Lance Armstrong. Definitely still a jerk. Subway’s footlong sub? Still maybe not precisely 12 feet, but guys, we’ve never needed that much of a Subway sandwich anyway. Regardless of all this breaking news, it’s still the weekend.
Friday
I can’t tell you how much I wish the Dallas Museum of Art were celebrating its 111th birthday tonight so I could tell you that I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like, and that I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve. But the DMA is 110 years old, and tonight’s a very special late night, so we’ll table the Bilbo Baggins joke for next year and just tell you that polka perpetrators Brave Combo will provide the live music and that you can entertain yourself with tours, a Fresh Ink event with author and Dallas native Michael Ennis, and a creativity challenge for all your competitive types.
There are still seats left for this evening’s performance of A Behanding in Spokane, a play with a title that, at first glance, may appear to be a typo. But no. It’s just Irish playwright Martin McDonagh trying his hand at a black comedy set in America rather than his native land. The show is Second Thought Theatre’s season opener, and revolves around a dsyfunctional young couple trying to sell a hand–yes–to a man named Carmichael, who’s been searching for his own missing appendage for years. Add a creepy hotel and a weirdo clerk to the mix, because nothing can go wrong there. I reviewed the show for FrontRow. Spoiler: I liked it, mostly. You can read that here. And since you’re headed to the Kalita Humphreys Theater (SST performs in the smaller theater space, detached from the main building), my favorite thing to do is catch the Oak Lawn La Duni’s happy hour for drinks and a snack before the show.
Saturday
The Joffrey Ballet has finally, finally come back to Dallas. They’re only performing for two nights at the Winspear, and Saturday is your last opportunity to see this preeminent company perform a selection of masterworks, such as Edwaard Liang’s “Age of Innocence,” Christopher Wheeldon’s “After the Rain,” and Russian composer Igor Stravinsky’s orchestral ballet “Le Sacre du Printemps [The Rite of Spring]” complete with original choreography in honor of the 100th anniversary of its premiere.
Over at the Texas Theatre, comedian Joel Hodgson is doing his new one-man stand up show, Riffing Myself. Of course, Hodgson is the guy behind Mystery Science Theater 3000 (also known as MST3K), and there’s no way to resist a screening of the classic “Pod People” episode before he takes the stage. Web intern Iris Zubair has a great Q&A with Hodgson on FrontRow, which you can read right here.
Sunday
I’m headed to Fort Worth for some quality time with my folks, which basically means we’re seeing West Side Story at Bass Hall on the very last possible day for us (and you) to do so. This is the music my mom loved and listened to on the way to school when I was growing up, which explains why “Gee, Officer Krupke” and “I Feel Pretty” were among the first musical theater songs I memorized. And so while the great Stephen Sondheim himself is no longer entirely in love with his treatment of Tony and Maria, it’s still a Johnstone family favorite. Plus, I defy anyone to resist Selena singing “A Boy Like That.”
If you’d like your show tunes with a twist rather than straight up, Uptown Players is back with their annual fundraiser, Broadway Our Way. The evening plays out like a theatrical battle of the sexes, pitting the men against the women onstage for a mix of past and present Broadway hits.
For more to do this weekend, go here.
