Good morning. It’s Friday. Today, and on Fridays through the summer, we’ll focus on things to do in New York over the weekend.
Things are getting curiouser and curiouser at the New York Botanical Garden.
You can go through a rabbit hole.
You can encounter White Rabbit, who is late, late, late for a very important date. (He’s there all the time and will probably be the first thing you’ll see. At 12 feet tall, he’s hard to miss.)
And you might run into the Queen of Hearts and the playing card she searches for in “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” Don’t worry. She won’t say “off with your head.”
You’ll find those and other connections to Alice’s adventures in “Wonderland: Curious Nature,” an indoor and outdoor show at the garden that takes its inspiration from the Lewis Carroll books. The show combines literary and botanical history with contemporary art, including “Play It by Trust,” a large-scale interactive chess set by Yoko Ono. It brings to mind the living chess pieces in “Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There.”
“Wonderland” is open six days a week — closed on Mondays except holidays — from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. And tomorrow, when the garden will be open from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. for “Wonderland Nights,” you can see the plants and art installations in the evening and attend the Mad Hatter’s tea party, staged by Thistle Dance, a company that specializes in immersive experiences. The garden says you can go as your favorite “Alice” character.
Or you can order a “Drink Me” lavender latte at the garden’s Pine Tree Café, which is also serving illustrated Wonderland sugar cookies and Mad Hatter brownies.
Carroll lectured in mathematics at Oxford University (as Charles Lutwidge Dodgson — he made used Lewis Carroll as a pen name) and was animated by the botanical garden there, which dates to the 17th century. But, as Jennifer Bernstein, the president and chief executive of the New York Botanical Garden, said, “We were taking more of our inspiration from Alice’s experiences in nature than his.”
That would explain the giant White Rabbit, whose fur is cream-colored Sedum foliage and whose coat is a jacket of Alternanthera leaves.
“Alice has all of these different encounters with nature that connect to experiences we want people to have — experiences that challenge your perception of reality and also beauty,” Bernstein told me. “The stories have a kind of whimsy that we want to bring out.”
Brian Sullivan, a vice president of the garden, said that the idea was to highlight Victorian plants that Carroll might have seen in that era, when greenhouses and photography were new and importers were bringing back exotic plants, like Amazonian water lilies, that Britons had never seen.
“They were the horticultural big game of their day,” said Marc Hachadourian, the director of glasshouse horticulture and senior curator of orchids at the garden.
As for the rabbit hole, in the garden’s Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, it is made of cedar and festooned with bromeliads and other plants. And while everybody knows that Alice went down the rabbit hole, this portal is upright, and you walk through on the way to a space called the Wonderland.
Along the way are nosegays, small bunches of flowers, because in “Alice’s Adventures,” Alice is at one point sitting with her sister and thinking of making a daisy chain. There is a bat flower, which Hachadourian said was just one of the stranger and more curious flowers in “Wonderland.” And there are displays that point to Carroll’s interest in Charles Darwin — and Darwin’s influence on Carroll.
The Queen of Hearts and the playing card — brought to life by performers from the American Circus Theater, a New York-based traveling company with ballet dancers and Cirque du Soleil alumni — will be at the garden in the afternoon on Saturday and Sunday from noon to 3 p.m.
A special ticket is required for “Wonderland Nights” ($29 for members, $39 for nonmembers). “Wonderland Nights” will be repeated next Saturday.
Weekend Weather
Expect the weather to vary this weekend, with a mostly sunny day on Friday, a chance of showers at night on Saturday, and a partly cloudy day, with a chance of showers on Sunday. Temperatures will mostly be in the 80s during the day and in the low 60s at night.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until June 12 (Shavuot).
What Else to Do This Weekend
Long-running events in the city
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It’s the time of the year to say “Que Bonita Bandera”: The 67th annual National Puerto Rican Day Parade will be held on Sunday at 11 a.m. The route runs along Fifth Avenue in Manhattan from 44th Street to 79th Street.
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Back to the Jazz Age: The Jazz Age Lawn Party returns this weekend for its 19th year on Governors Island.
Catch a film festival or two
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A Brooklyn Film Festival premiere: On Sunday at 5:30 p.m. in Brooklyn, watch a screening of “Ovid, New York” as the festival winds down.
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Taking “Pride in Community”: The Queens World Film Festival features a lineup of stories about the L.G.B.T.Q. community. The festival will host a post-show panel and reception on Friday at 7 p.m. in Queens.
More local events
For more events in New York, here’s a list of what to do this month.
A laconic comedian at UBS Arena
Nate Bargatze is a low-key comedian from Nashville who has become a favorite of Jimmy Fallon’s since he opened for Fallon 11 years ago. Bargatze has appeared a total of 15 times on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” and, before that, on “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” on NBC. In 2015, Bargatze’s first Comedy Central special topped the comedy albums chart.
Our writer Sean L. McCarthy says that Bargatze’s aw-shucks sensibility and family friendly humor won him an invitation to be a presenter at the 2022 Grammy Awards, where he was also nominated for his comedy album “The Greatest Average American.” He used the same approach when he hosted “Saturday Night Live” in October. “If you’re at home, I’m as shocked as you are that I’m here,” he told the audience. Looking back on the “Saturday Night Live” season, Dave Itzkoff of The Times called Bargatze’s monologue “dryly hilarious.” (“I’m from the 1900s,” Bargatze declared. “And the world is so future now, and I feel in the way of it.”)
Last month, Bargatze did a short routine at the annual gala for the Robin Hood Foundation, an antipoverty group that gives millions in grants each year. But for him the highlight of the year has been two nights at the Hollywood Bowl with Jerry Seinfeld, Jim Gaffigan and Sebastian Maniscalco for the Netflix Is a Joke Festival last month. All the while, he helps produce and distribute specials for other comedians through his YouTube channel, Nateland Entertainment.
Now, Bargatze is headlining “The Funny Tour,” which stops at UBS Arena in Elmont, N.Y., for a show at 7 p.m. on Sunday. Tickets start at $33.75, before fees, on Ticketmaster.
METROPOLITAN diary
Seafoam green
Dear Diary:
I was walking to Grand Central early one summer Saturday. I was wearing seafoam green pants because it was to be a seafoam-green-pants type of day at the beach.
I passed a moving van on the other side of the street where some men were unloading furniture.
“You a doctor?” one of them yelled to me.
“No, sir,” I replied.
He shook his head.
“You’ve got to get some new pants,” he said.
— Geddes Johnson
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.