Best Bets: Hocus Pocus Pops, The Minutes and More

It’s National Slap Your Coworker Day, but, since we don’t condone violence, let’s make it Invite Your Coworker on a Fun Outing Day instead. And, if you need ideas for things to do together, we’ve got you covered. This week, we’ve got the return of the Alley Theatre’s All New Festival, the regional premiere of a well-received Tracy Letts play, and a couple of ways for you to get a head start on Halloween. Keep reading for these and more on our list of best bets.

In a world where a virus threatens pregnancies, a trainee at a safe-haven clinic is tasked with keeping certain people out in Marisela Treviño Orta’s Womb 2.0, the first staged reading of the 2025 Alley All New Festival on Friday, October 24, at 4:30 p.m. The three-day festival returns with readings of plays in development from playwrights including Treviño Orta, Chisa Hutchinson, Mark Bedard and John Tufts, and Lisa D’Amour. Ahead of seeing former festival selection Born with Teeth by Liz Duffy Adams in London’s West End, Alley Artistic Director Rob Melrose told the Houston Press the festival is “a way of showing the world that the Alley is a leader in the American theater.  When we do something, other folks follow.” Tickets to the festival are free and can be reserved here.

Houston Grand Opera will return to Catfish Row on Friday, October 24, at 7 p.m., when it opens its first production of Porgy and Bess at the Wortham Theater Center since its 1994-95 season. The 1935 show, from composer George Gershwin, librettist DuBose Heyward, and lyricist Ira Gershwhin, tells the story of Porgy, a disabled beggar, and his attempts to rescue his love, Bess, from a world of drugs and violence. Bass-baritone Michael Sumuel, who will play the role of Porgy, recently described him as “just a good man” to the Houston Press, adding that “He’s got this light about him, this hopefulness in spite of what he’s been through, in spite of his disability.” Performances will continue through November 15 at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays. Tickets can be purchased here for $30 to $306.50.

Houston Symphony will return to The Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion on Friday, October 24, at 7:30 p.m. for Hocus Pocus Pops, its annual Halloween concert. Though John Williams will be well-represented on the program – with the march from Superman, “Fawkes the Phoenix” from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and the themes from Jaws and Jurassic Park – you can also expect “Der Hexenritt,” or the “Witches’ Ride,” from Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hansel und Gretel; Jules Massenet’s “Menuet de Cendrillon” and a suite of music from Back to the Future. Be sure to get there early, as the pre-show fun, including a little trick-or-treating on the plaza, begins at 6 p.m. The first 100 boys and girls in costume to check in can also walk on stage during the Goblin Parade. The event is free and no ticket is required.

Variety called it “among the best new plays on Broadway in years,” and on Friday, October 24, at 8 p.m., you can catch the regional premiere of Tracy Letts’ The Minutes when Dirt Dogs Theatre Co. opens the production at the MATCH. The 90-minute, intermission-less play is “funny until it’s not,” using the setting of a council meeting in the fictional town of Big Cherry to expose “the systems of delusion that blind people to truths buried in plain sight” and interrogate “the present by laying bare how history is written.” Performances are scheduled through November 8 at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays and Monday, November 3; 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; and 2 p.m. Sundays. Tickets are available here for $35 with matinees and Industry Night pay-what-you-can (with a minimum price of $5).

In Greek mythology, Princess Ariadne sailed away with her love, Athenian hero Theseus, after helping him kill the Minotaur and escape Crete, only to have Theseus abandon her on the island of Naxos while she slept. Inspired by the myth, Joseph Haydn composed Arianna a Naxos, a solo cantata that will be at the center of Ars Lyrica Houston’s concert, Love Untamed, on Saturday, October 25, at 5 p.m. at the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts. Mezzo-soprano Erin Wagner will lend her voice to Ariadne on the program, which also features Georg Philipp Telemann’s Triple Concerto for flute, violin, and cello, and a neoclassical miniature by Vittorio Rieti, as well as The Peace of Wild Things by Houston composer David Ashley White. Tickets are available here for $15 to $80.

Celebrate Halloween and take your costume on a dry run (with the possibility of a reward) when Scream on the Green returns to Discovery Green on Saturday, October 25, from 6 to 9 p.m. The free, family-friendly festivities will feature music, games, living sculptures, palm readers and psychics, and a costume contest. Participation in the costume contest requires pre-registration here, but winners in a variety of categories – infant to eight-year-olds, nine to 17-year-olds, adult female, adult male, family or group, and even dog or pet – will take home a prize. At 7 p.m., you can also enjoy a screening of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Tim Burton’s “long-imagined” 2024 sequel to his 1988 cult classic about an otherworldly bio-exorcist named Betelgeuse, played by Michael Keaton, who is recruited by a newly deceased couple to scare off the people who bought their house.

When the Houston Chamber Choir performs its latest program, All God’s Creatures, at South Main Baptist Church on Saturday, October 25, at 7:30 p.m., it will world premiere the first installment of its commissioned project, Houston Seasons, “Autumn” by Houston composer Daniel Knaggs and Houston poet Devondra Banks Brown. The concert, the second of the Choir’s season, will be conducted by Artistic Director Betsy Cook Weber and also feature “De Animals a-Comin,” performed by the men’s ensemble; Benjamin Britten’s popular cantata “Rejoice in the Lamb,” with text written by asylum-bound Christopher Smart; “If I Were a Swan,” composed and premiered by Kevin Puts in 2012 from a poem by Fleda Brown; and R. Murray Schafer’s choral song cycle “Medieval Bestiary.” Tickets are available here for $10 to $50.

Montopolis, an Austin-based indie chamber music ensemble, will return to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, on Sunday, October 26, at 3 p.m. as part of its Halloween tour to present Montopolis: Ghost Almanac. The group will put on a silent-movie concert, pairing live music and foley effects to a compilation of scenes from classic silent horror works, including F.W. Murnau’s 1922 vampire classic Nosferatu, the Fleischer Studios-produced Betty Boop’s Hallowe’en Party, the Walt Disney-directed animated short The Skeleton Dance, and Robert Wiene’s classic of German Expressionism, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, a film about “delusions and deceptive appearances, about madmen and murder.” The show is for all ages, and Halloween costumes are encouraged. Tickets are available here for $5 to $15, with children ages 12 and under free.

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