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Roaming spirits

Denton’s musical comedy freak show, Cirque du Horror, just grew legs and is heading to the Texas Theatre in Dallas’ Oak Cliff to unleash its twisted humor on some new, unsuspecting victims.

London Stage

Students of the Bard

Actor Patrick Stewartnever hid his affinity for the Bard. Stewart (Star Trek: The Next Generation, X-Men) co-founded an English company, London Stage, that uses major British theater companies as feeders to tour as an educational outreach. The company, which focuses exclusively on Shakespeare, will visit Denton next week for two minimalist performances of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing.

Courtesy photo

Dunn right

Kimberly Dunn said Forever on the Run fuses her musical past with the present. That means the debut album is a little bit country and a little bit rock ’n’ roll. Or, as Dunn puts it, “Allison Krause meets Alice in Chains.”

Phantom gala

Gala night for the Lewisville Lake Symphony is heading over into a touch of the “pops.” “Music of the Night: The Phantom’s Gala,” hints that at least one of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s blockbusters will get a good turn at the gala (in theme, and perhaps by special guest vocalist Don LeBlanc). The regional symphony has had a relationship with the University of North Texas College of Music since its founding 31 years ago.

AP

Innocent puppy bystander

The bad guys in the new action-thriller John Wick learn the hard way not to violate a universal commandment: Don’t mess with a man’s dog.

Halloween and Fall Events

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Denton Parks & Recreation

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Oct. 23 Denton Time PDF

DRC

The people sing

Music Theatre of Denton took on an ambitious project in the finale of its 2013-14 season. Les Miserables is a huge show in just about every way. The libretto is a demanding score of opera and “popera,” a marathon for the principals and anything but a trifle for the chorus.

Throwback Sunday

Organizers lovingly call the Industrial Street International Pop Festival “Geezerpalooza.” And the nickname seems more fitting than the part about being an international pop festival. But then the title is a hat tip to the Texas International Pop Festival, staged in Denton County in 1969.

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Packing a punch against cancer

When Denton singer Beth Heffernan laced up a pair of pink boxing gloves, she was channeling some serious anger against breast cancer.

Greater Lewisville Community The

Long as God can grow it

Greater Lewisville Community Theatre opens its season with Hair, the first rock musical and an icon of its time.

Courtesy photo

Artist’s devotion to Mary

Denton painter Randall Good continues his series of gallery talks from 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday at Oxide Gallery.

AP

The little tank that could

Brad Pitt and his tank crew single-handedly win World War II in the new action-drama film Fury. Someone had to do it. Writer-director David Ayer (Training Day) draws on nearly 70 years of World War II movies, and the latest special effects, to render a conventional but engaging story about a determined sergeant and his men.

Berlin Cultural Archive

After the wall

A University of North Texas department is remembering the fall of the Berlin Wall 25 years ago with a series of events this month and next.

Events

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Dining

Oct. 16 Denton Time PDF

DRC

Picking up where she left off

PILOT POINT — She sounds like a country music legend, a mixture of Loretta Lynn, Tanya Tucker and Barbara Mandrell. It’s a raspy voice tinged with a lifetime of experience raising kids in the country. It takes you back in time, to an era when the Highwaymen were still rowdy and the women of country dominated the music charts.

Together by design

Serve Denton has a dream that local nonprofits might one day be located on the same campus in the center of town, with a monthly rent payment of about 8 cents a month.

UNT College of Music

Please touch

The orchestra pit can be mysterious for anyone who can’t read a note of music. For parents who want their children to consider learning to play an instrument, the orchestra pit can sometimes be overwhelming.

UNT College of Music

Reich concert to trick the ear

It’s a concert that comes full circle. Professor Joseph Klein regularly teaches a piece titled Music for 18 Musicians in his courses at the University of North Texas College of Music.

University of North Texas

Beaming in

Actor, social justice activist and social media mega-power George Takei will speak Oct. 27 as part of the University of North Texas Distinguished Lecture Series. Takei will speak at 8 p.m. Oct 27 in the UNT Coliseum, 600 Ave. D. Tickets are on sale now. With a career spanning five decades, Takei is known around the world for his founding role in the acclaimed television series Star Trek, in which he played Hikaru Sulu, helmsman of the Starship Enterprise. Takei appeared in three seasons of Star Trek and reprised his iconic role in six movies. Tickets for the general public cost $15, available online at http://studentaffairs.unt.edu/takei.

Focus Features

Ink-stained wretch

Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Nancy and Ronald Reagan and John Kerry are all featured in Kill the Messenger, a taut, fact-based thriller with an apt title. And at its center lies a subversive conspiracy that could only be uncovered with an old-fashioned journalistic investigation.

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Oct. 9 Denton Time PDF

Fussy? Not these guys

When a mutual friend of Fishboy founder Eric Michener and writer, actress, comedian and musician Charlyne Yi (Paper Heart, Knocked Up) said Yi was looking for DIY spaces for a tour, Michener knew just the place.

150548

Creativity around the clock

North Branch Library is the place to be for creative types Friday night and Saturday. The branch will host the Better Denton Hackathon and 24-Hour Comics Day, both of which start at 5 p.m. on Friday and end on 5 p.m. Saturday. Together, the events make up the Denton Public Library’s “Up All Night” event.

Tiffany Hillan

The Bard, adapted

The Winter’s Tale chronicles the fallout of a king’s gossip. The Shakespearean drama finds a king and his family floundering in the shrapnel 16 years from the moment he falsely accused his wife of infidelity with his best friend.

Lisa Loving

Halloween tease

Sometimes, it’s more fun to slip out of a Halloween costume. That’s the idea behind Saturday night’s date with Lemme Addams’ Stardust Revue’s presentation of “Mysteries, Magick & Mayhem.”

AP

Notes on a marriage

Sympathies change, and then they change again in the dynamic Gone Girl, a twisting-turning new crime-thriller from David Fincher. The heralded director builds an engrossing, escalating mystery before unveiling a few surprises that pull the rug out from everyone.

Fathom Events

Your chance at ‘Eternity’

It doesn’t seem possible that From Here to Eternity could get more sultry than the film’s iconic passionate kiss on the beaches of Pearl Harbor. But Tony Award-winning musical-maker Tim Rice adapted the film for the stage, and if reports are true, audiences had to fan themselves through the big numbers. A filmed version of the musical — about young Army men in 1941 and the women they love — was made of this spring’s production on London’s West End, starring Darius Campbell as First Sgt. Milton Warden and Rebecca Thornhill as Karen Holmes. The company men doff their shirts and the women play peek-a-boo with pinup-style curves while the band plays on. Fathom Events screens the musical at 7:30 p.m. today at theaters including the Denton Cinemark, 2825 Wind River Lane. A repeat screening is at 7 p.m. Oct. 9. The musical is rated R for adult situations. For tickets, visit www.fathomevents.com.

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Oct. 2 Denton Time PDF

Staff Photographer

Texas casual

When officers of the Denton Benefit League started casting around for a fresh event that would attract a younger set, it settled on fine spirits and casual clothes. “Boots, Bling & Bourbon” covers it all, said events coordinator Carrie Langford.

Nance Photography

Alumna back to direct dark comedy at TWU

Vickie Washington is coming back to her alma mater to direct the opening play of the Texas Woman’s University 2014-15 season.Speech and Debate is in the vein of Moliere’s Tartuffe — shedding light on hypocrisy...

DRC

A howling good time

Man’s best friend gets his day in the sun on Saturday.Dog Days of Denton starts first thing in the morning at the fairgrounds, and promises the traditional contests, exciting demonstrations and lots of...

Courtesy of UNT

Fractured faith

A nun nurses a niggling suspicion that the priest who presides over the Catholic school where she teaches is a predator. Her anxieties teach a young sister — an emerging teacher — an unintended lesson about the fallout of power plays.

A green, well-lighted space

With all the music festivals in Denton, there’s one that honors the city’s allegiance to nuclear polka while celebrating the county’s untamed, pretty corners.

AP

Killing machine

He’s a little older now, and he needs more time to warm up. He thinks things through, looks them over, and only when he’s ready does Denzel Washington find his inner-action hero in the new thriller The Equalizer.

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