Plenty of options for Super Sunday
Let's say you just don't care. Or, more realistically, say you just can't take all those hours of pregame hoopla. Or maybe you're too nervous to sit through the whole thing and just want to be told afterward that the Patriots are Super Bowl champions. Here is a selection of things to do on Sunday that don't involve Brady, Bruschi, or Belichick.
From scones in Concord to ska in Cambridge, there's plenty to do besides (or before) the Super Bowl on Sunday. Several plays end their runs with matinees, while one delivers a marathon rendition in two parts - with a break for dinner. Speaking of marathons, here's the chance to catch up with the whole first week of HBO's therapy series "In Treatment." Globe critics have other suggestions, too. As for the Big Game - isn't that what
High tea
Everyone in New England will be drinking Duff's and pounding their La-Z-Boys. You, on the other hand, will be lifting your pinky and sampling fine English, Chinese, and Indian teas served in the Colonial Inn's elegant bone china teacups. Everyone else will be clotting their arteries with pork rinds. You will be spreading Devonshire clotted cream on your scone. Everyone else will be yelling. You won't. Colonial Inn, Concord, 3 to 5 p.m. For reservations call 978-528-0207.
Curtains all over
A bevy of shows worth catching have their final matinees Sunday afternoon - so, in theory, you could see one and still make it home in time for kickoff. (It's hard to imagine a huge overlap of Patriots fans with aficionados of Michael Frayn, Christopher Durang, or Wendy Wasserstein, but surely some Shakespeareans will have more than one vasty field in mind.) And the choices are: "Copenhagen" (American Repertory Theatre, 617-547-8300, amrep.org), "Third" (Huntington Theatre Company, Boston University stage, 617-266-0800, huntingtontheatre.org), and "Henry V" (Actors' Shakespeare Project, Downstairs at the Garage, Cambridge, 866-811-4111, actorsshakespeareproject.org), all at 2 p.m.; and, at 3, "Adrift in Macao" (Lyric Stage Company, 617-585-5678, lyricstage.com).
Visit from New York
Today's concert by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center groups young players with seasoned veterans. Clarinetist David Shifrin represents the latter camp, while pianist Shai Wosner and the Escher String Quartet are in the former. In various configurations, they will survey two much-loved cornerstones of the chamber music literature: Beethoven's Quartet Op. 130, with its serenely majestic Cavatina movement, and Brahms's Clarinet Quintet. There's also a welcome rarity: Prokofiev's Overture on Hebrew Themes. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 280 The Fenway, 617-278-5156, gardnermuseum.org. Concert begins at 1:30 p.m.
MTV, 1983
If you feel curiously compelled to stare at a screen for three hours, but not at football, log on to your computer for a trip back in time - a time when Genesis, the Police, and Van Halen had yet to break up. A time when you could get 40 of the biggest hits for just $6.99 on cassette. A time when MTV still played music videos. Recently, a VHS tape made of three random hours of MTV programming from 1983 popped up on the Web. You might be surprised, and slightly ashamed, at how quickly the minutes pass as you revel in clips by Night Ranger and the Tubes, sing along to 25-year-old commercials, and ponder the concept that Mark Goodman was once cool. At boingboing.net/2008/01/25/three-hours-of-mtv-f.html.
"Let's Get Lost"
Bruce Weber's 1989 documentary about Chet Baker, the jazz trumpeter and vocalist, is as troubling to contemplate (Baker was not a saint) as it is beautiful to listen to and look at. Weber's day job is as a photographer. Best-known for his highly sensual Calvin Klein ads, he brings a gloriously stylized look to the film's black-and-white camerawork. Few movies have so elegantly integrated sight and sound. Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle St., Cambridge, 617-876-6837, brattlefilm.org. Today's screenings are at 2:15, 4:45, 7:15, and 9:45 p.m.
Two by Penn
There will be blood, on screen anyway, with a double feature of director Arthur Penn's most famous film, 1967's "Bonnie and Clyde," and his debut, "The Left-Handed Gun," which came out a decade earlier. The former stars Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty as '30s criminals on the lam. "They're young, they're in love, and they kill people" the movie's ad campaign said. Who could resist? The latter stars Paul Newman as Billy the Kid in a very different sort of Western - look for Penn's brief use of slow motion, a foreshadowing of its role at the end of "Bonnie and Clyde." Harvard Film Archive, Cambridge, 7 p.m.
Austen vs. Austen
The furthest you could possibly get from the Super Bowl? Yup, Jane Austen. PBS's "Masterpiece" is in the midst of an Austen-a-thon, airing weekly adaptations of her novels, but this Sunday the series pauses for a look at Austen herself. "Miss Austen Regrets" (9-10:30 p.m., Channel 2) is a biopic about Austen and the choices that led her to stay single, with Olivia Williams playing Austen as a wise, tart, but ultimately sad, lady. Meanwhile, TCM is making a play for the huge Austen audience (yes, irony alert) by programming one of the better Austen adaptations against PBS. "Sense and Sensibility," starring Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet, is a warm and exceedingly pretty take on Austen's tale of two sisters. It was written by Thompson and directed by Ang Lee. Catch it from 8-10:30 p.m.
Matt Haimovitz
This one-time cello prodigy had a falling out with the classical establishment and now plays to his own internal metronome. Everyone should be happier for it. In recent years, Haimovitz has pioneered the now-burgeoning indie classical movement, bringing the music into hip or alternative venues. Sunday he's back at Club Passim in Cambridge, where he'll play works by Ned Rorem, Paul Moravec, and Lewis Spratlan from his fine new solo album, "After Reading Shakespeare." Club Passim, 47 Palmer St., Cambridge, 617-492-7679, clubpassim.org. Show starts at 7:30 p.m.
"Angels" in excelsis
It's a marathon day for Boston Theatre Works, which is staging ambitious yet intimate productions of both parts of Tony Kushner's epic masterpiece, "Angels in America." Part I, "Millennium Approaches," starts at 2 p.m., with time for supper before you hit Part II, "Perestroika," at 7:30. A ticket for both plays is a bargain at $80 - but, more important, it provides the rare chance to see Kushner's sweeping vision whole. Boston Center for the Arts Roberts Studio Theatre, 527 Tremont St., 617-933-8600, bostontheatrescene.com.
Juliet and beyond
Working with director Karin Coonrod, Rebekah Maggor has revised "Shakespeare's Actresses in America," her one-woman exploration of great - or at least famous - performers in Shakespearean roles. With examples ranging from Sarah Bernhardt to Claire Danes, her virtuosic demonstration of wildly divergent performance styles gives a deeper appreciation of the strengths and weaknesses of each. Tonight's 65-minute show starts at 7. Boston Center for the Arts, Wimberly Theatre, 527 Tremont St., 617-933-8600, bostontheatrescene.com.
"In Treatment"
Some people just aren't that into football games. But they do enjoy watching lively psychological games, with all their power plays, defensive moves, and emotional fumbles. "In Treatment," HBO's new drama, is all about the action in a therapist's office, between Gabriel Byrne's Dr. Paul Weston and his clients, as well as between Paul and his own therapist, Gina (Dianne Wiest). In the first episode of Sunday's marathon of the show's first five episodes, see Paul's client Laura (Melissa George) make a forward pass that goes way out of bounds. HBO, 6:30-9 p.m.
"Dance Craze"
On a typical night at T.T. the Bear's, rock-starved indie kids fill up on drums and guitars. But the beloved Central Square club is shaking things up with a Sunday dance party that's all over the musical map. This week DJ Ford E. Buxworth (get it?) will spin soul, garage, punk, ska, and reggae. They've shined up the floor, added cheap beer specials, and a low-down cover. Think of it as an athletic event for people more interested in shaking their booties than passing the pigskin. T.T. the Bear's, 10 Brookline St., Cambridge, 617-492-0082, ttthebears.com. Tickets are $5; doors open at 8:30 p.m.
Compiled by Globe staff writers Joan Anderman, Ty Burr, Jeremy Eichler, Mark Feeney, Matthew Gilbert, Louise Kennedy, and Sarah Rodman.
