Punch bowl showing the trade district in Canton, China, about 1780.Art: Earlier this month, China claimed the title of the world’s second-largest economy, overtaking Japan for the No. 2 spot behind the United States. It seems a local achievement for a nation that has long been a much-desired global trading partner, and a new show at the Norton Museum of Art focuses on one of the more familiar offshoots of that commercial energy. On the Silk Road and the High Seas features more than 70 pieces of pottery for the international and domestic markets, including pieces with themes the world has come to associate with Asian art such as an early 19th-century peacock blue vase in the form of a magnificent fish. The show runs through Nov. 21. For more information, call 832-5196 or visit www.norton.org.
Fish vase with ormolu mount, from the reign of Emperor Jiaqing (1796-1820). Theater: In a disappointing summer season locally, Florida Stage’s inaugural production in its new home at the Kravis Center, the musical revue Low Down Dirty Blues, remains the most entertaining show around. But it will not be around for long, since it has to close next Sunday, Sept. 5, to make way for the company’s subscription slate of new works. Set in a Chicago club in the wee hours of the morning, this primer in the blues features an authentic cast of performers who demonstrate the range of emotions, high and low, that the genre encompasses. The show itself could stand some shaping, but the company – Sandra Reaves-Phillips, Mississippi Charles Bevel, Gregory Porter and Felicia P. Fields – could not be bettered. Call (561) 585-3433 for tickets. -- H. Erstein
Paul Dano and Kevin Kline in The Extra Man. Film: In the midst of all the summer blockbusters and redundant sequels, The Extra Man is a small whimsical film that deserves to find an audience. Based on a memoir by Jonathan Ames, it is tale of a Midwestern school teacher (Paul Dano of Little Miss Sunshine) who relocates to New York City and rents a room from a seedy, eccentric old coot (Kevin Kline, too long absent from the big screen) who tutors him in how to be a freeloader in style. Among his tricks is serving as an “extra man,” an escort for dowagers at dinner parties, a skill that is not uncommon on Palm Beach. The screenplay is full of head-scratching tangents, such as John C. Reilly in a hirsute, high-pitched cameo, but just accept them as part of the oddball fun. – H. Erstein
Dave Wakeling, in a picture from his website.Music: Back at the beginning of the 1980s, the English guitarist and songwriter Dave Wakeling and his band, The Beat, enlivened the technopop-heavy sounds of the day with infectiously catchy, stripped-down ska-influenced singles such as Save It for Later, I Confess, Mirror in the Bathroom, and even an anti-Tory protest song, Stand Down Margaret. Long a resident of Los Angeles, Wakeling is out on tour again with a new version of the band, known over here as The English Beat, and they’ll be stopping in Saturday night at the Culture Room in downtown Fort Lauderdale. This is classic British pop, as fun and danceable as it was when it first hit the airwaves, and it still sounds fresh. Tickets are $18 through Ticketmaster, and the show starts at 8 p.m.
Matthew Steynor.Maurice Ravel’s version of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition added plenty of orchestral color to the composer’s original piano suite, and the piece always has attracted musicians who want to put the music in a form richer than that of the solo piano. This Sunday at Miami’s Trinity Cathedral, the organist Matthew Steynor will perform the suite, drawing from two or three transcriptions, and accompanied by images broadcast on a screen at the front of the cathedral. Steynor also will make a mark for himself by debuting his own arrangement of Respighi’s beautiful Three Botticelli Pictures, also accompanied by images. Also on the program, called Musical Murals, are works by Schumann and the contemporary Dutch composer Ad Wammes. The concert begins at 6 p.m. Sunday; tickets are $20-$15. Call 305-789-0074 or visit www.trinitymiami.org.