Best Community Theater 2014 | Stray Cat | People & Places | Phoenix
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Best Community Theater

Stray Cat

Stray Cat's 11th season may not be remembered as its best ever, but no one who saw the company's production of The Whale, starring Damon Dering and directed by the company's founder, Ron May, will forget it. This also was the year Stray Cat scored a coup with film and TV star Zach Braff's All New People, neatly directed by Louis Farber and featuring Michael Peck, Angelica Howland, and filmed cameos from some estimable local talent. And the year that May really swung out with a fine production of Kristoffer Diaz's difficult The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity. It's this kind of rare, risky fare that gets us going back, again and again, to see what Stray Cat has uncovered this time.

Best Stage Surprise

Mary's Wedding, Theatre Artists Studio

Set "somewhere in Canada" in 1920, Mary's Wedding offered a simple story about a transplanted city girl who doesn't like the country so much until she meets a pretty farmhand named Charles. Canadian playwright Stephen Massicotte's sweet memory play got a first-class staging, early this year, by this often iffy local company. Heidi Haggerty's charming performance in the title role was matched by Kent Welborn's neatly naïve leading man, both situated on a simple, versatile set by Deb Mather Boehm and nicely directed by theater veteran Carol MacLeod. Theatergoers who'd written off this tiny troupe were pleased to find a simple, simply excellent production on its stage. Here's to more of the same in 2015.

Best Reason to Go to the Theater All Season

Damon Dering in The Whale

If culturally minded people remember anything about Valentine's weekend 2014, it will be this: That was the weekend Stray Cat Theatre brought us The Whale. Samuel D. Hunter's story about a morbidly obese man seeking redemption at the end of his life featured a career-making performance by actor Damon Dering, trussed up in a fat suit as the beleaguered title character, Charlie. Dering's artful performance steered clear of scenery chewing and revealed the fragility behind a dying man's histrionics — all with the help of director Ron May, who handled expertly the highs and lows of a play that's neither comedy nor drama. On Eric Beeck's drearily smart set, which provided pages of background on the dismal grayness of Charlie's life, a fine supporting cast (particularly a darkly comic Michelle Chin as Charlie's mean-spirited teenaged daughter) managed not to be eclipsed by Johanna Carlisle, who turned up with a giant performance, late in the second act of this, the very best play of last season.

Best Return from the Theatrical Grave

Actors Theatre

The behemoth stirs! We're grateful that this smart professional theater company didn't just blow away after plunging into financial despair in 2012. Instead, artistic director Matthew Weiner and his staff got busy raising funds, booking plays, and spending a whole season as vagabonds, working out of several different playhouses. And what work! Patti Suarez in 4000 Miles; Joseph Kremer and Christopher Haines in A Steady Rain. And an all-star cast of local talent in Good People. As if that weren't enough, Actors Theatre then launched a summer stock season, featuring a pair of plays in repertory (Karen Zacarias' The Book Club Play; Sandy Rustin's The Cottage) as well as many one-person shows (most notably, Sally Jo Bannow's The Boob Show and The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, featuring a star turn by Ron May). Here's to hoping this company continues to thrive.

Best Trip Down Memory Lane

Vintage Phoenix

There are times when living in Phoenix can be tough. Politics, the endless sprawl of chain restaurants and strip malls. But Vintage Phoenix, a Facebook page managed by local musician and photographer Dave Driscoll, doesn't make Phoenix perfect, but the vintage pictures, of canoe paddlers at Encanto Park, the Tovrea stockyards in the late '40s, and a downtown remarkably different looking than the one we're used to, do help remind us of a true community, of a shared historical perspective that often is built over or demolished by our local government and industry. More than 31,000 folks "like" the page, and they regularly take to the comments section to reminisce and share more photos. It may be just pictures popping up in a social media feed, but a couple of times a week, it feels like home. Pictures evoking nostalgia for a time in which some of us lived, and some of us just wish we had.

Best Of Phoenix®

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