It may be World Television Day, but we encourage you to get off the couch and check out some of this week’s best bets. We’ve got film screenings, classical masterworks, and a timely stage play. Keep reading for these and more.
After multiple attempts to mount a film adaptation of the Tony Award-winning Dreamgirls, a Broadway musical that presents a fictionalized version of The Supremes and the origin of Motown set in the 1960s and 1970s. It finally made it to the big screen in 2006 with a star-studded cast including Jennifer Hudson, Beyoncé, Jamie Foxx, Eddie Murphy, and Danny Glover – to name a few. On Thursday, November 21, at 6:30 p.m., you can catch an outdoor screening of Dreamgirls, courtesy of Downtown Houston’s Movies Under the Stars, at Trebly Park. On its release, Rolling Stone said the film “has everything,” from “its dream cast” to “a timely story about how music can sell its soul to greed and compromise.” Admission to the screening is free, but register here first.
Following the death of her teenage son, a nurse travels from Madrid to Barcelona to find his long-lost father and, along the way, cultivates a found family in Pedro Almodóvar’s Oscar-winning melodrama All About My Mother, which you can catch at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, on Friday, November 22, at 7 p.m. The 1999 film has been said to be “all about how tragedies of the flesh can yield renewal and hope despite the pain they leave behind.” It also co-stars Penélope Cruz, who has made seven films with Almodóvar over the last 27 years. The film is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year and will be introduced by MFAH Audio-Visual Technician Rob Arcos. Tickets can be purchased here for $7 to $9.
On Friday, November 22, at 7:30 p.m., Kinetic Ensemble will visit Sanman Studios to perform their latest concert called The Strangers’ Case, which will feature works from Andy Akiho, Karim Al-Zand, Paul Wiancko, and Errollyn Wallen. The program’s name is borrowed from a song cycle by Al-Zand, which will be previewed during the concert and uses text from immigrants to the United States. Al-Zand recently told the Houston Chronicle, “By using text materials that span diverse nationalities, stories, voices and historical periods, ‘The Strangers’ Case’ aims to make a case of its own: though our commitment to immigrants and refugees has been equivocal, nonetheless their success forms the basis of American strength and renewal.” Tickets to the program can be purchased here for $20.
Siblings get a visit from their movie star sister and her much younger boyfriend in playwright Christopher Durang’s Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, which 4th Wall Theatre Co. will open at Spring Street Studios on Friday, November 22, at 7:30 p.m. 4th Wall co-founder Philip Lehl, who is playing Vanya, recently told the Houston Press that the play, which includes frequent references to Anton Chekhov, is “still as timely as it was when it first came out,” and “like many Chekhov plays: a visitor comes — in this case the sister and her boyfriend — and it upends everything.” Performances will continue at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays and 3 p.m. Sundays through December 21. Tickets are available here for $25 to $65.
Concertmaster and violinist Yoonshin Song will lead the Houston Symphony during Bach, Mozart & Brahms on Saturday, November 23, at 7:30 p.m. at Jones Hall. Song will begin the program with Johann Sebastian Bach before the spotlight turns to the Symphony’s wind section for Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and closes with Johannes Brahms. Senior Director of Artistic Planning Rebecca Zabinski has said performing this music without a conductor “is very difficult and is only done by musicians of the highest caliber, which certainly describes Yoonshin and the musicians of the Houston Symphony.” A second performance is scheduled for Sunday, November 24, at 2 p.m., which will also be livestreamed. Tickets for either performance are available here for $52 to $140, or you can purchase access to the livestream here for $20.
It’s Christmas Eve when an unexpected guest turns things on their head “in a bourgeois, intellectual household” on Saturday, November 23, at 7:30 p.m. when Rec Room Arts opens prolific German playwright Roland Schimmelpfennig’s dark comedy “about the historic danger of extremism,” Winter Solstice. The 90-minute one-act, translated by David Tushingham, has been described as “a portrait of zombie fascism, nazism back from the dead,” and is “deeply radical in form: spoken dialogue is mixed with scene-setting and description of characters’ thoughts as if it were a mix of play, film and novel.” Additional performances are scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays and will continue until December 14. Tickets are available here for $15 to $30 (with special $5 tickets available for the performance on Wednesday, November 27).
Visit Asia Society Texas on Sunday, November 24, at 2 p.m. for a screening of Ayumu Watanabe’s anime based on Daisuke Igarashi’s critically acclaimed, five-volume manga Children of the Sea as the film tours nation courtesy of Japan Foundation New York. The story focuses on a young girl who meets two boys raised in the ocean at an aquarium and slowly learns more about their world. Though the film speaks to the issue of climate change, Watanabe has said “it’s not just holding a sign that says, ‘Keep the oceans clean.’ It’s more about portraying something beautifully, and then having the audience think, ‘How can I maintain that? What’s the answer?’ And realize that, ‘I’m part of this world, too.’” Admission to the screening is free, but you must register here.
On Thanksgiving, the River Oaks Theatre will celebrate its 85th birthday and you can celebrate a day early, on Wednesday, November 27, at 6:30 p.m. when the theater and Arthouse Houston present a special screening of Giuseppe Tornatore’s Cinema Paradiso. Though the Italian film was “a nostalgic, sentimental movie about moviegoing” made “by an unknown 32-year-old director” that “flopped” on its release, the film went on to “become one of the most successful foreign-language movies of all time.” Audience members can also enjoy a pre-film concert by Reel Harmony Duo and Oscar-winning short film Precious Images by Chuck Workman, a collection of quick clips from movie moments from more than 80 years of American film history. Tickets to the screening can be purchased here for $19.23.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
