Go to Red Alert! Original “Star Trek” cast member, LGBT activist and all-around kick ass guy George “Mr. Sulu” Takei is coming to Little Rock for a special performance with the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra at Robinson Center Music Hall on Saturday, February 25 at 8 p.m. and Sunday, February 26 at 3 p.m. The concert, the fifth in the Symphony’s Stella Boyle Smith Masterworks series, will feature performances of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony (“Ode to Joy”) and Schoenberg’s “A Survivor from Warsaw.” Takei will serve as narrator during the Schoenberg piece. The concert will also feature a 400-strong choir of vocalists from around the state. Video of ASO director Philip Mann talking about the event is seen above.
Takei, who is scheduled to be on the next season of “Celebrity Apprentice,” is no stranger round these parts, having been imprisoned with his family at an interment camp at Jerome during World War II, and angrily pronouncing Midland School board member Clint McCance a “douchebag” in a still-“Ode to Joy”-worthy 2010 Youtube video after McCance posted gay-hating comments on Facebook. Oh, my!