Weekend Event Planner

Pro tennis tourney aces the 13 best things to do in Dallas this weekend

Although there are events happening throughout the weekend in and around Dallas, the slate chosen for this week's list all start or take place on Friday and Saturday, an unusual concentration of entertainment. Choices include a great animated film back by an orchestra, six theater productions, a dance production, an opera, a well-known comedian, a big tennis tournament, and two concerts, including one featuring a trio of powerhouse R&B acts.

Below are the best ways to spend your free time this weekend. If you want more options, check out the calendar for an even longer list of the city's best events.

Friday, February 6

Dallas Symphony Orchestra presents How to Train Your Dragon In Concert
DreamWorks’ How to Train Your Dragon is a story about a young Viking named Hiccup, who defies tradition when he befriends one of his deadliest foes, a ferocious dragon he called Toothless. Together, these unlikely heroes must fight against all odds to save both their worlds. How to Train Your Dragon In Concert will highlight John Powell's Oscar-nominated score, performed live to picture by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Enrico Lopez-Yañez. There will be three performances through Sunday at Meyerson Symphony Center.

Sam Cormier presents Remember Me
Remember Me by Sam Cormier is an immersive soundscape performance that blends original music, photography, and theater performance from queer Dallas artists. The performance will explore the unique and shared experiences of three queer artists, exploring their relationships with family and their personal experience growing up as a queer person in Texas. The production, part of AT&T Performing Arts Center's Elevator Project, will have three performances through Sunday at Wyly Theatre.

TITAS/Dance Unbound presents Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana
With a powerhouse cast of dancers and musicians from the U.S. and Spain, Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana - making their Texas debut - brings all that pride and passion to life in Tablao Flamenco. The name “tablao” comes from the wooden floor dancers stomp and glide across, and these cozy venues are where flamenco truly comes alive. There will be performances on Friday and Saturday at Moody Performance Hall.

The Dallas Opera presents The Little Prince
The opera The Little Prince takes a flight of the imagination when a pilot stranded in the desert meets the little prince. After an action-packed galactic journey, the magical boy visits Earth, determined to find a way to save his own tiny planet and everything he cherishes. The production deals with friendship, loss, love, and finding out that what’s truly important in life. The production will have four performances through February 14 at Winspear Opera House.

Richardson Theatre Centre presents A Murder Is Announced
An announcement in the local paper states the time and place when a murder is to occur in Miss Blacklock's Victorian house. The victim is not one of the house's several occupants, but an unexpected and unknown visitor. What follows is a classic Agatha Christie puzzle of mixed motives, concealed identities, a second death and a determined inspector grimly following the case's twists and turns. Fortunately, Miss Marple is on hand to provide the solution - at some risk to herself - in a dramatic final confrontation. The production runs through March 1 at Richardson Theatre Centre.

Harland Williams: Comzilla Comedy Tour
Comedian and actor Harland Williams is known for his hilarious movie roles and outlandish stand-up and sketch comedy routines. He's had roles in films such as Dumb and Dumber, There's Something About Mary, Half Baked, Rocketman, Sorority Boys, Down Periscope, and more. He'll perform for one night only at Texas Theatre.

Theatre Coppell presents The Fantasticks
The Fantasticks is a musical about two young lovers, Matt and Luisa, who are tricked into falling in love by their fathers, who stage a feud to bring them together. The story explores themes of love, disillusionment, and the complexities of relationships, as the young couple's love is tested and they eventually find their way back to each other with a deeper understanding of love. The production runs through February 22 at Coppell Arts Center.

Lewisville Playhouse presents Ordinary People
Conrad had an older brother and now he is gone. What's left of young Conrad's family, with his successful, well-intentioned father and his beautiful, organized and remote mother, is in terrible jeopardy, as is Conrad himself. They are all "ordinary people" and each is fighting a hard battle. Ordinary People delves into themes of family dynamics, mental health, and the difficulty of communication in the face of immense loss. The production runs through February 22 at Lewisville Playhouse.

Saturday, February 7

Nexo Dallas Open
The Nexo Dallas Open is an ATP Tour 500 men’s tournament celebrating its fifth year in Dallas and its second year at the Ford Center at The Star in Frisco. The tournament will include top players like American standouts Ben Shelton (currently ranked No. 7 in the world) and Taylor Fritz (No. 9), 2025 DO finalist and No. 13 Casper Ruud, No. 14 Alejandro Davidovich Fokina, No. 20 Tommy Paul, No. 22 Flavio Cobolli, and more. The event, taking place through February 15, will also include the All-American Classic, featuring John McEnroe, Andy Roddick, John Isner, and Sam Querry.

Gipsy Kings featuring Nicolas Reyes in concert
For almost 50 years, the Catalan group Gipsy Kings has been entertaining fans around the world with their version of rumba, salsa, flamenco, and pop music. With lead singer Nicolas Reyes at the helm, the family band (comprised of Reyes' brothers and their cousins) has gone well beyond their French roots, with their albums regularly topping Billboard's U.S. World chart. Their most recent release was Evidence in 2018. They'll play at Majestic Theatre.

New Edition in concert with Boyz II Men and Toni Braxton
The New Edition Way Tour brings together three of music’s most enduring and influential acts, including New Edition, Boyz II Men, and Toni Braxton. The concert celebrates music, legacy, and connection, offering fans an opportunity to experience the legendary artists performing together. The concert takes place at American Airlines Center.

Teatro Dallas presents 22nd International Theatre Festival
Teatro Dallas will present their 22nd International Theatre Festival, taking place over three weeks and featuring three separate productions. The first production, presented by ASTA - Teatro e Outra Artes, will be Spectrum, a sensory experience that transcends the limits of traditional theatre. In the immersive creation, the audience is invited to dive into a post-reality where the human body interacts with technology, video, projection, and electronic music. Blending the real and the virtual, the performance offers a deep reflection on the impact of technology on our perception of reality, evoking a modern allegory of Plato’s cave.

Art Centre Theatre presents The Vagina Monologues
An Obie Award-winning whirlwind tour of a forbidden zone, The Vagina Monologues introduces a wildly divergent gathering of female voices, including a six-year-old girl, a septuagenarian New Yorker, a vagina workshop participant, a woman who witnesses the birth of her granddaughter, a Bosnian survivor of rape, and a feminist happy to have found a man who "liked to look at it." There will be four performances through February 21 at Art Centre Theatre in Plano.

Photo courtesy of Dreamworks Animation

Dallas Symphony Orchestra presents How to Train Your Dragon In Concert, February 6-8 at Meyerson Symphony Center.

music concerts symphony theater dance opera comedy sports event-planner

Movie review

Over-the-top The Bride! makes other Frankenstein movies seem subtle

Photo by Niko Tavernise

Christian Bale and Jessie Buckley in The Bride!.

The story of Dr. Frankenstein and his monster is now over 200 years old, with Mary Shelley’s book having been adapted or referenced in close to 500 films. Less common is the character of The Bride of Frankenstein, which existed in the original text but has more often than not been excised in adaptations. Writer/director Maggie Gyllenhaal has tried to rectify that by giving the character a big showcase in her new film, The Bride!.

Gyllenhaal has reimagined the story as one in which a woman named Ida (Jessie Buckley) becomes possessed by the spirit of Shelley (also Buckley). At the same time, the already-existing Frankenstein’s monster (Christian Bale) approaches Dr. Euphronius (Annette Bening), who specializes in reanimation, with the request to make him a wife. When Ida falls to her death in an “accident” involving her boyfriend (John Magaro), the ideal corpse becomes available.

After Ida’s resurrection, she and the monster become restless being studied by Dr. Euphronius and decide to break out to experience the world. The world, naturally, is not exactly welcoming to them, and soon the couple are on the run for causing mayhem, including a few murders. In hot pursuit are detective Jake Wiles (Peter Sarsgaard) and his assistant, Myrna Mallow (Penélope Cruz), as well as other authorities.

It’s clear that Gyllenhaal wanted to merge the Frankenstein story with Bonnie & Clyde, especially since she sets the film in the mid-1930s. And that wouldn’t have been a bad idea if having the monster and The Bride going on a crime spree was truly the focus of the movie. But most of the time there’s less intentionality in their misdeeds and more confusion, leading to a muddled plot with no clear direction or end goal in mind.

One of the biggest problems is that Gyllenhaal starts the energy of the film at an 11, giving her and everyone else nowhere to go but down. She dabbles in multiple different tones, at times going the straight drama route and other times making what seems like full-on camp. At one point, she even has the monster and the Bride in a dance sequence set to “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” which would be hilarious as an homage to Young Frankenstein if the film weren’t so disjointed.

Most baffling of all is what Gyllenhaal wants from The Bride character. She morphs multiple times over the course of the film, from close to unintelligible at the beginning to rough-and-tumble at the end. There are hints at the lack of control she has over her autonomy, including Shelley’s possession of her and the monster lying to her about her past, but any commentary that Gyllenhaal might be trying to make gets lost amid the oddity of the film as a whole.

Both Buckley and Bale are all-in for their performances, which definitely fall in the “love it or hate it” dichotomy. Each scene is pitched so high that there’s little nuance to either of them, and neither is on par with their previous Oscar-caliber roles. The high-powered supporting cast of Bening, Sarsgaard, Cruz, and Jake Gyllenhaal is watchable based on previous roles, but none of them elevate this particular movie.

Whatever intentions Maggie Gyllenhaal had in making The Bride! are only halfway legible in a film that can never find its tonal footing. There has rarely been subtlety in movies featuring Frankenstein’s monster and related characters, but this one makes all the others seem like stuffy dramas in comparison.

---

The Bride! is now playing in theaters.

movies film