Some theatre historians have attributed the decline of theatre to the diminishing stature of the dramatic hero. Greek tragedies centered on kings and gods, Shakespeare’s plays on dukes and princes. By the time O’Neill wrote about actors, poets and prostitutes, Miller about salesmen and movie stars, Williams about football heroes,…
Representative David Farnsworth stepped to the microphone of the Arizona House of Representatives to deliver the opening prayer. “Father, there is a great battle that rages in the hearts of many of those who are really concerned about our environment,” he droned. “We pray that Thou wilt touch their hearts…
On October 6, 1992, Peoria ironworker Sabino Jayo Jr. blew out his knee while playing hacky sack in the white sand dunes of New Mexico. Two and one-half years and piles of paperwork later, the Arizona Court of Appeals says Jayo was entitled to workers’ compensation benefits as a result…
Way out on U.S. Highway 70, past Zeke’s General Store and towns so small the post offices have dainty curtains in the windows, sit the adjoining southeastern Arizona towns of Thatcher and Safford. They are places where routine and tradition have a way of becoming the same thing, and neither…
For state Senator Jim Buster, environmental regulation is like a midway game named Whack-a-Mole played at the Yuma County Fair. As soon as industry dares to make a buck, whack! Regulators pound it with environmental laws. Buster, chairman of the Senate Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment Committee, intends to change…
Pastrami’s, 5930 West Greenway Road, Glendale, 938-5900. Hours: Breakfast and Lunch, Sunday and Monday, 9 a.m to 2 p.m.; Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner, Tuesday through Saturday, 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. For all the sophistication and variety on the Valley eating scene, there is still one huge, gaping hole in…
While Robert Zemeckis’ Forrest Gump racks up the nominations, let’s pause a moment to take a look at the latest project of Zemeckis’ old buddy Bob Gale, his writing partner on Used Cars and the Back to the Future films. Mr. Payback, which Gale wrote and directed for Sony New…
True to its title, French director Nicolas Philibert’s documentary In the Land of the Deaf approaches deafness not as a handicap but as the unifying condition of a subculture. It’s a very simple, unaffected piece of filmmaking, smoothly intercutting several unconnected strands of narrative–the marriage of two young people, a…
Trays of Our Lives, Part Deux: Seven Maricopa County employees have passed along their disagreement with my negative assessment of Sutton’s, a downtown cafeteria located at 101 West Jefferson, in the Superior Court building. They write: We are wondering who you think YOU are, and for what purpose do you…
For years, the crumbling of the British Empire has been mirrored by the shrinking chart fortunes of British bands in the colonies. Sure, at one time Britain gave us the Beatles, the Stones, the Who, the Kinks, Cream, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, the Sex Pistols, the Police and the Smiths–but…
Now the stage is bare and there’s emptiness all around. Facing his audience after almost seven years in the wilderness, it’s only natural that this beloved performer should be wracked with fear. Will the old magic work again? Will this crowd get fidgety and have to go to the bathroom…
Samuel Beckett was arguably the most important writer for the theatre of our century. Winner of the Nobel Prize for literature in 1969, Beckett wrote three masterpieces for the stage: Waiting for Godot (1952), Endgame (1957) and Krapp’s Last Tape (1960). Many people would add Happy Days (1961) to this…
Grand Canyon University’s production of Georg Kaiser’s 1918 play Gas I has scored a bull’s eye on a virtual blind spot in my experience. Never having seen productions of Capek’s R.U.R., Cocteau’s The Infernal Machine, or any of the 73 plays Kaiser apparently wrote in addition to Gas I, my…
Harvey Howell, a ranch hand for most of his adult life, lives in the middle of the quiet vastness of the Coconino Plateau, a high desert plain stretching north from the railroad town of Williams to the south rim of the Grand Canyon. Most of the time, silence rules. Only…
Ladies and gentlemen, live from one of the Valley’s most upscale areas, it’s the ultimate neighborhood-growth grudge match. In one corner, wearing suits and weighing in with big bank accounts, developers building luxury homes in north Scottsdale. In the other corner, wearing waffle-stompers and weighing in with vehicles large enough…
Ann has three young children and a husband who held a gun to her head. “He threatened me in front of my kids, and my little boy started crying, and saying that he didn’t want to be there,” Ann recalls. So on February 13, Ann called a battered women’s shelter…
Few Arizona Republic readers will remember an August 1, 1984, story headlined “U.S. Crime Strike Force in L.A. Accused of Corruption.” The story seemed straightforward enough. Its opening sentence: “The U.S. Justice Department is investigating allegations of corruption and misconduct of high-ranking officials of the federal Organized Crime and Racketeering…
Ivan Makil sets down his chopsticks, gives the Szechuan chicken a rest. A slim guy, he watches what he eats. He’s reminiscing about his high school days, when he played trumpet in South Phoenix for a blues band called the Soulsations. “I was the only Indian guy in the band,”…
Munch a Bagel, 5114 North Seventh Street, Phoenix, 264-1975. Hours: Breakfast and Lunch, Tuesday through Sunday, 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. Are you one of those morning people who wake up at full speed and leap out of bed hungry and rarin’ to go? Do you race to the kitchen…
The flawless, if sterile, computer illusions of Jurassic Park condemned stop-motion animation to extinction as a special effect. First developed in the silents by pioneering animator Willis O’Brien, this technique involved the frame-by-frame shooting of articulated puppets to simulate movement when run at regular speed. But it was always too…
Pizzeria Bianco, Town & Country Shopping Center, 4709 North 20th Street, Phoenix, 381-1779. Hours: Lunch, Tuesday through Saturday, 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.; Dinner, Tuesday through Saturday, 5:30 to 10 p.m.; Sunday, 5:30 to 9 p.m. There’s a tale about an old man, a boy and a donkey that has…
Many times over the last four decades it seemed like Ronnie Dawson was on his way to being somebody. At the ripe age of 17, he was picking and yelping his go-to-hell rockabilly on American Bandstand. He was part of seminal rock impresario Alan Freed’s stage shows. He played on…
