Email Author Robrt L. Pela

1999 Stories by Robrt L. Pela

• Dumb-Dumb Shells

  published May 6, 1999

  There's something unsettling about the overwrought lunatics created by playwright Richard Dresser. It isn't their crabby personalities or their... More >>

• Double Billing

  published April 29, 1999

  Who says Phoenix isn't a theater town? For the past five years, a real live Broadway legend has walked among us--not that most people here... More >>

• Guy Lib

  published April 22, 1999

  There are few theatrical experiences more gratifying than watching a talented young artist fulfill his promise. Theatergoers who saw David Drake... More >>

• Screechers' Pet

  published April 15, 1999

  The woman in line ahead of me for Phoenix Theatre's production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? turned to me just before buying her tickets. "I... More >>

• Major League

  published April 8, 1999

  Legend has it that, in 1947, Brooklyn Dodgers owner Branch Rickey gathered together the most influential black men in America in one cramped hotel... More >>

• Offender Bender

  published April 1, 1999

  At the end of the 20th century, no life is allowed to go unexamined, and none of us is permitted to claim a clean bill of mental health. Talk show... More >>

• Don't Carry Me Back to Ol' Virginny

  published March 25, 1999

  Those who enjoy wasting time and money on one spectacularly horrible theater production per season shouldn't miss Insurrection: Holding History.... More >>

• Feud for Thought

  published March 11, 1999

  A theater critic can't afford to have a favorite play. Saddled with personal preference and fond memories of a first performance, he's apt to... More >>

• What a Dick!

  published March 11, 1999

  There are few of us born before 1965 who wouldn't have given our eyeteeth to be a fly on the wall of the Lincoln Room on August 7, 1974, when, on... More >>

• Holy Cow!

  published February 25, 1999

  About halfway through Sister Amnesia's Country Western Nunsense Jamboree, one of the characters turns to the audience after a particularly unfunny... More >>

• Suffer Club

  published February 18, 1999

  I may see another show this season that I like as well as Raised in Captivity, but I doubt it. With this production, the folks at Planet Earth... More >>

• A Raisin in the Slum

  published February 11, 1999

  There's a character in Pearl Cleage's Blues for an Alabama Sky who repeatedly shouts "Let the good times roll!" throughout the... More >>

• Clueless

  published February 4, 1999

  Audiences for Actors Theatre of Phoenix's newest catastrophe may exit the theater feeling they've missed something more than a good time. Gunmetal... More >>

• Attention, Choppers!

  published January 28, 1999

  I have a recurring nightmare: I'm seated in a crowded theater where, up on the stage, a little girl is singing about poverty while flash pots... More >>

• Playing Through

  published January 21, 1999

  An open letter to the man in seat E-103 on opening night of Phoenix Theatre's production of Golf With Alan Shepard: Dear Sir, You... More >>

• Diaper Wrath

  published January 14, 1999

  I'd like to see Kathleen Butler, one of our better local comic actors, perform in her own one-woman show. She'd be swell in Jane Wagner's The... More >>

• What's It All About, Albee?

  published January 14, 1999

  Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance is a literate, witty and enormously challenging piece of theater, as proved by several dreary film and stage... More >>

• Closet Dramas

  published January 14, 1999

  A pair of AIDS dramas that opened here last weekend have more in common than their still-timely subject matter. Both Before It Hits Home and Lips... More >>

• Step Brothers

  published January 7, 1999

  With this review, I join the cacophony of critics and flacks heralding the latest tribute to George and Ira Gershwin. The Gershwins' Fascinating... More >>