If you weren’t at the Meyerson last night, you missed the historic appearance by former First Lady Laura Bush, appearing with her home town’s gay men’s chorus, the Turtle Creek Chorale, for a program that also featured the Army chorus. It marked the final concert of the TCC’s season, and the first since interim conductor Trey Jacobs was officially named the new permanent artistic director.
Dallas Theater Center’s production of God of Carnage at the Kalita provides a juicy bit of social commentary amid 75 minutes of serious belly laughs. And there’s still time to catch Memphis at Fair Park, an entertaining and occasionally moving musical about the history of rock ‘n’ roll on the radio with some radiant singing. (It was written by Tony winner Joe DiPietro.) The Dallas Children’s Theater wraps up its production of Diary of a Worm, a Spider and a Fly soon with this family-friendly hip-hop musical about embracing differences in one another. And different it is — B.J. Cleveland does drag as a lady fly and Adam Garst cleverly James-Deans his way through the role of an angsty spider.
Mansome is still playing at the Angelika, and you’s be better off catching that — or even The Avengers again — rather than Men in Black 3, although it’s better than the last two. Or kick off summer’s first three-day weekend with some beach reading, especially In One Person, the new one by John Irving with a bisexual hero at its center. The is also Ye Fynall Week-End to enjoy Scarborough Faire, pictured.
Poor Barry Sonnenfeld. In another life, he was a respected cinematographer, who shot the Coen Brothers’ Blood Simple and Raising Arizona, in addition to Misery. He was versatile and quirky. Then he became a director, and that sense of humor became compromised by Hollywood middle-brow aesthetics. The two Addams Family movies had moments, and Get Shorty was actually good, but mostly he’s stuck adding a shiny inconsequentiality to bad action comedies. (His last film as a director, RV in 2006 was a serious flop; he has directed some good TV shows though, notably the short-lived Pushing Daisies.)
