to write in that genre, crafting some of the more graphic sexual descriptions in contemporary fiction.

    She objects to the popular “Fifty Shades” trilogy because, in her words, “it is just bad writing. That and the fact that the heroine is subservient, allowing her body to be abused in order to ‘get her man.’ Is this what we’ve come to?”

‘Graduate’ Auditions

    Center Stage at the Southampton Cultural Center will hold open auditions for performances of “The Graduate,” based on the 1963 novel and 1967 film of the same title, on Sunday at 4 p.m. and Monday at 6 p.m. The center is on Pond Lane in Southampton Village.

    Michael Disher will direct the play, which was adapted for the London stage in 2001 by Terry Johnson. The film told the story of Benjamin Braddock, a recent and aimless university graduate who is seduced by an older woman and falls in love with her daughter.

    No prepared monologue is required. Sides will be provided at the auditions. Auditions will begin promptly; late arrivals will be seen at the discretion of the director. Performances will begin on July 12 and run through July 29. Questions can be e-mailed to Mr. Disher at [email protected].

‘Black Tie’ Onstage

    The Hampton Theatre Company will present “Black Tie” at the Quogue Community Hall beginning next Thursday. A.R. Gurney’s play features a clash of cultures and generations at a traditional WASP wedding. The play will run Thursdays to Sundays through June 10.

     The cast of five includes Andrew Botsford as Curtis, the father of the bridegroom, and Cyrus Newitt as the ghost of Curtis’s father, who returns to help his son be the perfect host according to family dictates. Rosemary Cline plays Curtis’s wife, who tries to help her husband embrace a multicultural world. Christopher Scheer is the panicked bridegroom, and Sydney Schwindt is his sister.

    The play will be onstage Thursdays at 7 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., and Sundays at 2:30 p.m. Ticket prices are $25 for adults, $23 for senior citizens (except Saturdays), and $10 for students under 21. Reservations can be made through Hamptontheatre.org.

‘American Meat’

    A new documentary, “American Meat,” will be screened at Guild Hall on Saturday at 2 p.m. It chronicles a grassroots evolution in sustainable meat production from the current industrial meat system, as told through the eyes of farmers who live and work in the industry. Smaller-scale operations and the farmers, food advocates, and chefs who support them are featured, and the film addresses whether such efforts could meet the demand of American consumers.

    “American Meat” focuses in particular on Joel Salatin, a Virginia farmer who began a movement to raise animals outdoors and without antibiotics. After the screening, Graham Meriwether, the filmmaker, will take part in a discussion with Joe Realmuto of Nick and Toni’s restaurant in East Hampton, Scott Chaskey of Amagansett’s Quail Hill Farm, and Alex Balsam and Ian Calder-Piedmonte of Balsam Farms, also in Amagansett.

    Nick and Toni’s will serve small plates, wine, and beer from local sources at 4:30 p.m. The film and discussion cost $12, $10 in advance at AmericanMeatFilm.com. The event at Nick and Toni’s costs $25.

The Wine of Love

    Morris Goldberg, a virtuoso on clarinet, saxophone, flute, and even the pennywhistle, will perform at the last Candlelight Fridays show of the season at the Wolffer Estate Vineyard tomorrow from 5 to 8 p.m. An East Hampton resident, Mr. Goldberg plays in many musical genres, among them classical, jazz, bebop, and mbaqanga. Well known among jazz aficionados, he worked with Paul Simon on his album “Graceland.”

    Next week, live music will continue at the Sagaponack winery on Thursdays in the tasting room from 5 to 8 p.m. and on Fridays at the wine stand, both with no cover charge. Wine, with cheese and charcuterie plates, will be available for purchase. Food may not be brought in from outside.