Weekend Event Planner

These are the 11 best things to do in Fort Worth on Halloween weekend

Spookiness may be in the air this Halloween weekend, but events around Fort Worth will have many different atmospheres. There will be three new local theater productions, a documentary about a man who played monsters, a special event from a local Broadway star, themed classical music, a giant duck, a big Christian concert, a chalk art festival, and more.

Below are the best ways to spend your precious free time this weekend.

Thursday, October 28

Circle Theatre presents The Glass Menagerie
From her cramped St. Louis apartment, Amanda Wingfield dreams of her days as a Southern debutante while worrying about the future of her aimless son Tom and unmarried daughter Laura. With their father absent and the Great Depression in motion, the siblings find comfort in their foibles, which only heightens Amanda’s anxiety. When a gentleman caller arrives for dinner, the Wingfields are flooded with hope. But it’s unclear if his presence will change things for the better or shatter their fragile illusions. The production will run at Circle Theatre through November 20.

Friday, October 29

Halloween events
Halloween doesn't often take place on a weekend, so you can expect plenty of people out and about and in a spooky mood. The Dallas-Fort Worth area does not have a lack of quality haunted houses and other Halloween-themed events. Special this weekend will be Fort Worth Zoo's Boo at the Zoo, where guests can enjoy treat stations, themed entertainment, animal shows, and more, and themed train rides from Grapevine Vintage Railroad that appeal to both kids and adults.

Magnolia at the Modern: Boris Karloff: The Man Behind the Monster
Drawing from dozens of interviews, including with Guillermo del Toro, John Landis, Roger Corman, Ron Perlman, Sara Karloff, Peter Bogdanovich, Christopher Plummer, Stefanie Powers, Lee Grant, Sir Christopher Frayling, and Kevin Brownlow, Boris Karloff: The Man Behind the Monster takes audiences to the heart of the man, with a gripping, intimate portrait of Karloff and the genre he helped define. The film will screen seven times through Sunday at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.

Major Attaway's Magical Cabaret: Genie's Jukebox
Major Attaway was the first to take over the role of The Genie in Aladdin from James Monroe Iglehart and currently holds the title of Broadway longest-running Genie with over 1,500 performances. This show, taking place at Downtown Cowtown at the Isis, finds Attaway presenting a Genie variant Cabaret from a slightly evil timeline. Who are the genie's would-be favorite vile villain cohorts?

Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra presents Halloween on Bald Mountain: Mussorgsky, Liszt, and Stravinsky
This concert from the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra will feature Mussorgsky's now-seminal A Night on Bald Mountain, Liszt's Totentanz, or "Dance of the Dead," and Stravinsky's Pétrouchka. The concert, featuring conductor Anna Skryleva and pianist Joyce Yang, will have three performances through Sunday at Bass Performance Hall.

Amphibian Stage presents Egress
Amphibian Stage presents the world premiere of Egress, a psychological thriller examining the way spaces can protect us or trap us. An architecture professor who specializes in modes of egress tries to teach his students to care about safe passage through spaces and they write about doors and windows. One night, he startles awake wondering what had just been in the room with him. What does he expect to come find him? And how does he get away? The production will run through November 14.

Saturday, October 30

Kindness Duck Project presents Big #KindnessDuck Party
Rescheduled after a COVID-cancellation earlier this year, Kindness Duck Project will present Big #KindnessDuck Party, featuring a six-story tall rubber duck. Circling the duck will be a number of great attractions, including live music, food trucks, beverage vendors, craft artisans, games, and more. Proceeds for the event, taking place at Trinity Park, will benefit the Kindness Duck Project’s partner charities.

TCU School of Music presents TCU New Music Ensemble
The New Music Ensemble program at TCU focuses on performing repertoire that ranges from early 20th century classic works to newly written music by contemporary composers. This concert will feature Paul Schoenfeld's trio for flute, clarinet and piano; George Walker's Lyric Suite; Ida Gotkovsky's trio for violin, clarinet and piano, Peter Maxwell Davies' Sonata for Trumpet and Piano; the world premiere of Amy Barlowe's "Epitaph;" and Alyssa Morris' “Four Personalities” for oboe and piano. The concert will be at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.

Casa Mañana presents Smokey Joe's Cafe: The Songs of Lieber and Stoller
Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, as much as anyone, virtually invented rock ‘n’ roll, and nearly 40 of their hits — from “Jailhouse Rock” to “Stand by Me” and “Hound Dog” to “Love Potion #9” — are featured in Smokey Joe's Cafe. The production, taking place at Casa Mañana Theatre through November 7, takes the audience on a trip down nostalgia lane that will lead them to dust off their vinyl records and continue the party after they leave the theatre.

Premier Productions presents Elevation Nights
Elevation Nights is a new tour featuring Elevation Worship and Steven Furtick that brings the worship experience of Elevation Church into arenas. Taking place at Dickies Arena, the tour is more than a concert; it's a full worship experience as Furtick preaches and Elevation Worship leads some of their hit songs, including “Graves Into Gardens,” “Rattle!,” “Do It Again,” “The Blessing,” and others.

Sunday, October 31

Crockett Row at West 7th presents Monsters & Murals Chalk Art Festival
The Monsters & Murals Chalk Art Festival is an outdoor Halloween community event that will feature live professional chalk artists, a kids activity area, food and drink specials from nearby shops, live entertainment, trick-or-treating, festive décor, local art, and more. Amateur artists will be set up along Crockett Street creating custom pieces vying for attendees’ “votes” via cash donations.

Kindness Duck Project presents Big #KindnessDuck Party at Trinity Park on October 30.

Photo courtesy of Kindness Duck Project

Kindness Duck Project presents Big #KindnessDuck Party at Trinity Park on October 30.

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Movie Review

Music and Lady Gaga make for unusual Joker: Folie à Deux film sequel

Photo by Niko Tavernise

Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga in Joker: Folie à Deux.

For a movie that was more about one man’s mental health condition than anything related to comic books, 2019’s Joker was shockingly successful, making over $1 billion worldwide and nabbing a Best Actor Oscar for Joaquin Phoenix. Phoenix and writer/director Todd Phillips are back with Joker: Folie à Deux(literally meaning "a madness of two"), a film that has some of the same themes but a story that could not feel more different.

After his murder spree in the first film, Arthur Fleck (Phoenix) now calls Arkham Asylum home, where he is alternately tortured and favored by the guards, and revered by his fellow patients. Arthur plays nice for the most part, which leads one of the guards, Jackie Sullivan (Brendan Gleeson), to allow him to attend a music class in the minimum security ward of the facility, where he meets Lee Quinzel (Lady Gaga).

The immediate connection between Arthur and Lee allows Arthur to indulge in more than a few fantasies, ones that manifest themselves in the film as musical sequences involving the two of them. As his fortunes change and he is forced to stand trial for his crimes, Arthur returns to the fantasies repeatedly, with Lee giving him a sense of hope and security that has been missing from his life.

The film, co-written by Scott Silver, features songs so often that the boundary between reality and fiction within the story is completely blurred. Some of the songs show Arthur, Lee, or both singing at Arkham, while others emulate old musicals by creating numbers on a set meant to look like the Murray Franklin talk show from the first film. It’s fair to wonder how much, if any, of it is real or just things that Arthur has conjured to comfort himself.

Most of the songs - “Good Morning,” “Get Happy,” and “That’s Entertainment,” among others - are cribbed from the classic movie musical era of the 1930s-1960s. Their titles and lyrics have surface-level relevance to the story being told, but it’s hard to say their meaning goes deeper than that. They are also so chopped up and delivered so often that it’s difficult to tell what kind of importance Phillips was trying to put on any one individual song.

While the music is the obvious big change, the more significant one is the film’s almost total lack of action. The focus on Arthur and Lee’s possible relationship and Arthur spending most of the film at Arkham leads to very few scenes of mayhem. In fact, hardly anything of substance happens until the film’s final act, and what does happen is less impactful than what fans of the first film may want.

Phoenix, just as he did in Joker, commits fully to the role, appearing to become gaunt once again and making sure the character is sufficiently disturbing. The arc makes him quieter and less annoying this time around, which may or may not disappoint some viewers. Lady Gaga is fine as the character otherwise known as Harley Quinn, although it’s interesting that she was likely hired for her singing ability and the film rarely lets her truly let loose.

If the nihilistic tones of Joker made it a surprise billion-dollar movie, it would be even more of a shocker if Joker: Folie à Deux made anywhere near that type of money. The Joker character has been approached in many different ways, but this is one of the oddest yet.

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Joker: Folie à Deux opens in theaters on October 4.

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