qboro: Arts, Culture & Living

A handful of classic musicals dating back to what has become known as the Golden Age of the Broadway Musical are among the anticipated highlights of the upcoming community theater spring season. These, along with more recent productions and a pair of straight plays that first delighted audiences in an even more distant past, make up this spring’s offerings.

Todd P seems like an ordinary guy.

At his Ridgewood home, he talked about everything from his changing life — he has just become a father — to his fondness for Thai food in Elmhurst.

The portrayal of disabled characters in mainstream film has had an uneven history. Actors like Dustin Hoffman (“Rain Man”) and Tom Hanks (“Forrest Gump”) have been praised for their depictions of people afflicted with mental and physical disabilities, but too often, in films ranging from 1932’s “Freaks” to 2008’s “Tropic Thunder,” one-dimensional portraits or insensitivity toward the disabled have been the norm.

Hoping to steer clear of stereotypes, the citywide ReelAbilities Film Festival, which kicks off on Feb. 9 in Manhattan and includes several screenings in Queens, seeks “to change perceptions in our society and to bring to the spotlight a large minority in America that is often shied away from,” according to Isaac Zablocki, the fest’s co-founder.

As movies ranging from “2001: A Space Odyssey” to “Alien” to “The Astronaut’s Wife” have proven: going to space is not always a good thing.

This point gets driven anew in “Advance Man” at the Secret Theatre. The play kicks off a six-month series of works by three companies who have banded together to form the BFG collective.

From the minute it opens, “Jackson Heights, 3 a.m.” bombards the senses: the lights go pink and dance music blares as the audience is taken inside one of Roosevelt Avenue’s drag clubs. Once the music dies down, we witness a secret meeting between two lovers who are plotting to escape together into the night. In that moment, “Jackson Heights, 3 a.m.” becomes reminiscent of “West Side Story,” yet still feels unmistakably grounded in today’s reality.

One of the play’s most unique elements is how it was written: Director Ari Laura Kreith took works by seven different playwrights — Jenny Lyn Bader, J. Stephen Brantley, Ed Cardona, Les Hunter, Tom Miller, Melisa Tien and Joy Tamasko — and arranged them so their plots would intersect over the course of a single late night in Jackson Heights.

For a gourmet Italian eatery that opened this past July, La Bottega has quickly made a home in Howard Beach.

Travel down Cross Bay Boulevard — there’s no doubt any Queens visitor or resident has a lot of dining choices. If you’re not just looking for fine food, but an overall gratifying experience, La Bottega is the place for you.

Fractals — irregular shapes that can be broken down into parts closely resembling the whole — are everywhere in nature: Clouds, mountain ranges, coastlines and broccoli are just a few examples.

This mathematical phenomenon can now also be found at the Crossing Art gallery, on the ground floor of the Queens Crossing mall in Flushing, where artistic renderings of fractals are on display until Feb. 14.

Inside the Proper Cafe on Linden Boulevard in St. Albans, drummer Butch Bateman taps a slithery rhythm on his hi-hat cymbal while Michael Benjamin’s fingers run up and down his upright bass. Saxophonists, trumpeters and flautists follow the lead of band director Hank Wentz, playing jazz standards with improvised twists. At any other place, this would be a special occasion, but at the Proper, they call it Wednesday.

That night every week, residents from around Queens come to the Proper for a night of live jazz with some of the best performers in the city.

As if it wasn’t enough for the Queens Library to manage over a million books, the library also seeks to preserve and catalog the history of Queens. To that end, it’s home to over 150,000 photographs, 6,000 maps and hundreds of thousands of manuscripts depicting “the history, the geology, the geography” of Long Island, including Queens and Brooklyn, said John Hyslop, the digital assets manager for the library.

But until an enterprising library studies grad student got involved, the library’s collection had one notable gap: audio recordings.

For some, winter is a season best experienced from underneath the covers. But even if you’d rather be hibernating for the next few months, consider making your peace with all things icy cold over at City Ice Pavilion in Long Island City, one of two ice rinks in Queens.

The other rink, World Ice Arena, is located in Flushing, and run by the same management company.