qboro: Arts, Culture & Living

The darkly comic tale of a small-town Irish girl whose wedding day takes a surprising turn when she flees her own reception, “Appropriate” is coming to our shores for a brief run at the New York Irish Center in Long Island City beginning Jan. 27.

Has Sorcha, who is engaged to Marty, a former soccer hero, gone mad? Or is she just experiencing ambivalent feelings over the prospect of becoming a soccer bride?

Few movies have been more discussed and analyzed than Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey,” the 1968 science-fiction epic that was lauded for its visual effects while also leaving many viewers wondering what the meaning of it all was.

At nearly two and a half hours, the film, written by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, examines the relationship between humanity and technology through pioneering special effects. It made $146 million at the box office and earned Kubrick an Academy Award for Visual Effects.

It opens with a man writing a suicide note. It finds an Irish family embroiled in an argument over the suspicious death of its patriarch. It addresses a controversial topic: the legalization of abortion.

And it’s a comedy ... of sorts!

Queens has been even brighter than usual this holiday season.

Citi Field is home for the inaugural Hello Panda Festival, which began on Dec. 6 and runs through Jan. 26. It promotes itself as the “largest lantern festival in North America.”

In the absence of a white Christmas here in New York City, the winter wonderland that has been created on stage at The Secret Theatre for its current production, “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” running through Jan. 4, might just do to help put you in the holiday spirit.

It’s the theater’s fourth go-round with this seasonal attraction, though many of the personnel involved in this year’s rendering are on board for the first time, lending it a fresh feel.

Have you had your fill of the Times Square mob scene? Are you fed up with long lines at overpriced restaurants? Are you fearful of all the crazies out on the roads?

Well, there is an alternative for New Year’s Eve ... and it’s called staying home.

Christmastime is the season of giving, and what better gift is there to give than food? With these recipes, you can make it look like you spent more time in the kitchen than you did wrapping presents, but in reality these festive delicacies to delight friends and family take very little time.

Despite his tremendously successful career as a writer, Charles Dickens, considered by many to be the greatest English novelist of all time, may never have imagined that a century and a half after his death his works would still be making glad the hearts of readers the world over.

He might be even more surprised that so many of his stories have been adapted into motion pictures and as staged presentations, including “A Christmas Carol,” being performed through Dec. 22 by Titan Theatre Co. at Queens Theatre.

It still amazes Jon Lovitch that his first gingerbread creation consisted of 12 homes that could fit in 4 square feet and now he creates a display of 2,300 of them at the Hall of Science.

He notes how he went from a Missouri town with 2,000 people with one gas station and one stoplight to New York City.

The world premiere of a new, nearly wordless musical, “A–oranza de Colombia” (“Nostalgia for Colombia”), running at Thalia Spanish Theatre in Sunnyside through Dec. 15, provides a veritable smorgasbord of the music and dances that have ties to that South American country.

The show, presented in conjunction with Mestizo Art Center and featuring a cast of about a dozen young, tireless and talented performers, is a feast for the eyes and ears.