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.

Panic! At The Disco will play at American Airlines Center on August 4.

Photo by Jimmy Fontaine

Panic! At The Disco will play at American Airlines Center on August 4.

event-planner

Movie Review

Jessica Chastain drama Dreams stumbles through steamy romance

Photo courtesy of Teorema

Isaac Hernández and Jessica Chastain in Dreams.

The opening scenes of the new drama Dreams are bracing, fictional sequences that call to mind real-life scenarios. In them, a young Mexican man named Fernando (Isaac Hernández) goes through a somewhat harrowing journey from the back of a semi truck in South Texas all the way to San Francisco. It’s a familiar immigrant story that seems to set the stage for a film with something interesting to say.

It turns out, however, that Fernando has not made the long and arduous trek for a job. Instead, it’s to be with Jennifer McCarthy (Jessica Chastain), a rich woman who helps lead a foundation dedicated to multiple things, including funding dance academies. Fernando, a talented dancer, and Jennifer have been in an off-and-on affair for years, with Jennifer wanting to keep their relationship a secret.

Although both are drawn to each other in an inexplicable, lustful way, their bond is tenuous, with each of them dissatisfied for different reasons. Fernando clearly sacrifices much more of himself than Jennifer, who wants for nothing except maybe more affection from her father, Michael (Marshall Bell), and brother, Jake (Rupert Friend).

Writer/director Michel Franco seems to try to inject tension into Fernando and Jennifer’s relationship from the start, an attempt that is only halfway successful. It’s clear from the way they greet each other - not to mention a steamy sex scene shortly thereafter - that they have known each other for a good length of time. Franco is able to get across this familiarity with an economy of scenes, and the intensity of their bond holds for a while.

But as the film progresses and both of them grow disenchanted with their arrangement, Franco starts taking the story in some odd directions. The biggest issue is that it’s never clear at what point in time the story is taking place. Fernando ends up making multiple trips back and forth across the border, with Jennifer doing the same at one point, and Franco’s use of flashbacks muddies the waters, wrong-footing the audience when he should be trying to draw them further into Fernando and Jennifer’s complications.

Revelations in the final act make the story even more confusing, as both main characters start saying and doing harsh things that seem to come out of nowhere. That would be all well and good if Franco actually committed to their changes of heart, but he keeps things wishy-washy for most of the final 15 minutes, resulting in an ending that makes little sense for either character.

Despite the story issues, both Chastain and Hernández give compelling performances. Chastain has been a little under the radar since winning an Oscar for The Eyes of Tammy Faye, but she keeps this character interesting longer than it should have been. Hernández has limited credits and appears to have been cast for his dancing ability, but he goes toe-to-toe with Chastain on more than one occasion and acquits himself well.

Dreams had all of the ideas to explore a more in-depth story about the complicated immigration policies between Mexico and the U.S., or how wealthy people take advantage of those less fortunate. But Franco never finds the right footing, settling instead for a titillating and somewhat mystifying relationship story that feels half-baked.

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Dreams is now playing in select theaters.

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