Event Planner

Taylor Swift tops packed weekend of Memorial Day events in Dallas

Memorial Day weekend is typically a big travel weekend for many in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Coming just before the end of the school year, it gives families a chance to kick start their summer with a little out-of-town fun.

But there's so much going on in town this year that it might make you rethink your plans. Below are the best options for your precious free time Thursday through Memorial Day Monday. Don't like what you see? Lucky for you, we have a much longer list of the city's best events.

Thursday, May 23

Delta Rae in concert with Jillette Johnson and The Saint Johns
The North Carolina folk rock band Delta Rae has made so many recent area appearances that you could mistake it for a local group. In reality, it's just a band that's hitting at the right time, riding the Mumford/Lumineers wave for all it's worth. Delta Rae plays The Kessler on Thursday night, but if you can't make this one, scroll down to Friday.

Dallas Symphony Orchestra presents Carmina Burana
If you haven't been to a Dallas Symphony Orchestra concert during the 2012-2013 season, there's no time like the present. DSO wraps up its schedule at Meyerson Symphony Center with Orff's dramatic Carmina Burana, a piece you know even if you don't think you know it. Playing Thursday through Saturday, the group is joined by the Dallas Symphony Chorus and Children's Chorus of Greater Dallas.

Friday, May 24

The Fourteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition
Coming just three months after Van Cliburn passed away after a long battle with cancer, this quadrennial competition features 30 young pianists hoping to make it as big as Cliburn did. The preliminary rounds take place Friday at Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth, with semifinals happening June 1 and finals June 6.

Sarah Jaffe in concert with Delta Rae
Levitt Pavilion for the Performing Arts in Arlington kicks off its 2013 concert season with a Memorial Day weekend music festival. Following this concert with two very familiar names on Friday, The Polyphonic Spree headlines Saturday's concert, and The Old 97's take center stage on Sunday. The festival also features food from area restaurants.

Kitchen Dog Theater presents Se Llama Cristina
The annual New Works Festival from Kitchen Dog Theater is just that, a variety of new plays and readings from local and national playwrights. The festival's featured play is Se Llama Cristina, about a man and a woman who wake up in a room with no memory of how they got there. It plays at McKinney Avenue Contemporary through June 22.

Saturday, May 25

Taylor Swift in concert with Ed Sheeran and Austin Malone
If you couldn't tell, country music is pretty huge in Texas. Just two weeks after Kenny Chesney filled up Cowboys Stadium, Taylor Swift does the same. She gets a little help in that regard from one of her opening acts, Ed Sheeran, a Brit who's nearing the popularity of boy band One Direction — which is only right because he's written songs for them.

Kenny "Babyface" Edmonds in concert
The name Babyface still rings a certain bell in soul/R&B circles, even though the man otherwise known as Kenny Edmonds hasn't put out any new music since 2007. But nostalgia is a big hook for anybody who came of age in the late '80s or early '90s, so expect a packed crowd at Majestic Theatre to hear songs including "When Can I See You" and "Every Time I Close My Eyes."

Sunday, May 26

Dallas Museum of Art openings
As it's the 50th anniversary of his assassination in Dallas, 2013 is the year of tributes to President John F. Kennedy. The Dallas Museum of Art honors the president with two new exhibits, Hotel Texas: An Art Exhibition for the President and Mrs. John F. Kennedy and DallasSITES: Charting Contemporary Art, 1963 to Present. The first features art that was installed in the Kennedys' hotel room during their visit, and the second looks at how the local art world has changed in the half-century since his death. Both are part of the museum's free exhibits and will be on display through September 15.

2013 Tomato Battle
Have you ever had the urge to get into a food fight but were too chicken and/or law-abiding to go through with it? This event at Fair Park gives you full permission — for a price — to hurl tomatoes at friends and strangers alike. In the event of bad weather or a tomato shortage, event organizers will use an equally messy alternative — mud.

Soundgarden in concert
Soundgarden, one of the progenitors of the grunge movement of the early '90s, burned hot and heavy for less than a decade before splitting up in 1997. They reunited three years ago and just released their first new album in 16 years, King Animal, at the end of 2012. You can see if they've still got it when they play the soon-to-be-renamed Palladium Ballroom.

Monday, May 27

Dallas Arboretum presents Eddie Coker Memorial Day Children’s Concert
Heading out to a park is sure to be a popular activity on Memorial Day, so you might as well get a two-for-one deal by taking in the beauty at Dallas Arboretum and being treated to a concert by children's musician Eddie Coker. Coker plays two different sets, and there is also kid-friendly stuff like a petting zoo, arts and crafts, and face painting.

Dallas Symphony Orchestra presents Memorial Day Concert and Fireworks Display
Every good holiday deserves a fireworks show, and that's what you get when the Dallas Symphony Orchestra starts its outdoor season by performing at Flag Pole Hill Park. Get there early to grab a great spot, then settle in for a program of patriotic music and bombs bursting in air.

North Carolina band Delta Rae plays The Kessler on May 23 and the Levitt Pavilion for the Performing Arts on May 24.

Delta Rae/Facebook

North Carolina band Delta Rae plays The Kessler on May 23 and the Levitt Pavilion for the Performing Arts on May 24.

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Movie Review

Rose Byrne plays one stressed-out mom in If I Had Legs I'd Kick You

Photo courtesy of A24

Conan O'Brien and Rose Byrne in If I Had Legs I'd Kick You

Movie history is littered with depictions of stressed-out mothers who have breakdowns due to the pressure put on them by their children, spouses, or society in general. Recent examples include Hereditary, Tully, and Nightbitch, with each of them finding different ways to depict their main character’s struggles. Yet another put-upon mother goes through the wringer in the oddly-named If I Had Legs I’d Kick You.

When we meet Linda (Rose Byrne), she’s already in the middle of a huge ball of stress. Her daughter (Delaney Quinn) suffers from an unnamed illness that requires around-the-clock care and frequent doctor visitors. Her husband, Charles (Christian Slater), is a boat captain whose job keeps him away from home for long periods of time. And her job as a therapist requires her to hear other people’s problems, necessitating her seeing a fellow therapist (Conan O’Brien) on a daily basis.

Nearly everyone else she encounters in the movie adds to her anxiety, including Caroline (Danielle Macdonald), a new mother who’s constantly worried about her baby; Dr. Spring (Mary Bronstein), who constantly harps on Linda to get her daughter to eat; an officious parking attendant at the hospital; and a sneering desk clerk at the motel she and her daughter are forced to stay at after a plumbing disaster at home. Consequently, she dismisses James (A$AP Rocky), another motel worker, the one person who treats her with a modicum of kindness.

Written and directed by Bronstein, the film is a harrowing experience that somehow also manages to be darkly funny at times. Linda is dealing with way too much for one person to adequately handle, something that is compounded by the fact that nobody really listens to her, not even the therapist she’s paying to do so. Scenes bounce back and forth between Linda demonstrating righteous anger at what the world is throwing at her and crushing guilt over supposedly not doing enough for her child.

Bronstein depicts Linda’s journey in a number of interesting ways, some straightforward and others not so much. Bronstein makes liberal use of close-ups on Linda’s face, heightening the feeling that the world is closing in on her. The plumbing problem at her home results in a huge hole in the ceiling, which becomes the source of some unexplained phenomena, a choice that might have been unnecessary.

What’s most striking about the film is how hardly anyone is on Linda’s side. Since the film joins the story as it’s already in progress, the audience is left to guess as to how Linda has behaved in the past to garner such negative interactions from people who should be helping her. While she’s not a perfect person, she also doesn’t appear to be such a jerk that she should be treated with disdain everywhere she goes.

Byrne, who’s gravitated toward lighter roles in recent years, is an absolute marvel in this part. The more stress Linda feels, the more she becomes disheveled, and Byrne makes you feel every ounce of the character’s pain. O’Brien, who’s rarely had to play anyone but “Conan O’Brien” before, is surprisingly good, tamping down his comic sensibility to complement Byrne well. A$AP Rocky also makes a nice impression, elevating a character that’s a little underwritten.

The role of a mom is never an easy one, and that’s in the best of circumstances. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You - a title that is never explained yet still somehow fits - earns its stripes by demonstrating how the often thankless job of motherhood can become even more distressing when the mom in question is given little to no support.

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If I Had Legs I'd Kick You is now playing in select theaters.

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