Hot Dates: July 4 fireworks, international baseball, Todrick Hall and Merle

Saturday

July 4 fireworks, of course, with SkyShow 2015 at uptown’s BB&T Ballpark. There’ll be baseball as Team USA and Team Cuba – two international baseball powerhouses – continue a friendship series in Charlotte and Durham. The series is sponsored by the Charlotte Knights and Durham Bulls. The gates open at 5 p.m. There’ll be pregame events at the SkyShow Street Party that include music, food, inflatables, kid crafts, carnival rides, gamesand prizes.

After 16 years of no baseball between the two teams, the home-and-home series resumed in 2012 with Team USA traveling to Havana. The first and fifth games of this week’s five-game series will be played at the USA Baseball National Training Complex in Cary. The second and third will be played will be played at Durham Bull Athletic Park.

After the game, there will be a patriotic flag ceremony followed by one of the largest fireworks shows in the Southeast. The event is being presented by WBT radio and 107.9 The Link, Carolina Chevy Dealers, NAPA Auto Parts and Fox 46 Charlotte.

Best places to watch fireworks if you’re not going to the game? Romare Bearden Park and blocks surrounding the ballpark.

Game tickets, click here.

Independence Day at Historic Brattonsville, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Travel back to an 1840s July 4 celebration. The militia will be mustered on the back lawn of the York County plantation. There will be a militia mustered on the back lawn, and the day will culminate with costumed interpreters reading the Declaration of Independence at 3 p.m. on the steps of Hightower Hall, the antebellum home of John Bratton Jr. There will be music and dancing, all the sights and sounds of a 19^th-century patriotic revelry. Details, click here.

Monday

“The Toddlerz Ball” at McGlohon Theater at Spirit Square, 7:30 p.m., 345 N. College St. YouTube sensation Todrick Hall brings the humor and music of his Internet characters to Charlotte and meets with fans after the show. Hall’s videos have achieved more than 200 million online, and now he’s taking his wacky casts of characters on the road and on an MTV series.

Details, click here.

A little Todrick Hall:

Tuesday

“Dixie Tupperware Party” at Booth Playhouse, 130 N. Tryon St., 7:30 p.m. (through July 19). See a Southern drag queen dish one-liners while discussing the benefits of plastic food preservers. Kris Anderson’s one-person play is on its way. Details, click here.

Merle Haggard, the last active member of the Bakersfield School of country music, at Belk Theater, 7:30 p.m. Haggard is one of country music’s most gifted and prolific songwriters. For three decades beginning in the 1960s, he wrote a remarkable streak of 26 No. 1 hit songs. Expect to hear “Mama Tried,” “Lonesome Fugitive,” and likely “Okie From Muskogee.” Details, click here.

Merle singing Okie:

“Mamma Mia!” at Knight Theater, 430 S. Tryon St. The ABBA-fueled musical about a girl with three possible dads comes to Charlotte for the sixth time in 13 years on the tour that never stops. Details, click here.

Friday

“Boeing-Boeing” at Pease Auditorium off Elizabeth Avenue, 8 p.m. Marc Camilleri’s Tony Award-winning farce centers on bachelor Bernard, a Parisian who juggles three flight attendants romantically – until a new and faster Boeing jet places all three stewardesses in town at the same time. In 1991, the Guinness Book of Records named “Boeing-Boeing” the most produced French play in history. Park of CPCC’s Summer Theater Series. Details, click here.

This story was originally published June 29, 2015 at 6:31 AM with the headline "Hot Dates: July 4 fireworks, international baseball, Todrick Hall and Merle."