Music/Theater

DOOM AND DEVILTRY: Reverend Eddie (Doug Lavanture, right) preaches hell fire and brimstone and the end of the world to his loyal hunchbacked assistant Brother Lawrence (Dave Holtz) in the setting of a dilapidated church filled with the paraphernalia and refuse of contemporary civilization in Theatre Intime’s production of Levi Lee and Larry Larson’s comedy, “Some Things You Need to Know Before the World Ends (A Final Evening with the Illuminati),” at the Hamilton Murray Theater through October 18.

Theatre Intime Presents a Timely Post-Apocalyptic Sermon: “Some Things You Need to Know Before the World Ends”

Donald Gilpin

Yes, this is a comedy. Under normal circumstances, I could probably assume you‘d realize that a play titled Some Things You Need to Know Before the World Ends (A Final Evening With the Illuminati) couldn‘t be anything but satiric. But at last Thursday‘s opening night, on a day when the stock market tanked again en route to the worst week in Wall Street history, the timeliness of this end-of-the world theme was frightening.

But no. Theatre Intime is not offering a doomsday scenario on the decline of Western Civilization, nor an economic treatise on the consequences of the failures of capitalism, nor an investigation of what you should do in the coming recession with what’s left of your retirement account, your stock portfolio, and the rest of your life.

In Some Things You Need to Know Before the World Ends the genre is satiric comedy, the conspiracies are the occult religious ones of the Illuminati rather than sub-prime mortgage sellers and Wall Street wheeler-dealers, and the principal villain is the black-robed figure of Death himself. Grim subject matter notwithstanding, Some Things You Need to Know…, which takes place in the small Hamilton Murray Theater cleverly transformed into a dilapidated, post-apocalyptic church looking like an overflowing junkyard, might even provide a certain comic relief from the daily assaults of the economic, political, and world news.

Latin American Jazz Group Electrifies Audience in Richardson Auditorium

Nancy Plum

The Princeton University Music Department is apparently not the only department presenting concerts in Richardson Auditorium these days. For the past five years, the Program in Latin American Studies has also been sponsoring musical events on campus to further acquaint the Princeton community with the culture of Latin American countries and artists. One of the premiere Latin American musical groups, Choro Ensemble, came to Richardson on Friday night, and this quartet of artists treated the audience to a wide variety of Brazilian musical styles and songs.