Friday Five for April 2

Holidays happen. Spring has spranged. The Final Four is unfurling. But there is plenty to do if baskets, briskets and basketball aren’t what your weekend is all about.

#5: L’Argent de poche and Ghost Town at UWM Union Cinema.
Why? Because you might know this movie as Small Change, Francois Truffaut’s much loved child’s-eye view of life in a small French town. And if you don’t know it, you are in for one of the most charming and good-humored film about childhood ever made. Zhao Dayong’s Ghost Town is another side of small-town life. Filmed illegally over the course of six years, this portrait of the impoverished Chinese village of Zhiziluo, is a vision of the “new China” that its government doesn’t want you to see.

#4: Joanna Newsom at the Pabst.
Why? Because the last alternative rock singer-harpist you heard just didn’t measure up, and you want to give Newsom a try. Because those in the know urge you to think beyond her hippy-dippy, “freak-folk” label (and, some say, her voice, a cross between Billie Holiday and Lisa Simpson) and listen for her literate song-craft and string-plucking chops. And because she’s shown with her latest release, “Have One On Me,” that she is certainly one of the most original voices and sensibilities in indie-rock/pop today.

#3: Milwaukee Symphony at the Marcus Center.
Why? Because it’s hard to think of a more savvy interpreter of Chopin than the American pianist Garrick Ohlsson. Because he launched his career by being the first American to win the International Frederick Chopin Piano Competition (in 1970). And because he’s coming to Milwaukee to play….Chopin! Edo de Waart conducts the achingly romantic second concerto by Frederic C. and also gets a little Shakespearean with Berlioz’s Beatrice and Benedick overture. Elgar’s Symphony No. 1 rounds out the program.

#2: La Donna Veleta at the Milwaukee Art Museum
Why? Because you keep meaning to pay a visit to the Pitti Palace in Florence, but you know how it is: soccer games, fantasy football meetings, and the final season of Lost. You just haven’t gotten around to it. Well the prime of the Pitti comes to you courtesy of the Milwaukee Art Museum, which hosts Raphael’s famed 17th-century portrait, “The Woman with the Veil” right her in Beertown. So now you can oooh and ahhh at a Raphael in the afternoon, and still watch Gallardo throw the first pitch at Miller Park in the evening.

#1: The Value of Names at Next Act Theater.
Why? Because you didn’t name names. But some people did. Jeffrey Sweet’s play revisits the McCarthy era (those were the days, weren’t they, when demagogues didn’t have their own cable news shows?) through the story of a couple of old friends drawn apart by the ’50s witch hunts. Loosely based on the relationship of Elia Kazan (who named names) and Zero Mostel (who was one of the named), Next Act’s final play this season (and the final play performed in their Off-Broadway Theatre) stars two of Milwaukee’s best, John Kishline and Bobby Spencer.