Your weekly guide to staying entertained any day of the week

May 2, 2025

Welcome back to The Big To-Do. It’s finally May, but the weekend weather forecast includes April-style showers. The Kentucky Derby is Saturday, and Journalism is the favorite (at least in horseracing). Conan O’Brien’s Mark Twain Prize celebration brings local color to this week’s roundup of what’s new and notable on streaming, and the Globe’s Matt Juul has the highlights. And the most fun Globe story of this week is about a former Market Basket bagger. Bob Hoyt gained let’s-just-call-it-fame by creating a Spotify playlist, “Market Basket Classics,” that’s “made up of songs piped over the sound system of the grocery store he worked at when he was 14.” The Globe’s Beth Teitell has the earworm-inducing details.

Film & Movies

From left: Hannah John-Kamen, Lewis Pullman, Wyatt Russell, David Harbour, Florence Pugh, and Sebastian Stan in "Thunderbolts*." Chuck Zlotnick/MARVEL STUDIOS

Fair warning, Marvel fans: “Thunderbolts*” has an asterisk in the title. “It’s usually not a good sign when something comes with an asterisk attached, and that’s the case here,” the Globe’s Mark Feeney writes in a 2-star review. Florence Pugh’s character, Yelena Belova, is “the best thing in the movie, as matter-of-factly insolent as she is matter-of-factly lethal.” And Julia Louis-Dreyfus brings “phony-smile gusto” to her villain role.

“Guys and Dolls,” the “miscast movie musical adaptation” of the Broadway hit, turns 70 this year. In Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s film version, Sky Masterson is played by “some wannabe crooner named Marlon Brando,” writes Globe film critic Odie Henderson, even though Frank Sinatra was available — he played Nathan Detroit. Brando “was the biggest star in Hollywood, a man whose star had risen to the upper echelon of greatness. But dammit, Brando couldn’t sing!”

TV & Streaming

From left: Steve Carell as Nick, Kerri Kenney as Anne, Tina Fey as Kate, Colman Domingo as Danny, Marco Calvani as Claude, and Will Forte as Jack in "The Four Seasons." Courtesy of Netflix

“The Four Seasons” adapts unlikely source material: Alan Alda’s 1981 film about “complicated, close friendships and marriages.” The big names in this ensemble are Tina Fey, Steve Carell, Colman Domingo, and Will Forte, and it may be for you “if you want familiar faces talking about familiar themes.” The Globe’s Meredith Goldstein views the remake through Gen X-colored glasses and says it’s “shinier than Alda’s ... but the material stays true to its source.”

In the new season of “Walking Dead: Dead City,” Massachusetts plays Manhattan. “We went to check out Boston to see for possibilities for season 2, and found the most incredible locations and the best freaking crew,” star Lauren Cohan tells the Globe’s Matt Juul. Keep an eye out for scenes with Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s Negan at Lowell’s St. Jean Baptiste Church. “We knew that we’d be able to do something really epic in this place,” says Cohan.

The documentary “Free for All: The Public Library” “reflects its subject — and the double meaning of that title.” Filmmakers Dawn Logsdon and Lucie Faulknor make some iffy decisions, but “[p]erhaps it’s fitting that ‘Free for All’ offers a few causes for complaint,” writes the Globe’s Mark Feeney. “Some of it will make you proud and feel inspired. Some of it will make you angry. Sometimes it may even make you tear up.”

The title character of “Miss Austen” is not who you might expect. Cassandra, older sister of Jane, outlived the beloved author and “became a notorious literary villain,” destroying most of her letters. The four-episode “Masterpiece” series “threads together rich stories of duty, care, and the very real financial considerations every woman has to take into account when making decisions about her future,” writes Globe correspondent Caroline Framke.

The Big Day

San Francisco residents Brina Dillon and Taha Bakhtiyar returned to Boston, where they met and fell in love, for their April 5 wedding at the Fairmont Copley Plaza. Lovely Valentine

The Globe’s weddings column, The Big Day, tells stories of how couples found each other, fell in love, and said “I do.” For San Francisco residents Brina Dillon and Taha Bakhtiyar, who had their first meeting and first date in the West End, returning to Boston for their April wedding just felt right. “It made a ton of sense to take it back to where we met and where the journey, in many ways, began for both of us,” Taha tells Globe correspondent Andrea Timpano.

To apply to be featured, recently married and engaged couples (vow renewals and commitment ceremonies, too!) with ties to New England can click here for the application form.

Music

VOICES Boston music director Dan Ryan makes performance notes on sheet music during rehearsal with Julieta Ortiz and Ayden Bercy. "Noah's Flood" will involve hundreds of Boston-area youth performers and community ensembles of adults. JOSH REYNOLDS FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE

Boston Lyric Opera presents Benjamin Britten’s opera “Noah’s Flood” on Saturday, but it isn’t a “BLO performance.” Music director David Angus explains, “It’s a kids and community thing.” Hundreds of performers will take part, and the Globe’s A.Z. Madonna has a preview. “By the end, when they’re all playing and singing, and the entire audience is joining in the hymns, you’ll have two-and-a-half thousand people all performing together,” Angus says. “It’s a pretty mind-blowing experience.”

Rapper and MIT visiting scholar Lupe Fiasco tells his students to “go outside, get out of the studio.” Ahead of a free performance Friday, he chats with Globe correspondent Candace McDuffie about his teaching philosophy and using the campus as an inspiration. “Just to see rap spread and expand and be taken with a certain level of seriousness, not only by the students but also by the people teaching it, has been very fulfilling.”

Japanese Breakfast is back. “It’s really nice to come back and go on tour and sell more tickets than we ever have,” frontwoman Michelle Zauner tells Globe correspondent Henry Bova. The band is promoting “For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women),” which dropped in March but was recorded in 2023. “It was very scary for me to walk away for a year and do something else with my life, but it was really intellectually stimulating and felt very necessary.”

The New England Ukulele Festival benefits the Ukulele Kids Club, which puts instruments in the hands of medically fragile kids around the world. “It’s not just, ‘we’ll make kids smile for a minute with the ukulele,’” says Cynthia Miller. “It’s such a durable thing, because you’re giving this kid music.” The musician helped organize Sunday’s inaugural event, Globe correspondent Victoria Wasylak writes for Sound Check.

Theater

MaryRose Brendel (Karen Smith) and the tour company of "Mean Girls." Jenny Anderson

“Mean Girls” “still speaks to teenage girls, current and former.” The incarnation playing Boston through Sunday demonstrates that 21 years after the movie release, the musical “is best seen as a showcase for talented young performers,” writes Globe theater critic Don Aucoin. He singles out Kristen Amanda Smith (Gretchen) and MaryRose Brendel (Karen) as “the two best reasons to see this ‘Mean Girls.’”

At North Shore Music Theatre, it’s 1974, and the filming of “Jaws” is way behind schedule. “The Shark Is Broken,” by Ian Shaw and Joseph Nixon, tells the story of Robert Shaw (Ian’s dad), Roy Scheider, and Richard Dreyfuss on set. The play is “a smorgasbord for ‘Jaws’ fans, while also exploring relationships complicated by egos, alcoholism, and fame,” director Guy Masterson tells Globe correspondent Terry Byrne.

The national tour of “the acclaimed yet unconventional musical” “Kimberly Akimbo” reaches Boston next week. Carolee Carmello, 62, plays a teenager with a rapid-aging condition. “If I’m lucky enough to have a couple more decades, what do I want to do with whatever time is left? And that’s exactly the question she’s facing,” Carmello says in an interview with Globe correspondent Christopher Wallenberg. “Twenty days or 20 years, it’s a finite amount.”

Museums & Visual Art

John Singer Sargent, "The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit," 1882, at "Sargent & Paris," through August at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The painting is the centerpiece of the Museum of Fine Arts' Sargent galleries. Hyla Skopitz, courtesy of The Met

“Sargent & Paris,” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, considers John Singer Sargent at the dawn of his career. The show “bracingly, convincingly, reintroduces a familiar artist as a gifted naif, hungrily carving his path in a chaotic moment of revolutionary artistic change,” Globe art critic Murray Whyte writes from New York. “If that doesn’t sound like the Sargent you know, well, join the club.”

Pay attention to the subtitle of “Monsters of the Deep: Between Imagination and Science,” at the MIT Museum. Imagination contributes “views of whales and related sea creatures, monstrous and otherwise,” writes Mark Feeney. The science element is “a kind of case study in the nature of our knowledge about nature.”

Lucy Kim’s sculptural paintings “fool the eye, scramble assumptions.” “I oil paint on casts, direct, low relief impressions,” this week’s Working Artist, who teaches at BU, tells Globe correspondent Cate McQuaid. “But the two things” — the cast and the painting — “don’t match.” A solo show, “Pigment Spells,” opens May 15 at Praise Shadows Art Gallery in Brookline.

Books

Robert Pinsky Eric Antoniou

Robert Pinsky, “who’s long aimed to break poetry free of ivory towers and get it into the hands of every human,” retired from BU this week after 36 years. “I’m more aware of my emotion about not being a teacher than I am about leaving an institution,” the three-time US poet laureate says in a Q&A with Globe correspondent Lauren Daley. “What wonderful students I’ve had.”

In Aaron John Curtis’s first novel, “Old School Indian,” “the sly humor never stops, even in the most painful passages.” Set in Miami and on an Indian reservation in Upstate New York, it’s narrated by Dominick Deer Woods, who’s “a bit of a wiseass, but he’s a fine and reliable storyteller, a committed tour guide, and a gifted poet. You’re going to end up liking him,” writes Globe reviewer Marion Winik.

Comedy

Mo Amer performs at the Chevalier on Wednesday and the Wilbur on Thursday. Courtesy.

Mo Amer visits the Boston area next week on his “El Oso Palestino” tour. His series “Mo” wrapped up this year after two seasons, and “[t]he reception has been unbelievable,” Amer tells Globe correspondent James Sullivan. Now he’s looking toward his next special, which will feature material from the current tour. “I’m glad I found this art form, or it found me,” he says. “I feel like I’d be a big ball of angry energy if I didn’t have an outlet to express myself.”

Architecture

Robert Campbell (right) interviewed architect I.M. Pei at the John F. Kennedy Library in 2004. Lee, Matthew J. Globe Staff

Longtime Globe architecture critic Robert Campbell died Tuesday at 88. “Crisp, vigorous sentences supported the sweep of Mr. Campbell’s pronouncements,” Mark Feeney writes. “The reader could see that not only was this someone who knew what he was talking about; he did that talking surpassingly well.” Click through to read some examples.

Boston Globe Media Partners thanks its sponsors for supporting our newsletters. The sponsoring advertiser does not influence or create any editorial content for this newsletter. If you are interested in advertising opportunities, please contact us here.