STAGE

Benjamin Britten’s music is unfailingly delicious, and Seattle Opera’s never utilized more potent scenic effects: two reasons to go see The Turn of the Screw before it closes Saturday. Adam Larsen’s hallucinatory cubist projections atop Robert Dahlstrom’s set drenched in Connie Yun’s lighting are expertly calculated to disconcert, and succeed; when all three start shifting and morphing, the effect is eerily reminiscent of the zoom-in-pull-back camera trick invented for Vertigo. (Dahlstrom designed a disappearing/reappearing staircase that seems to ooze out of the background, then get slurped back in.) The story itself—are two children being menaced by ghosts, or is their governess just going mad?—has never worked for me, but the chamber orchestra drawn from the Seattle Symphony sounds fantastic. Constantin Trinks conducts; sung in English with English supertitles. GAVIN BORCHERT McCaw Hall, seattlopera.org. $49 and up. 7:30 p.m. Oct. 24, 26, 27.

George Bernard Shaw’s 1964 comic bonbon Arms and the Man offers a creamy-sweet center of romance coated with a shell of wry cynicism. Or is it the other way around? Shaw ruthlessly sends up chivalry, heroism, romance, idealism—pretty much everything the 19th century valued. How dare he? GB Center Theatre at the Armory. $30–$55. Previews Oct. 24–25, opens Oct. 26. 7:30 p.m. Wed.–Sat. plus some weekends and matinees; see seattleshakespeare.org for exact schedule. Ends Nov. 18.

With puppetry, drumming, and movement, Madison Jade Jones’ Anansi and the Halfling combines myth and modernity in the story of a millennial black woman. GB Annex Theatre, annextheatre.org. $10–$20. 7:30 p.m., Oct. 25–Nov. 17.

Tony Kushner’s A Bright Room Called Day deals with artists in 1932 Berlin facing political catastrophe. (Is it an allegory? What? Why do you ask?) GB Hillman City Collaboratory. Pay what you can. Oct. 25–Nov. 18.

Firebrand monologist Mike Daisey returns with A People’s History, a show examining the way we teach and respond to history by comparing his high-school education to Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. SETH SOMMERFELD Seattle Repertory Theatre. $17 and up. Oct. 24–Nov. 25.

COMEDY

No one does dry-as-a-bone, deprecating stand-up comedy quite like Andy Kindler. His performances read as unrelenting attacks on himself that intentionally lean into the cringe at times. He’s also the medium’s shrill ombudsman, delivering the haymakers during his “State of the Industry Address” each year at Montreal’s Just for Laughs Festival. Considering the current state of comedians behaving awfully, he’s got more material than ever. SS Laughs Comedy Club, laughs comedyclub.com. $20. 10 p.m. Fri., Oct. 26.

VISUAL ART

Seattle Art Museum’s Peacock in the Desert: The Royal Arts of Jodhpur, India offers a sense of what it would’ve been like to be Indian royalty (circa 17th century–1947) through 250 intricate paintings, canopies, jewelry, and weapons that once resided within palace walls. SS Seattle Art Museum, seattleart museum.org. $25. Thru Jan. 21.

CLASSICAL

UW faculty member Cristina Valdés is pretty much the area’s go-to pianist whenever any scary modern music is involved; the Seattle Symphony seems to have her on speed-dial. On this recital she’ll play formidable avant-garde piano works from Satie to today (well, 1980) by Boulez, Stockhausen, and others. GB Meany Center, UW campus, music.washington.edu. $10–$20. 7:30 p.m. Fri., Oct. 26.

A longtime Halloween tradition, the annual UW Halloween Organ Concert features seasonal music, including Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. BOO! GB Kane Hall, UW campus, music.washington.edu. Free. 7:30 p.m. Sun., Oct. 28

MUSIC

After years of stops and starts for life reasons (including a kidney failure), standout underground rappers P.O.S. and Astronautalis finally managed to put together 6666, the first full length album for their side project, Four Fists. Always aggressors on the mic, the pair should make for a wild Wednesday. SS Nectar Lounge, nectarlounge.com. $20. 8 p.m., Wed., Oct. 24.

The only modern Seattle grunge band that matters—Wild Powwers—celebrates the release of its new album, Skin. (Check out our feature on the band for more details.) SS Neumos, neumos.com. $12. 8 p.m., Thur., Oct 25.

There’s a delightfully dizzying and disorienting quality to The Joy Formidable’s whizzing walls of melody-meets-shoegaze rock. Listening to the Welsh trio can seem like a bee buzzing so close to your ear that you feel it—an unnerving, unexpected adrenaline boost. (Thankfully, TJF doesn’t sting.) The group’s new album Aaarth takes a few cues from Middle Eastern music while still letting front woman Ritzy Bryan shred and howl to her heart’s content. And don’t sleep on the show-opening Tancred, which has put out some of the best melodic rock in recent years (Out of the Garden was my favorite album of 2016) and carved out a more seasoned and mature sound on its new album, Nightstand. SS Neumos, neumos.com. 7 p.m., $22. Sun., Oct. 28.

Ah, Simple Minds. You didn’t (forget about them), did you? GB The Moore, stgpresents.org. $27–$73. 8 p.m., Sun. Oct. 28

FILM

It’s always wunderkind central when the National Film Festival for Talented Youth (aka NFFTY) screens the genre-spanning short works by top sub-25-year-old filmmakers. SS SIFF Cinema Uptown & Nesholm Family Lecture Hall, nffty.org. $33–$2,500. Oct. 26–28.

Newly rediscovered photographs by Dorothea Lange enhance And Then They Came for Us, a doc about the Japanese-American internment during WWII. GB Northwest Film Forum, nwfilmforum.org. $7–$12. 4:30 p.m. Sat., Oct. 27, 7 p.m. Sun., Oct. 28.

Satyajit Ray’s three-film bildungsroman, The Apu Trilogy, opens Oct. 29 with Pather Panchali, followed by Aparajito on Nov. 5, and The World of Apu on Nov. 12. GB Seattle Art Museum, seattleartmuseum.org. $9. 7:30 p.m.

BOOKS & TALKS

Just before the midterms, Chelsea Clinton comes to town to sign her book Start Now!, a book “for the next generation of young activists.” GB Elliott Bay Book Company, elliottbaybook.com. $17. 6 p.m., Wed., Oct. 24.

Kwame Anthony Appiah, the chair of this year’s MAN Booker Prize jury, brings The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity. GB Seattle Central Library, spl.org. 7 p.m., Fri., Oct. 25.

Frankenreads: A Mary Shelley Celebration honors the classic horror tome’s 200th anniversary with activities and discussions. GB. Research Commons, UW campus, ubookstore.com. 9:30 a.m., Sat., Oct. 27.

SPECIAL EVENTS

An estimated 16,000 members of the family Corvidae roost on the UW Bothell campus’s 58 acres, and the university not only has a webpage devoted to this phenomenon, but is throwing a crow party. UW Bothell Crow Watch features a lecture, student crow art, and a chance to stand outside and watch them swoop and circle (try not to think too hard about Hitchcock). GB UW Bothell, uwb.edu/visitors/crows. 3–6:30 p.m., Sun., Oct. 27.

SPORTS

Lucha libre takes center stage at DEFY Dia De Los Muertos when white-hot indie wrestler Bandido teams up with Flamita to take on The Amerikan Gunz for the Defy Tag Team Championship. The event also boasts the beefy Ring of Honor/New Japan Pro Wrestling rising star Jeff Cobb and Defy Champion Shane Strickland. SS Washington Hall, defywrestling.com. $25–$100. 8 p.m., Sat., Oct. 27.