We officially started a new year again – this time based on the lunar calendar – so we encourage you to kick it off right with some of the best in the Houston arts scene this week, including a clever (and silent) retelling of the Scottish play, contemporary Latin American music, and an opera Houston has been waiting to see again for 44 years. Keep reading for our picks for this week’s best bets.
Over at the Alley Theatre this evening, Thursday, at 7:30 p.m., you can check out Lauren Yee’s Cambodian Rock Band, which officially opened last night. The two-act play is about a survivor of the Khmer Rouge who returns to Cambodia after 30 years at the same time his daughter is about to prosecute a Khmer Rouge war criminal – all set to a soundtrack of Dengue Fever and other Cambodian oldies. Francis Jue, who plays Duch in the production, recently told the Houston Press that “there are some really serious themes in the show but I think one of the gifts that Lauren gives us is the fact that music, that joy, can be a revolutionary act and art and actually remembering the past, documenting the past, can be a progressive act.” Performances will continue at 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays and Sundays, 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 2:30 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays through February 12. Tickets can be purchased here for $26 to $92.
It doesn’t get much more timely than Lisa Loomer’s Roe, now playing at Stages. The play, which premiered in 2016, explores the culture divide over abortion through two women at the heart of the 1973 court case that challenged Texas’s ban on abortion: the plaintiff and her lawyer. Teresa Zimmermann, who plays Norma McCorvey (also known as Jane Roe) in the production, recently described her character to the Houston Press as “a very complicated person and at times, an unreliable narrator,” but adds that “this show does the incredibly difficult job of talking about a moment in history that defined a lot of where we are now and there are uncomfortable truths that need to be faced.” Performances will continue at 7:30 p.m. tonight, Thursday, January 26, and then at 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 2:30 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays through March 5 at The Gordy. Tickets can be purchased here for $30 to $84.
The Ensemble Theatre will open Dominique Morisseau’s Paradise Blue, the first of Morisseau’s Detroit trilogy of plays along with Detroit ’67 and Skeleton Crew, tonight, Thursday, January 26, at 7:30 p.m. Paradise Blue focuses on a jazz club, the titular Paradise Blue, which is an important place in a predominantly Black neighborhood that finds itself threatened by gentrification. The regional premiere will feature an all-star cast, including Jason E. Carmichael, Brandon Morgan, Crystal Rae, Curtis Von, and Liz Rachelle, who plays the mysterious Silver. Rachelle told the Houston Chronicle that “Silver is a very complex individual” but “still has a soft spot as far as humanity is concerned.” Performances continue at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays, 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. Saturdays, and 3 p.m. Sundays through February 26. Tickets can be purchased here for $34 to $57.
“Six effervescent minutes of upbeat Cuban dance energy” lend its name to Aperio, Music of the Americas’ Latin-themed concert at The MATCH on Friday, January 27, at 7:30 p.m. The program, Hot Buttered Rumba, which borrows its name from a 1996 Robert Xavier Rodriguez work, will include not only the titular work, but Rodriguez’s duo for piano and cello, Tentado por la Samba; Miguel del Aguila’s Charango capriccioso for piano quintet and Salon Buenos Aires for six musicians; John Mackey’s Breakdown Tango; and Astor Piazzolla’s Milonga del Angel and Oblivion. Aperio artistic director and pianist Michael Zuraw told the Houston Chronicle that the works on the program try to “stretch boundaries,” adding that the “aspirational quality of the music and the spirit of it” also “stretches everybody’s flexibility in ensemble playing.” Tickets can be purchased here for $10 to $35, with general admission being priced at $35.
The last time Houston Grand Opera staged Jules Massenet’s Werther, Jimmy Carter was president, “My Sharona” was at the top of the charts, and the Steelers beat the Cowboys in Super Bowl XIII. But on Friday, January 27, at 7:30 p.m. the opera will make its long-awaited return to Houston when it opens at the Wortham Theater Center along with four performers making their debut in the Bayou City, including Grammy-winning mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard. Tenor Matthew Polenzani, who will perform the role of the titular character based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, recently told the Houston Press that “it is a great piece of music” that is “jammed with beautiful music and people struggling to figure out how to keep going and these are things we can relate to.” Performances continue at 2 p.m. on Sunday, January 29, and at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, February 4, Wednesday, February 8, and Friday, February 10. Tickets can be purchased here for $20 to $210.
It’s now officially the Year of the Rabbit – “traditionally a symbol of hope and peace” and where better to celebrate Lunar New Year than with the Asia Society Texas Center this Saturday, January 28, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. The afternoon will include food, arts and crafts, and activities such as Chinese calligraphy, interactive story times, and a lion dance by Shaolin Kung Fu Academy. Huaxing Arts Group will be present to perform Spring Festival: Splendor of Huaxing, a program of Chinese music and dance, as well as Houston Grand Opera, which will do a little kid-friendly opera. You can view the full schedule here. The all-ages-welcome festival is free, but you have to RSVP here. Also, the two Spring Festival: Splendor of Huaxing performances (at 1 and 3 p.m.) are ticketed events. You can purchase a ticket here for $10.
Following sell-outs of the four scheduled performances, the good folks over at Main Street Theater have added an additional showing of La Fille Du Laitier’s Macbeth Muet at OVATIONS in Rice Village on Sunday, January 29, at 3 p.m. The last time the production swung by Houston back in 2018, also courtesy of Main Street Theater, the Houston Press described the silent, 50-minute telling of William Shakespeare’s tragedy as “one of the most original, clever, funny, intense, and just bloody entertaining (pun intended) shows” seen in years, adding that “Macbeth Muet strips the story down to the most guttural and intimate emotions and as such, touches emotional inroads that we might have thought were lost after so many viewings of this narrative.” Tickets are pay-what-you-can with a suggested price of $40 and can be purchased here.
On Sunday, January 29, at 5:30 p.m. Ars Lyrica visits Rienzi, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston house museum for a late afternoon program inspired by the art imported from China into Europe back in the 17th and 18th centuries. The program, From China with Love: Musical Chinoiseries in 17th- and 18th-Century Europe, will begin with Rienzi’s Assistant Curator Misty Flores talking about the way Europeans imagined China at the time with harpsichordist Mario Aschauer, before Aschauer joins violinist Manami Mizumoto and soprano Josefien Stoppelenburg to perform works from Henry Purcell, Jean-Philippe Rameau, and Christoph Willibald Gluck. This concert will be in-person only – no streaming options for this one – and you can purchase a ticket for $70 here.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2023.
