Lion kings
You won’t believe your eyes at the new Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus performance “Legends” when a unicorn, Pegasus and woolly mammoth roll into the ring at Barclays Center.
“We’ve had little kids showing up with pictures they’ve drawn of unicorns,” says Harlem-born ringmaster Johnathan Lee Iverson, 38, who first joined the troupe in 1999. “The show is packed full of extraordinary wonders.”
Highlights include the daredevil Torres family speeding at 65 mph on eight motorcycles inside a 16-foot steel sphere, capoeira acrobat Paulo dos Santos and the “king of the big cats” Alexander Lacey.
Addressing the increasingly vocal protestors lobbying NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio to ban animal circuses in the city, Iverson quips: “He doesn’t know animals — he can’t even hold a groundhog without dropping it on its head!”
Friday through March 2 at Atlantic and Flatbush avenues, Brooklyn; 917-618-6700; barclayscenter.com. Tickets start at $15.
— Jane Ridley
Thonx, Bronx
Arlene Alda wants you to know that not all of the 60 people featured in her upcoming book “Just Kids From The Bronx” are stars, even though it does include the likes of Al Pacino, Regis Philbin, Mary Higgins Clark and Carl Reiner.
“It’s not just famous people,” Alda says. “They’re prominent people who have interesting lives. Many of them are just great in what they do.”
Alda, who was born in The Bronx in 1933 and lived off of Allerton Avenue, will be discussing her collection of stories about growing up in the borough Saturday as part of the Bronx Museum of the Arts’ Back in The Bronx series. And she’ll be interviewed by her husband, actor Alan Alda.
“I thought it would be fun,” she says, “I’ve never been interviewed by him.”
Noon at 1040 Grand Concourse, at 165th Street; 718-681-6000, bronxmuseum. org. $10 admission includes lunch (phone for reservations).
— Tim Donnelly
Game on
“We never got to play video games on a large projector screen before,” says Brooklyn sideshow performer and pro wrestling manager Bobby Phobia, 32, “but as adults, we finally have that ability!” At Union Hall’s “Our Princess Is in Another Castle: Street Fighter vs. Mortal Kombat” event, entrants will face each other in a series of classic video games to compete for prestige, fun and, best of all, drinks, with live gaming commentary by Phobia and A.V. Club writer Steve Heisler. “We wind up with a sports-bar feel, with the whole crowd bursting into screams, or going ‘Aww’ when something bad happens,” says Phobia. And if your skill level seems more likely to elicit awws than awe, don’t worry, says Phobia: “We’ll be awarding drink tickets to some of the best and worst players of the night.”
Sunday, 7 p.m., at 702 Union St., Park Slope; 718-638- 4400, unionhallny.com.
— Charlie Heller
Mad man
The most prescient film of the last 40 years? No contest. It’s Sidney Lumet’s “Network,’’ which predicted (in 1976!) that the line between television news and entertainment would become irrevocably blurred in the pursuit of ratings. Peter Finch won a posthumous Oscar as the mad anchorman (“I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!’’) whom an insanely ambitious programmer (Faye Dunaway, who won the Best Actress Oscar) refuses to pull off the air. Based on a brilliant, Oscar-winning script by Paddy Chayefsky, it’s showing Sunday at 2 p.m. at the Museum of the Moving Image, followed by a conversation between Dave Itzkoff, author of a new book about the movie, and Keith Olbermann. 35th Avenue and 36th Street, Astoria. Info: movingimage.us
— Lou Lumenick
Price is right
With a nickname like Mr. Personality (from his 1959 hit song), it’s little wonder that Lloyd Price is such a likable character. “They gave me that nickname because I smile and laugh a lot,” he says with a chuckle. “It’s one of the things that keeps me young.” Eighty-year-old Price is ready to prove that Friday at the Cutting Room for a show that celebrates his status as a rock ’n’ roll pioneer. Back in 1952, the success of Price’s “Lawdy Miss Clawdy” (later covered by Elvis Presley and Little Richard, to name but two) helped seed not only a musical revolution, but a social and racial one, too. “That song started the youth movement and it brought black and white kids together for the first time. I’m certain that Barack Obama is in the White House because of this music.” It’s a legacy that is pretty hard to top.
8 p.m. at 44 E. 32nd St.; 212-691- 1900, thecuttingroomnyc.com. Tickets from $40.
— Hardeep Phull