Maybe the culture you originally developed to preserve your identity and express your heritage is now exploited by your oppressors. Sucks. But at times, white artists shared the black experience partly because it was the only way to disseminate remarkable stories and art to a larger audience. Complicated.One such masterpiece…

Perhaps the coolest things about the musical version of the film 9 to 5 are the designs (which drag us back to the big hair, giant eyeglasses, and distinctive color schemes of the early ’80s workplace) and the plot, almost point-for-point the same zany, empowering story that made the movie…

The Odd Couple, most people’s favorite Neil Simon play, was also a classic film and a long-running sitcom. Sloppy, fun-loving Oscar Madison and meticulous, kinda anal Felix Ungar will always be our models for friends who become mismatched roommates. Once, it was unusual for post-collegiate adults to share an apartment…

If a play opens at Gilbert’s Hale Centre Theatre and one of the characters can’t see or hear it, is it Tommy or The Miracle Worker? This summer, it’s the latter — William Gibson’s award-gobbling 1959 teleplay/script/screenplay based on Helen Keller’s autobiography, which also catapulted Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke…

Things we didn’t know about Mel Brooks’ 1974 film Young Frankenstein: • Brooks and Gene Wilder came up with the idea during a coffee break on the set of Blazing Saddles. • Most of the lab equipment props are from the 1931 original. • Aerosmith generated the lyrics for “Walk…

Stories about writers aren’t always fun — the pitfalls include conceited, oblivious, and incestuous points of view. But tales about stage folk are often entertaining, because those people are nuts. The current Herberger Lunch Time show, Life in the Theatre, comprises three tiny plays presented by Theatre Artists Studio. John…

What better way to forestall the summertime forgetting of what the kids learned in school than to infuse them with the best educational earworms of all time? We’re talking about “Conjunction Junction,” “Interplanet Janet,” “Three Is a Magic Number,” the increasingly ironic “Just a Bill,” and the rest. Schoolhouse Rock…

Although the Broadway musical The Bridges of Madison County (which did exist, despite your conviction that it was just a chalupa-fueled dream you had) is scheduled to close this weekend, its composer, Jason Robert Brown, remains in the limelight by virtue of his other profound, iconoclastic works. Like the Drama…

If you think professional wrestling’s too fake, you may hold an overinflated opinion of reality. But a play about that sweaty, spandexed world — The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity, presented by Stray Cat Theatre — places the action on stage, rendering moot any doubts about authenticity. The show (not…

People who’d never enjoy pornography (or admit it, anyway) proudly consume erotica with an intellectual sheen. Hence the sophisticated crowds flocking to the first week of Arizona Theatre Company’s Venus in Fur, continuing through Sunday, May 18. Wonder what some of ’em had on under those nice suits and gowns.David…

David Lindsay-Abaire (Rabbit Hole, A Devil Inside, Fuddy Meers, Wonder of the World) might be the darling of Phoenix theaters and audiences alike because his absurd works and his heart-wrenching dramas alike feature hypernatural dialogue and distinctive, complex characters, all of which illustrate how life is simultaneously a bitch and…

R. C. Davis is the given name of a renowned American actor, writer, and activist. An inattentive county clerk (or family affection) morphed the baby’s name into Ossie. It didn’t seem to harm Ossie Davis any, evidenced by his Broadway career and memorable roles in everything from Car 54, Where…

When film director David DeCoteau, a former production assistant for Robert Corman who’s famous for the “boxer briefs horror” genre, wants to stretch his artistic muscles (we’re guessing), he makes (under an assumed name) feel-good family romps like A Talking Cat!?! — reputedly not the finest “so bad it’s good”…