Weekend event planner

These are the 15 best things to do in Dallas this weekend

This weekend around Dallas is packed full of events, headlined by an Irish festival several weeks ahead of St. Patrick's Day. There will also be six theater productions, including a national tour of a Broadway musical; three dance events, including one from everyone's favorite reality competition; a couple of well-known comedians; and more.

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, March 2

Dallas Symphony Orchestra presents Mendelssohn’s A Symphony Cantata
Paul McCreesh joins the Dallas Symphony Orchestra to conduct a grand spiritual concert including vocal soloists, the Dallas Symphony Chorus, and the Lay Family Organ. The concert will include Mendelssohn's Lobgesang (A Symphony Cantata), aka Symphony No. 2, and Hubert Parry's Blest Pair of Sirens. There will be three performances through Sunday at Meyerson Symphony Center.

Broadway at the Center presents On Your Feet! The Story of Emilio & Gloria Estefan
On Your Feet! is the inspiring true story about heart, heritage and two people who believed in their talent, and each other, to become an international sensation: Gloria and Emilio Estefan. Now their story is an exhilarating original musical featuring some of their most iconic songs, including "Rhythm is Gonna Get You," "Conga," "Get On Your Feet," "Don’t Want To Lose You Now," "1-2-3" and "Coming Out of the Dark." The production will have four performances through Saturday at Winspear Opera House.

Uptown Players presents Silver Foxes
Silver Foxes is a world premiere comedy play written by James Berg & Stan Zimmerman of The Golden Girls and directed by Michael Urie. It's about an ensemble of queer men who rescue their best friend from a homophobic assisted living facility. The three older men, plus their buddy’s younger Twink lover, navigate stray cats, online hook up sites, and the real estate ravenous lesbian couple next door to become a fabulous de facto family in an iconic mid-century Palm Springs house. The production runs through March 12 at Theatre Three.

Pocket Sandwich Theatre presents Murder at the Howard Johnson's
Is all fair in love? Even murder? That's the question posed by this light and funny suspense comedy about a love triangle in a Howard Johnson Motor Inn. The play presents a love triangle involving a woman, her lover, and her husband in three hilarious scenes. A wicked yet hilarious comedy, the question being, will all survive this fiasco? The production runs through March 25 at Pocket Sandwich Theatre in Carrollton.

Dancing with the Stars Live
America’s favorite dance show is back on tour. Audiences can see the ballroom brought to life in this brand-new production featuring favorite Dancing with the Stars pros, plus special guest stars. There will be dazzling routines in every style, jaw-dropping talent, and non-stop entertainment. The event will be at Texas Trust CU Theatre in Grand Prairie.

Friday, March 3

North Texas Irish Festival
One of the largest Irish festivals in the U.S., the North Texas Irish Festival is a family-friendly event featuring live music, dancing, storytelling, chef demonstrations, and more on multiple indoor and outdoor stages. Attendees will also enjoy horse shows, sheepherding demonstrations, beer and whiskey tastings, genealogy research opportunities, animal rescue groups, shopping, child-friendly entertainment, and free arts and crafts for the kids. The festival takes place through Sunday at Fair Park.

Bruce Wood Dance presents Wood / Shop
Bruce Wood Dance will present new works by Company dancers in their acclaimed Wood/Shop. The production will highlight new works by company dancers Claude Alexander III, Jaime Borkan, Alex Brown, Kevyn Butler, Sofia Downing, Weaver Rhodes, Megan Storey, Elliott Trahan, Cole Vernon, and Seth York. There will be performances on both Friday and Saturday at Bruce Wood Dance Gallery.

Taylor Tomlinson: The Have It All Tour
Taylor Tomlinson is too funny to be in her twenties. Her perspective possesses a degree of wisdom that’s typically earned with age. Focusing exclusively on Taylor’s old-soul clarity is tempting, but what makes Taylor stand out isn’t just that she seems too young to understand youth so well. It’s that she combines that vision with on-the-nose immediacy that can only come with still living in the moments being lampooned. She'll perform five times through Sunday at Majestic Theatre.

Improv Addison presents Craig Ferguson
Craig Ferguson is an actor, writer, producer, director, and comedian with a diverse career that encompasses film, television, and the stage. He is a bestselling author, has recorded numerous standup specials, and was the host of The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, which ran on CBS for 10 years. He'll perform five times through Sunday at Improv Addison.

TITAS/Dance Unbound presents Trinity Irish Dance Company
Always more than one expects, Irish step dancing is fusion of Ireland’s vibrant and longstanding dance-form. Adding elements of American innovation, Trinity Irish Dance Company dazzles audiences with its hard-driving percussive power, aerial grace and lightning-fast agility. The company expands whatever notions audiences may have about Irish dance ... revealing its limitless possibilities. They'll perform on both Friday and Saturday at Moody Performance Hall.

Potted Potter: The Unauthorized Harry Experience
Potted Potter takes on the ultimate challenge of condensing all seven Harry Potter books (and a real-life game of Quidditch) into 70 hilarious minutes. The production has been updated with a refreshed set design, upgraded illusions, and all the latest hilarious insights into the wonderful world of all thing Hogwarts. It includes favorite characters, a special appearance from a fire-breathing dragon, endless costumes, jokes, songs, props, and a generous helping of Hogwarts magic plus lots of mayhem. There will be six performances through Sunday at Wyly Theatre.

Saturday, March 4

Coppell Arts Center presents Dragons and Mythical Beasts
Dragons and Mythical Beasts unveils myriad dark secrets where audiences can come face to face with some of the most magnificent monsters and terrifying beasts ever to walk the earth. Discover the colossal Stone Troll, the mysterious Indrik and Japanese Baku; the Tooth Fairy (not as sweet as you’d think), an adorable Unicorn, and majestic Griffin. There will be two performances at Coppell Arts Center.

Teatro Dallas presents Nuevo Mundo
Teatro Dallas will present its first-ever bilingual New Works festival, Nuevo Mundo. In celebration of the fresh new voices and performance styles blossoming across the global south, Nuevo Mundo features three emerging directors and the plays they have selected for an animated, staged reading series. Taking place weekly over three weeks, the festival kicks off on Saturday with Choke by Emilio Infante at Latino Cultural Center.

Wizkid in concert
The genre of Afrobeats, which generally refers to popular music from West Africa, may not be familiar to a lot of people in the United States, but Wizkid is helping to change that. The Nigerian singer has had a steady rise in the music industry over the past decade or so, ultimately working with artists as big as Drake and Beyoncé, and winning a Grammy for the song "Brown Skin Girl" to boot. He'll perform at The Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory in support of his 2022 album, More Love, Less Ego.

Sunday, March 5

The Crow Museum of Asian Art of The University of Texas at Dallas closings
Sunday will be the final day to view two exhibitions at the Crow Museum of Asian Art of The University of Texas at Dallas. "Phoenix Rising: Xu Bing and the Art of Resilience" highlights a celebrated work, Bronze Phoenix 2016 (Feng and Huang), complementing it with five works from the Crow Museum’s Chinese jade collection that also celebrate the revered phoenix. "Cast: Molding a New Museum for UT Dallas" looks to the future, providing an exclusive first look at the Crow Museum’s second location on the campus of UT Dallas in Richardson.

Photo courtesy of Wizkid

Wizkid will perform at The Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory in Irving on March 4.

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Movie Review

Korean film No Other Choice uses dark comedy to tell deeper story

Photo courtesy of Neon

Lee Byung-hun in No Other Choice.

When Parasite won the Oscar for Best Picture in 2020, it signaled a shift in how international feature films were viewed not only by Academy voters, but also American filmgoers, who made it the fifth-highest grossing non-English language film of all time. Extra attention has been paid to other international films in the intervening years, including the new South Korean film, No Other Choice.

Starring Lee Byung-hun of Squid Game fame, the dark comedy chronicles the increasingly desperate actions of Man-su, a middle manager at a paper factory who is laid off due to automation. After months of trying to find a job at another paper company, he finally finds a good prospect only to learn that several other men may be better candidates. Man-su decides that the only solution is to eliminate the competition.

The only problem is Man-su is a bit of a coward; an early plan at standing up to his company in the face of the lay-offs meets an anticlimactic end. His wishy-washy ways seem to permeate his life, from putting off treatment on a painful tooth to not communicating with his more willful wife to actually going through with his vengeful ideas. He bumbles his way through every aspect of his life, virtually daring anyone to call him out on his poor decision-making.

Written and directed by Park Chan-wook, and co-written by Lee Kyoung-mi, Don McKellar, and Jahye Lee, the film initially seems to be another approach toward telling the class division story that’s at the center of Parasite and Squid Game. And it is that to a degree, as those in charge of the paper companies and the hiring committees are either indifferent or unsympathetic to the plight of those who have been forced out of work.

But the more we see of Man-su, the more it becomes clear that his is a story all its own, one where a man claims there is “no other choice” when in fact there are plenty of other options. The men in the film in general don’t come across well, with many of them reacting to stress by turning into whiners who believe the world is out to get them. Some situations turn violent as the film goes along, events that most of the time could have been avoided if the people involved actually took the time to think things through.

The film features a somewhat confusing story made even more puzzling if you don’t speak Korean. On first viewing, it’s initially unclear why Man-su is doing what he’s doing, or why he’s going after certain people in particular. The plot becomes more understandable as the film progresses, but Chan-wook includes several side plots that muddle things further even as they broaden certain characters. There are also a couple of visual text jokes that can easily be missed if you don’t know where to look.

Byung-hun is great as a man who can’t seem to get out of his own way. The role is almost in direct contrast to the one he played on Squid Game, making it easy to see how well he can adapt to different stories. Son Ye-jin as Man-su’s wife Miri and Lee Sung-min as Bummo, one of Man-su’s intended victims, are also highly engaging.

Like any film not in English, No Other Choice requires viewers to pay strict attention to the screen to get full enjoyment of the actors and their dialogue. While it doesn’t hit as hard as a comedy because of this factor, it’s still a greatly entertaining film whose underlying message makes it become a little deeper.

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No Other Choice is now playing in theaters.

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