This Week in the Arts: Panorama, Andrew Solomon, ‘Be More Chill’

Pop Music: New York’s Own Blockbuster Festival

July 27-29; panorama.nyc.

Two years ago, Goldenvoice — the production company behind the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival — first tried to replicate in New York the success it had with the once-punk, now-mainstream Southern California monolith. Panorama Music Festival was born, and despite concerns about whether the city could support two large-scale festivals (Governors Ball Music Festival takes place in June), it has earned must-attend status among pop music fans.

This year’s edition, on Randalls Island, features a number of R&B and hip-hop heavyweights high in the lineup: the pioneer Janet Jackson and the melancholy superstar the Weeknd are headlining Saturday and Friday, respectively; the hitmakers Migos, Gucci Mane and Lil Wayne, as well as the critically acclaimed crooners SZA and Daniel Caesar are also featured.

Those whose interests skew toward alternative rock and pop may find Sunday’s bill more intriguing. The Killers will conclude that day’s performances, following lush folk from the Fleet Foxes, edgy electronic pop from The XX and a set from the Talking Heads legend David Byrne. Other rock and rock-adjacent highlights from the weekend include St. Vincent, Japanese Breakfast, Father John Misty, Jay Som and the War On Drugs. Also not to be missed are Floating Points and Jlin, two of the festival’s more outré D.J.s. NATALIE WEINER

Film: ‘Far From the Tree’ and ‘Generation Wealth’

July 20.

“Parenting is no sport for perfectionists,” Andrew Solomon wrote in “Far From the Tree,” his 2012 prize-winning best seller. And Rachel Dretzin’s adaptation of the book revels in that notion, unveiling the challenges faced by families dealing with Down syndrome, dwarfism, autism and even a child who committed murder, while interweaving Mr. Solomon’s own turmoil-riddled journey of love and acceptance as he came to terms with being gay.

“Generation Wealth” follows the photographer and documentarian Lauren Greenfield across 25 years as she examined the roles of money and celebrity in a lurid, occasionally menacing fun-house version of the American dream, while pondering her own childhood and that of her two sons. Both documentaries are explorations of identity, at once heart-wrenching and hopeful, based on creators — explorers, anthropologists and chroniclers of our time — who occasionally end up being as fascinating as their subjects.

“Generation Wealth” opens in New York and Los Angeles on Friday, July 20; and “Far From the Tree” in New York on July 20 and Los Angeles on July 27 before national rollouts. KATHRYN SHATTUCK

Theater: ‘Be More Chill’ Off Broadway

July 26-Sept. 23; bemorechillmusical.com.

The musical “Be More Chill” was not born to a chorus of adoring accolades. Three years ago, when the show had its professional premiere in New Jersey, The New York Times didn’t come right out and say, “Meh.” But that was pretty much the idea.

The fans, though? They had a very different verdict, and it turns out there’s nothing chill about them. Finding it online, many through YouTube, they fell unabashedly for the story of a high school nerd named Jeremy who swallows a minuscule supercomputer that has the power to turn him chill. (“You mean cool,” Jeremy tells the supercomputer. “I do not,” it replies.)

Now the show, with music and lyrics by Joe Iconis (“Smash”) and a book by Joe Tracz (“The Lightning Thief”), is riding that wave of popularity all the way to an Off Broadway production, featuring several actors from the original cast. Directed by Stephen Brackett, and based on the young-adult novel by Ned Vizzini, it starts performances on Thursday, July 26, at the Pershing Square Signature Center in Manhattan. LAURA COLLINS-HUGHES

Art: Eugène Delacroix’s Drawings

Through Nov. 12; metmuseum.org.

Of the more than 100 lush drawings by the French Romantic painter Eugène Delacroix in this enthralling show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, my favorites are the ones that depict animals. The beasts in a study of ten goats, tentatively dated to 1837, are made of almost nothing but a repeated squiggle that looks like a penmanship exercise. Caressing the shape of their flanks, it also conveys the texture of their hair.

“Crouching Tiger” (1839) amplifies this figurative efficiency spectacularly: Thick lines of brown ink applied with a brush, curving around the tiger’s back, serve simultaneously as stripes, contour lines, and shadows, while also suggesting the richly ominous feel of its fur. It’s a perfect introduction to the museum’s larger Delacroix survey, co-produced with the Louvre, opening Sept. 17. WILL HEINRICH

Dance: New Victory Theater’s Summer Sampler

July 26; newvictory.org.

Air-conditioned fun for the whole family awaits at Victory Dance, the New Victory Theater’s exuberant and educational summer sampler in Manhattan. Geared toward patrons ages 8 and up, the performances in this series are mostly reserved for summer camps and school programs, but one each week is open to the public for just $10 a ticket.

This year’s final program may prove the most intriguing for dance fans of any age, juxtaposing Ephrat Asherie’s hip-hop innovations, Calpulli Mexican Dance Company’s reinvention of an Aztec ritual and excerpts from Parul Shah’s “Enduring Silence,” which offers social commentary grounded in the classical North Indian form kathak. Completing the bill is Dance Theater of Harlem in excerpts from Darrell Grand Moultrie’s “Harlem on My Mind,” which sets slinky maneuvers on pointe to music by Duke Ellington and other jazz giants. A New Victory teaching artist offers context for each piece and leads a conversation after the show. SIOBHAN BURKE

TV: ‘The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco’

July 26; britbox.com.

In 2013, “The Bletchley Circle” arrived on PBS with the tale of four female British code breakers — their skills honed during World War II as they toiled in secret to decrypt enemy messages — who upend their humdrum postwar lives to solve a slew of murders.

“The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco,” debuting Thursday, July 26, on BritBox, picks up in 1956, when two of the original gumshoes, Millie Harcourt (Rachael Stirling) and Jean McBrian (Julie Graham), recognize the similarities between a friend’s murder during the war and one years later in California.

Traveling to the States to unravel the grisly crimes — in which the women were strangled, had their tongues cut out and a strange symbol drawn on their hands — they pick up some American cohorts, Iris Bearden (Crystal Balint) and Hailey Yarner (Chanelle Peloso), along the way. It’s the first original series for the streaming service, a collaboration between BBC Studios and ITV, and features four mysteries of two episodes each. Only the first case was available for review, and that offered period charm if not terribly taxing sleuthing so far. KATHRYN SHATTUCK

Classical Music: An ‘Activist Orchestra’ in Manhattan

July 27; thedreamunfinished.org.

In 2014, as the Black Lives Matter movement swelled to national attention following the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, the clarinetist and music teacher Eun Lee decided that it was time for her community to act. “As we were seeing a response from rap musicians and folk musicians and now more and more pop musicians, there was no such response from the classical music community,” she told The New York Times in 2016.

So Ms. Lee organized the Dream Unfinished, a symphonic benefit concert that raised money for civil rights organizations. Since then, the Dream Unfinished, which bills itself as an “activist orchestra,” has continued to address issues that are more overtly political than those the classical music world typically highlights.

This year, its focus is immigrant rights, and its Sanctuary Festival will conclude with a concert at Manhattan’s Saint Peter’s Church on July 27. Teaming up with the new-music ensemble Contemporaneous as well as the pianist-composer Vijay Iyer and the violinist Jennifer Koh, the Dream Unfinished will present music by composers who identify with their immigrant roots, including George Walker, Tania León and Huang Ruo. WILLIAM ROBIN