Weekend Event Planner

These are the 11 best things to do in Dallas this weekend

Fan Expo Dallas will take place at Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center, June 17-19.

Photo courtesy of Fan Expo Dallas

This weekend in and around Dallas will start with a focus on local theater, with two companies opening new productions, move on to a big convention with a ton of celebrities, and wind up with a lot of comedy, as four big name comedians and one notable host will perform. There's also a Pride celebration, a symphonic tribute to a popular singer, and a fun dance production.

Below are the best ways to spend your precious free time this weekend. Want more options? Lucky for you, we have a much longer list of the city's best events.

Thursday, June 16

Kitchen Dog Theater presents New Works Festival
After a week's delay due to COVID precautions, Kitchen Dog Theater will unveil High Five as the centerpiece production of their New Works Festival. The world premiere production, running through June 26, is a hilarious and heartfelt evening of five short plays that each shine a spotlight on one of the five senses: taste, touch, vision, hearing, and smell. Also starting this weekend is the Staged Reading Series, which will be "mixtape" of festivals past, featuring staged readings of the hottest new plays around. There will be two readings on Saturday, followed by another on June 22 and two more on June 25. All productions are at Trinity River Arts Center.

Shakespeare Dallas presents A Midsummer Night's Dream
As part of their annual Shakespeare in the Park series, Shakespeare Dallas presents A Midsummer Night's Dream. Four Athenians run through the forest pursuing each other while Puck, a mischievous fairy, helps his master play a trick on the fairy queen. A story of order and disorder, reality and appearance, and love and marriage. The production, playing at Samuell-Grand Amphitheatre through July 23, will play in repertory with The Tempest, opening on June 22.

Friday, June 17

Fan Expo Dallas
Fan Expo Dallas will present three days of events, family-friendly attractions, and celebrities at Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center, where fans can experience the ultimate playground for comics, sci-fi, horror, anime, and gaming. Celebrity guests scheduled to appear include Nathan Fillion; Brendan Fraser; Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Dominic Monaghan, and Billy Boyd from Lord of the Rings; Michael C. Hall, Jennifer Carpenter, and other stars of Dexter; Brent Spiner and Levar Burton from Star Trek: The Next Generation; and more. The event goes on through Sunday.

Dallas Arts District presents Pride Block Party
Dallas Arts District, collaborating with the Dallas Museum of Art, Nasher Sculpture Center, and Crow Museum of Asian Art of the University of Texas at Dallas, will present the fifth annual Dallas Arts District Pride Block Party in celebration of national LGBTQ+ Pride Month. The inclusive event will feature pride-themed tours, performances, film screenings, drag artists, fashion shows, gourmet food-fare, a community mural, family-friendly activities, and more.

Dallas Symphony Orchestra presents Paul Simon Songbook
The Dallas Symphony Orchestra will present a symphonic tribute to Paul Simon’s work in Simon and Garfunkel as well as the classic solo albums Graceland and Rhythm of the Saints. Audiences can sing along to favorites such as “Mrs. Robinson,” “Cecilia,” “The Sounds of Silence,” “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover,” and more. The concert, conducted by Jeff Tyzik, will have three performances through Sunday at Meyerson Symphony Center.

Bandan Koro African Drum and Dance Ensemble presents Griots: Celebrating a Compilation of Dallas’ Cultural Storytellers of the African Diaspora
The Bandan Koro African Drum and Dance Ensemble will pay homage to an array of Dallas’ key artistic and cultural storytellers such as Erykah Badu, Vicki Meek, Michelle Gibson, Baba Hassan, the late Afiah Bey, Bandon Koro’s own Tony Browne and Nana Kweku, and more. Through sensory immersion in traditional West African drum, dance, cultural ceremonies, and a spectrum of inventive artistic expressions, they will honor, highlight and navigate the pathways of cultural lineage to keep the history of the African Diaspora in the Dallas-Fort Worth area everlasting. The production, part of AT&T Performing Arts Center's Elevator Project, will be at Annette Strauss Square.

Saturday, June 18

Hyena's presents Bobcat Goldthwait
Bobcat Goldthwait is no stranger to entertainment and is one of the most recognizable comedians in show business today. His stand up features hilarious riffs on politics, divorce, going broke, and his career as a writer and director of film. His show is a wild ride of fun finding the funny no matter what the situation. He'll perform twice on Saturday at Hyena's Comedy Club in Dallas.

Marlon Wayans: Microphone Fiend Tour
Comedian Marlon Wayans is also an actor, producer, writer, and director who's been entertaining fans for decades, including In Living Color, The Wayans Bros., Scary Movie, and more. His first-ever comedy special, Woke-ish, premiered on Netflix in 2018, and he can also be seen in the 2019 Netflix movie, Sextuplets. He'll perform for one night only at Majestic Theatre.

Fred Armisen: Comedy For Musicians But Everyone is Welcome with Def Rain
Comedian Fred Armisen is his own kind of performer, bringing a unique quirkiness to his time on Saturday Night Live, the beloved sketch show Portlandia, and elsewhere. His show, Comedy For Musicians But Everyone is Welcome, finds him utilizing his two strongest skills (he was the bandleader/drummer for Late Night with Seth Meyers for a while). He'll be joined at The Factory in Deep Ellum by fellow musician Def Rain.

Sunday, June 19

Patton Oswalt: "Who's Ready to Laugh?"
Patton Oswalt is a comedian whose size belies his impact on the entertainment world. He's had award-winning comedy specials, many memorable film roles, and guest appearances on TV shows like Parks and Recreation. He recently created M.O.D.O.K., the new Marvel stop-motion animated adult comedy series and released the Netflix special, I Love Everything, in 2020. Four months after delaying the date due to injury, he'll perform a night of stand-up comedy at Majestic Theatre.

Nick Cannon presents Wild ‘N Out Live Tour
Nick Cannon's Wild ‘N Out Live Tour brings Cannon’s MTV series to the road, mixing up comedy, variety, and game show elements all in one for fans of the improv/competition show. Cannon and the Wild ‘N Out cast members will also invite members of the audience to join them for Wild 'N Out’s most popular games. The event takes place at Dos Equis Pavilion.

Fred Armisen will perform at The Factory in Deep Ellum on June 18.

Fred Armisen in Fred Armisen: Standup For Drummers on Netflix

Photo by David Moir

Fred Armisen will perform at The Factory in Deep Ellum on June 18.

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Movie Review

Killer cast battles monster of a movie in Death of a Unicorn

Photo courtesy of A24

Téa Leoni, Will Poulter, Paul Rudd, Jenna Ortega, and Anthony Carrigan in Death of a Unicorn.

High-concept movies can be a double-edged sword. On one hand, a film that has a striking and easily communicable idea is easy to sell, both to studios and the moviegoing public. On the other hand, those ideas tend to be very surface level, making it difficult to turn the great idea into a story worth watching for 90 minutes or longer.

The concept of Death of a Unicornis easy to understand: Father and daughter Elliot (Paul Rudd) and Ridley (Jenna Ortega) are on their way to the remote home of billionaire Odell (Richard E. Grant) when they accidentally strike and kill a unicorn. Instead of leaving it on the road, they take it with them, the first of many poor decisions by the film’s characters.

The group gathered at the home - including Odell’s wife, Belinda (Téa Leoni); son Shepard (Will Poulter), and butler Griff (Anthony Carrigan) - discover that the unicorn’s blood has great healing powers. With money on their minds, Odell and his family look to capitalize on this discovery, not anticipating that the parents of the clearly young unicorn will come looking for it - and revenge.

Written and directed by first-time feature filmmaker Alex Scharfman, the film is most notable for its off-the-wall humor. The greed of Odell, Belinda, and Shepard leads them down some clueless roads, especially once the adult unicorns show up. Their unexpected dialogue, along with the bloody rampage that ensues, delivers some memorably funny moments.

The trouble is, a film needs to be more than just moments, and in-between those scenes there’s little that keeps the film interesting. Elliott is a lawyer who originally came to deal with the estate of the dying Odell, but once that plot point becomes moot, so too does his character. Ridley develops a connection with the unicorns, but the character’s most compelling trait is her compulsive use of a vape, a joke that doesn’t wear well.

It’s not easy to ascribe meaning to non-talking mythical creatures, but even so, the film does a poor job at making anyone care about the unicorns. The adults are simply used as props with murderous intentions, with their horns being far from the only deadly element available to them. The story seems to be a slight allegory about man’s mistreatment of nature, but it would have been nice to find out more information about the unicorns than what is given.

It’s a shame that the story is mostly uninteresting as the film features a killer cast. Rudd is a comedy go-to who finds gold in even bad situations, while Ortega has developed into a reliable star, even if she has little to do here. Grant, Leoni, and Poulter all chew the scenery entertainingly, and Carrigan - one of the best actors on the HBO show Barry - gives a dry performance that elevates every scene he’s in.

There is lots of mayhem in Death of a Unicorn, but Scharfman seems content to let the violence be for violence’s sake instead of making us care about those being killed or the creatures doing the killing. There’s room for that kind of storytelling, but it needs to be done in a much better way than it is here.

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Death of a Unicorn opens in theaters on March 28.

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