Weekend Event Planner

These are the 8 best things to do in Dallas this weekend

As August begins, it's a relatively slow weekend in and around Dallas. New offerings include concerts from a variety of big names representing each of the past four decades. You can also see the start of two new local theater productions and the end of two others.

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

Thursday, August 2

African American Repertory Theater presents Too Heavy for Your Pocket
This weekend is your final chance to catch the regional premiere of African American Repertory Theater's Too Heavy for Your Pocket. In the summer of 1961, the Freedom Riders are embarking on a courageous journey into the Deep South. When 20-year-old Bowzie Brandon gives up a life-changing college scholarship to join the movement, he’ll have to convince his loved ones — and himself — that shaping his country’s future might be worth jeopardizing his own. The play runs through Saturday at Mountain View College.

Theatre Three presents Heisenberg and Actually Double Feature
Double features are usually the purview of movies, not plays, but Theatre Three will offer up a rare theater double feature. Heisenberg and Actually are being produced together to spark a conversation as it relates to sex, desire, and the ages of man and woman (youth, middle-age, senior). The two productions starring Kieran Connolly and Jessica Cavanagh will run through August 26.

Festival of Independent Theatres
After three weeks, this is also your final chance to see the offerings at the Festival of Independent Theatres. Each of the eight shows, which are all one-act plays paired in two-show blocks, will have one final performance during the last three days of the festival, which ends on Saturday. FIT Underground, which features a stage with live music and dance by local artists after the shows, will take place on Friday and Saturday. All events will take place at Bath House Cultural Center.

Friday, August 3

WaterTower Theatre presents Hand To God
Public piety, seething lust, family dysfunction, and repressed anxiety interact with explosive results in Robert Askins’ darkly unsettling, foul-mouthed, and uproarious dissection of the troubled currents that roil a Christian puppet ministry in suburban Texas. Hand to God, playing through August 26 at WaterTower Theatre in Addison, contains an almost surreal world where hand puppets (meant to impart moral lessons) take on frightening lives of their own.

Erasure in concert with Reed & Caroline
Like many bands from "the other side of the pond," Erasure has always been more popular in its native United Kingdom than it has been in the United States. And yet songs like "Chains of Love," "A Little Respect," and "Always" gave them enough cachet with American audiences for them to remain headliners 30 years after their debut. They'll play at the Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory in Irving in support of their new album, World Beyond.

Saturday, August 4

Panic! At The Disco in concert with Hayley Kiyoko
You can think of Panic! At the Disco as a band, but for a long time it's essentially been just Brendon Urie leading the way. Despite a lack of hits — 2006's "I Write Sins, Not Tragedies" is the band's only top-10 song — the band has steadily gotten more and more popular, with each of its past two albums reaching No. 1 on the Billboard charts. They'll play at American Airlines Center in support of their new album, Pray for the Wicked.

Dave Koz and Friends Summer Horns Tour
Kenny G may hold the title of most popular modern day saxophonist, but jazz icon Dave Koz is not far behind. Over the course of almost 30 years, he's racked up a slew of best-selling albums and awards. The Dave Koz and Friends Summer Horns Tour at Meyerson Symphony Center will feature Koz, Gerald Albright, Rick Braun, Richard Elliot, Aubrey Logan, and Adam Hawley. They'll play songs from the new album, Dave Koz and Friends Summer Horns.

Sunday, August 5

Texas Rangers Post-Game Concert: Lonestar
Despite some solid play as of late, this has been a down year for the Texas Rangers, as they're currently in last place in the strong AL West. However, you'll have more to enjoy than just baseball when the Rangers take on the Baltimore Orioles at Globe Life Park in Arlington on Sunday. Following the game, country band Lonestar will put on a special concert that's free with game admission. If you so desire, you can also buy $12 field passes for closer access to the show.

WaterTower Theatre presents Hand To God starting on August 3, running through August 26.

Photo by Evan Michael Woods

WaterTower Theatre presents Hand To God starting on August 3, running through August 26.

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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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