Theater, Comedy and Artworks : Lots of Other Things Going On

Dying for some super relief from the super hyperbole of Super Bowl week? Here are some best bets on the local cultural and entertainment scene that should offer an absorbing change of pace before and after Sunday’s kickoff.

Theater:

San Diego Repertory Theatre’s extended hit musical, “Six Women with Brain Death, or Expiring Minds Want to Know,” offers a super diversion. A lunatic tale of information overload in the ‘80s, the performances are at 8 nightly through Friday, and at 6 and 9:30 p.m. Saturday at the Lyceum Space in Horton Plaza. There is no performance Sunday. Tickets are $15 for tonight, and $18 for Friday and Saturday performances. Tickets are $2 off for seniors and students.

The Yale Repertory Theatre production of “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” previewing this weekend at the Old Globe Theatre, is already a hot property. Written by 1987 Pulitzer Prize winner August Wilson (“Fences”) and directed by 1987 Tony Award winner Lloyd Richards (“Fences”), the drama tells about a group of black boardinghouse tenants in 1911 Pittsburgh. A Washington, D.C., production at the Arena Stage preceded the San Diego run. After the San Diego production, the show travels to New York’s Ethel Barrymore Theatre for its Broadway opening March 27. The Globe preview performances are at 2 p.m. Saturday and 7 p.m. Sunday. The theater is in Balboa Park. Tickets are $16, $14 for seniors over 60 and active-duty military.

Actress-comedian Whoopi Goldberg’s new one-woman show, “Living on the Edge of Chaos,” bows in for only four performances at the Lyceum Stage in Horton Plaza at 8 and 10 p.m. today and Friday. Tickets are $35 and $50, except for Friday’s 10 p.m. show and gala midnight meet-the-actress reception, which are $100.

Art:

One of the art world’s best-kept secrets is the tiny Timken Art Gallery in Balboa Park. The gallery’s limited collection contains top-flight examples of major European Old Masters of the French, Dutch, Flemish and Italian schools and American painters from the 18th and 19th centuries. Works such as Rembrandt’s “Saint Bartholomew,” Petrus Christus’ “Death of the Virgin” and Boucher’s “Lovers in a Park” are displayed along with American works such as Fitz Hugh Lane’s “Castine Harbor and Town,” Eastman Johnson’s “Cranberry Harvest” and Albert Bierstadt’s “Cho-looke, The Yosemite Fall.” The gallery is open from 10 a.m to 4:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. Sundays. Admission to the gallery is free.

Another tiny treasure, also in Balboa Park, is the Museum of Photographic Arts, currently exhibiting 110 new acquisitions in its permanent collection. Among the photographs are Francis Frith’s “Nubie Temple” image of colossal Egyptian figures, Nadar’s 1885 deathbed portrait of author Victor Hugo and Ansel Adams’ “Aspens, Northern New Mexico.” Also on exhibit are prints by photographers such as Andre Kertesz, Roy DeCarava, John Gutmann and Harry Callahan. The museum is open daily 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is $2. Children under 12 are admitted free when accompanied by an adult.

The La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art’s current exhibition from its permanent collection surveys prominent California artists and selected major American artists of the past four decades. Californians such as Larry Bell, Scott Burton and Ed Moses are represented along with pieces by Richard Serra, Robert Rauschenberg and minimalists Ellsworth Kelly, Donald Judd and Sol LeWitt. The museum is at 700 Prospect St., La Jolla. Hours are from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily through Sunday. Admission charge is $3 for adults, $1 for students and seniors, and 50 cents for children under 12.

Painters Georgia O’Keeffe, Sarah Miriam Peale and Mary Cassatt are among the artists featured in “American Women Artists, 1830-1930” at the San Diego Museum of Art. The survey of women artists was organized by the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. Admission is $4, $3 for seniors 65 and older and active-duty military, $2 for students 13-18 or possessing a current college ID card and $1 for children 6-12. Children under 6 are admitted free.

Music:

Dmitri Shostakovich’s son, Maxim, conducts the San Diego Symphony in his father’s Symphony No. 5 in D minor at 8 p.m. today and Friday at Symphony Hall. Shostakovich will lead the orchestra in a program that includes Richard Strauss’ tone poem, “Don Juan” and Stravinsky’s 1919 revision of “The Firebird Suite.” The concert hall is at 1245 7th Ave. Tickets are $10.

Former San Diego Symphony concertmaster Andres Cardenas and pianist Karen Follingstad will play four of Beethoven’s sonatas for violin and piano at St. James-by-the-Sea Episcopal Chuch in La Jolla. Tickets to the 8 p.m. Saturday recital are $12.50. The church is at 743 Prospect St., La Jolla.