When the political activist, comedian, and performance artist Morgan Bassichis premièred their exquisitely funny show “Can I Be Frank?” in New York last summer, they were already picturing a splendid return. Dragging a crummy prop staircase laboriously across the tiny club stage at La MaMa, Bassichis promised us that the show had grandeur in store. “Frank” ’s director, after all, was the deft Sam Pinkleton, who, at the time, was in the middle of steering Cole Escola’s “Oh, Mary!” to the upper echelons on Broadway. Bassichis assured us, gravely and hilariously, that when their show went to Broadway, too, the resulting budget would be startling. “We’ll fly this in,” I heard them murmur, gesturing at the stairs bumping along behind them.

Well, the production’s triumphant return is actually to the postage-stamp-size SoHo Playhouse (through Sept. 13), but Bassichis will surely wave such minutiae graciously aside. (Bassichis’s stage persona is simultaneously that of a diva in the grand style and an anxious, rod-and-felt Muppet.) The “Frank” of the title is the groundbreaking, if now little known, comic Frank Maya, who died young, in 1995, of complications from AIDS, after achieving stardom in both avant-garde spaces downtown and on Comedy Central. Bassichis inhabits Maya, re-creating—and constantly interrupting their own re-creation of—one of Maya’s manic “rants,” a standup aria about sex and death, a high-octane mode which dovetails beautifully with Bassichis’s own agitated, often romantic energies.

Improbably, the hitmaker Pinkleton is simultaneously directing another show by a lanky, dark-haired, chaotic comic only a few blocks away: “ta-da!,” by Josh Sharp, at the Greenwich House Theatre (through Aug. 23). Sharp, like Bassichis, oscillates between mayhem and deep feeling: he co-wrote and co-starred in the queer absurdist gay-twins-in-love film “Dicks: The Musical,” and, at Greenwich House, Sharp’s monologue embeds an attempt to memorize two thousand PowerPoint slides into his tale of coming out. Pinkleton came on board after seeing a version he called an “idiotic feat of theatrical wizardry”—at this point, I would see anything that catches Pinkleton’s eye; certainly there is no surer guarantee of silliness honed to a cutting edge.—Helen Shaw

Movies

Hard on the heels of the new “Superman” comes “The Fantastic Four: First Steps,” which shares its sentimental tone and surprisingly many of its themes, including a hostile populace, a gigantic menace, and the rescue of a baby. Here, the baby is that of Mister Fantastic (Pedro Pascal) and Invisible Woman (Vanessa Kirby), who join with their comrades, the Thing (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) and Human Torch (Joseph Quinn), to protect the infant from Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) and the colossal Galactus (Ralph Ineson). The action, set mostly in an early-sixties New York, involves faster-than-light travel, but there’s more energy in the eye-catching production design than in the drama. The director, Matt Shakman, evokes little struggle, terror, or wonder, and the fine cast delivers amiable and mild performances.—Richard Brody (In wide release.)

Dance

When journeying into the woods, it’s usually safest to be home before dark. But “The Woods,” an immersive concert conceived by the composer Ellis Ludwig-Leone, of the band San Fermin, and the choreographer Troy Schumacher, the artistic director of BalletCollective, extends into the night. The cavernous hall of Pioneer Works is overgrown with roots, branches, and platforms, courtesy of the designer Jason Ardizzone-West (who forested a Broadway stage for “Redwood”). Seventeen dancers and singers surround free-roaming audience members, drawing on songs by San Fermin to tell how confusion and loss can be eased by communal gathering and love.—Brian Seibert (Pioneer Works; July 31-Aug. 2.)

Art

Since the Bruce Silverstein gallery moved to larger quarters in Chelsea earlier this year, it’s put on two excellent, unusually wide-ranging group shows. The current one, “In Sequence,” gathers work that counters the decisive moment with a series of moments, both charged and incidental. Four Man Ray filmstrips from 1928 establish an elegant cinematic model echoed here by Barbara Morgan, F. Holland Day, Francesca Woodman, and Aaron Siskind, all of whom shatter narrative into separate frames. Ryan Weideman’s black-and-white photos of the dramas, comedies, and spontaneous portrait sittings of passengers in the back seat of his taxi fill one wall: a night in the life of a New York cabbie unreeled in a series of moody noir stills with a cast of intriguing characters.—Vince Aletti (Through Aug. 29.)

Off Broadway