Editor’s Note: Welcome to V3 Weekend, Vanyaland‘s guide to help you sort out your weekend entertainment with curated selections and recommendations across our three pillars of Music, Comedy, and Film/TV. It’s what you should know about, where you need to be, and where you’ll be going, with us riding shotgun along the way.
Music: Isabel LaRosa at The Paradise Rock Club
As we predicted last year from new music features to Year in ReView, the star shine of Isabel LaRosa continues to grow brighter. The alt-pop singer from Maryland is poised for a big year ahead, releasing debut album Raven last month and setting out on her headlining Psychopomp Tour that tonight (May 9) rolls into Boston’s Paradise Rock Club. When the tour was announced, we were treated to a stirring new single called “Home,” which leans into drum n’ bass elements, and it popped right onto our Best of 2025 lists. “This song is about my parents selling my childhood house and moving away from my hometown,” LaRosa writes on Instagram. “It’s about watching my siblings growing up from afar and wishing I could be there with them. I’m so grateful that even though I’m leaving behind my childhood and some of the family I had back then, I’ve found my new family with all of you guys. You guys mean the absolute world to me.” It’s supposed to rain all day today, making the perfect spring backdrop for LaRosa’s dark and moody sounds.
ISABEL LAROSA + MERCER HENDERSON + THOMAS LAROSA :: Friday, May 9 at The Paradise Rock Club, 967 Commonwealth Ave. in Boston, MA :: 7 p.m., all ages, $48.25 :: Event info :: Advance tickets
Comedy: Ziwe’s America at The Wilbur
This is Ziwe’s America, and we’re all getting by best we can. Mic’d Up breaks it down: “The bad news is, shit is still crazy out there, to describe it lightly. The good news, though? Ziwe is making her way back home for a night to add some levity to the situation, and help us through it all, one laugh at a time. Bringing her new live show Ziwe’s America to home turf on Friday (May 9) for one night at The Wilbur, the Lawrence native isn’t just equipped with a dangerously sharp wit that has had audiences all over the map tuning in to her stand-up and TV career to get their fix of top-tier comedy and social commentary, she’s also continuing to bolster her nearly flawless penchant for harvesting gems of thought and conversation, while also presenting some cold, hard truths along the way that may be tough to digest, but prove to be vital to the discussion at hand. …Ziwe has proven to be a strong voice in the current climate, and as a collective, there’s a lot of pride in the fact that she represents all the best parts of her home city.”
ZIWE :: Friday, May 9 at The Wilbur Theatre, 246 Tremont St. in Boston, MA :: 6:30 p.m., $35 to $55 :: Advance tickets
Film/TV: ‘RoboCop’ at Cinema Salem
Here’s a fun fact we never get tired of thinking about: That futuristic, dystopian Detroit overrun by crime featured in RoboCop is only three short years away, as the 1987 sci-fi action film takes place in a fast-approaching 2028. Yikes! The good news is that something will probably kill us all by then, so we should head out to Salem tonight (May 9) for a late-night Night Light screening at Cinema Salem to revisit the classic Peter Weller film and see what we’ll be missing out on. We’ve written about RoboCop a lot here on the V — we’ll direct you back to Nick Johnston’s wonderful To Pimp A Metalhead: RoboCop’s’ foreign ads article from our 1987 Week series, and then to some one-on-one action versus The Terminator — but we’ll do it again now because we love both seeing dudes get shot in the dick and to get fashion advice from Allston style icon Clarence Boddicker. No for real, how does that gang look stylish in the 2020s? If they were a band, we’d hype them in New Sounds, and probably herald their debut EP, Your Move, Creep. Five stars.
‘ROBOCOP’ :: Friday, May 9 at CINEMA SALEM, One East India Square in Salem, MA :: 10 p.m., $12 :: Event info :: Advance tickets