It’s officially May, and we’ve got two days of particular import right around the corner: Star Wars Day and Cinco de Mayo. We’ve got both covered in this week’s best bets, so keep reading for these and more of our picks of the top picks this coming week.
It’s been said that many Richard Wagner stans “actually enjoy a good ‘Ring’ satire,” and if you are one of them, you won’t want to miss Das Barbecü, which reimagines Richard Wagner’s 15-hour-long, four-opera cycle as a two-hour, Texas-set, barbecue-obsessed musical. With “breezy and clever” lyrics by Jim Luigs and music with “verve and melodic grace” by Scott Warrender, the musical “tries to be more than just a parody” with familiar characters like “Wotan as a powerful rancher, Siegfried as a guitar-strumming cowboy, and Brünnhilde as a sassy cowgirl,” it is also a show “bent on giving the audience a good time.” The show opens on Thursday, May 1, at 7 p.m. with performances scheduled for 7 p.m. Wednesdays through Fridays, 2 and 7 p.m. Saturdays, and 2 p.m. Sundays through June 1. Tickets are available here for $52 to $95.
Danish-Palestinian filmmaker Mahdi Fleifel made a splash in 2012 with his debut feature, a documentary called A World Not Ours, became “an unexpected festival hit.” Last year, Fleifel released his long-anticipated follow-up, his fiction feature debut To a Land Unknown. The film is “a drama-thriller with real suspense” about two Palestinian cousins stranded in Athens trying and trying to get to Germany by “hatching a plan that sees them posing as smugglers and taking hostages in order to pay for fake passports.” To a Land Unknown will open this year’s Houston Palestine Film Festival on Friday, May 2, at 6:30 p.m. at Rice Cinema. The festival will continue through May 4 with a mix of feature-length films and shorts. Tickets to individual screenings can be purchased here for $10.
Dubbed “The Gentlemen of Hip-Hop,” Houston’s own FLY Dance Company, established in 1995 by artistic director and choreographer Kathy Wood, will bring their brand of theatrical hip-hop to Miller Outdoor Theatre on Friday, May 2, at 8 p.m. – this time, with a performance set to the music of Carlos Santana. During Fly Dance Company: Oye Como Fly, the company along with Olympian and alum Jeffrey (B-Boy Jeffro) Louis – one of four athletes who represented Team USA in breaking during the Paris games – will dance to a live band led by Haydn Vitera. Like all performances at Miller, the show is free, and you can reserve a ticket here beginning at 10 a.m. on Thursday, May 1, or you can nab a seat on the no-ticket-required Hill.
You can see one of William Shakespeare’s most famous tragedies stripped down – with only four actors playing the show’s more than 30 roles – when 4th Wall Theatre Company opens Bedlam’s Hamlet on Friday, May 2, at 7:30 p.m. Director Kim Tobin-Lehl recently told the Houston Press, “The immediacy of how this interacts with an audience is unique to me. We don’t indulge in any overly dramatic emoting or any long-extended breaks for any kind of spectacle. We assume the audience can listen to the speech at the same rate as they think. That they don’t have to be indulged with any kind of hand-holding. That it actually works better when the text is the thing.” Performances will continue through May 24 at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays and 3 p.m. Sundays. Tickets are available here for $22 to $62.
It’s no secret “Western classical music canon is notoriously white and male,” but Mercury Chamber Orchestra and Musiqa have teamed together to give due to Vicente Lusitano, a Renaissance composer believed to be the first published Black composer and “one of the most prolific Black artists of early modern Europe.” Lusitano was largely forgotten to history until “a revival of interest in his long-neglected choral music” occurred several years ago, and on Saturday, May 3, at 8 p.m., Conductor Antoine Plante will lead an ensemble at Saengerhalle in the Heights in performing motets composed by Lusitano alongside works from Brian Raphael Nabors and Nkeiru Okoye commissioned for the program, titled Divine Voices. Tickets to the program are pay-what-you-can (with a minimum price of $5) and can be purchased here.
Ska bands may not see the same mainstream popularity they found in the 90s, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t still rockin’ and rollin’ around the country. One of those bands still going strong is Inspector, from Monterrey, Mexico. Like other ska bands, Inspector fuses “Jamaican reggae styles and pop-rock sensibilities” but also adds in “Mexican pop-rock sensibilities of 1960’s rock-and roll.” You can celebrate Mexico’s victory over the French in 1862 with Inspector at Miller Outdoor Theatre on Saturday, May 3, at 8 p.m. during Wells Fargo Presents Cinco de Mayo at Miller Featuring Inspector. The performance is free, and you can reserve a ticket here starting at 10 a.m. on Friday, May 2, or you can plan to sit on the Hill (no ticket required).
It’s that time of year again i.e., an opportunity to nerd out and wish your friends and family a “May the Fourth be with you.” Star Wars Day may be an unofficial holiday, but it is regularly and often celebrated by fans of George Lucas’s space opera with parties and screenings. If you don’t yet have plans, you can catch the film that started it all – as well as introduced the line “May the Force be with you” into pop culture – on Sunday, May 4, at 11:30 a.m. when River Oaks Theatre presents Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope on the big screen. The film will be screened a second time at 1:30 p.m. on Sunday, May 4. Tickets to either screening can be purchased here for $12.
