The setup: In my old, crumbly Folger Library The Taming of the Shrew that I grabbed for a quarter to get through school, there’s an introductory essay about how William Shakespeare never meant to suggest that enhanced coercive techniques such as food and sleep deprivation, manufactured cognitive dissonance, and the…
It’s obvious Mimi isn’t feeling well in Giacomo Puccini’s La Bohème, because she wears a shawl in the promotional photo. The opera that inspired Rent, itself based on a French magazine serial that later became a play, features sublime music (Puccini’s famous even among philistines for Madama Butterfly’s soaring, weepy…
The setup: The 2007 stage musical Xanadu comes with so much baggage that it should be a Southwest flight. Thing is, most of that baggage is at least 34 years old. That’s why people buy tickets to the show — everything it’s based on is embarrassing and awful (roller disco…
The meekest mom goes tiger when you suggest her cub might be deficient. As for competitive dads, seen any sitcoms lately? With us Homo sapiens, success is the flip side of profound insecurity, and in the face of the smallest threat we can revert to caveman or -woman behavior: be-cave-ior,…
Just about any time a theater produces Right Bed, Wrong Husband, some PR person is quick to point out that despite the title, the play’s suitable for general audiences. Maybe — if your kids already know that adults can be downright ridiculous goofballs. (And they do know; they’ve told us.)The…
Next time you’re at Herberger Theater Center, sashay up the grand staircase (or simply take the elevator) to the Steele Pavilion Art Gallery for a fresh exhibition of two- and three-dimensional pieces from 24 different artists. The show’s name and theme is “Balance,” a state highly touted as natural and…
Here in Night & Day, we love it when people express and share the captivating beauty of human diversity. When public figures such as athletes come out as gay, leading to more understanding and acceptance by everybody. If we can ogle some tight buns and help a theater company stay…
What if every dreary January day brought us a rollicking farce (the theatrical variety, for a change)? Gilbert’s Hale Centre Theatre covers 21 of those 31 days with Cash on Delivery (continuing through Saturday, February 8, for good measure). The plot overflows a nutshell: Our hero tries to end his…
The setup: It’s that time of year to look back and remember what the most amazing and marvelous experiences of 2013 were. (You don’t have to, but it’s our job.) I am filled with a sense of personal development when I realize that at least three times this year I…
Google My Son the Waiter: A Jewish Tragedy, and you’re rewarded with an ad for death and mourning support services. This is undoubtedly taken in stride by writer/performer Brad Zimmerman, who’s made comedy gold out of struggle and disappointment. After decades waiting tables in New York, the underemployed actor began…
A little cognitive dissonance can get you to focus more clearly on what’s important. So whether you want to put 2013 behind you or hit 2014 running, an out-of-the-ordinary New Year’s Eve is just the ticket. Therefore, don’t head for an existing bar or a friend’s house. Go to Peoria…
The setup: For several if not most of the past 17 years, Black Theatre Troupe presented Langston Hughes’ seminal 1961 pageant Black Nativity as its Christmas show. I never got to see it, but I hear it’s rather awesome, and now it’s a Major Motion Picture. Meanwhile, BTT is premièring…
The setup: Orange Theatre Group has been working since last summer to develop an experimental theater production inspired by Federico García Lorca’s 1933 play Blood Wedding. The show is about two-thirds complete, and that two-thirds is a stunning (yet appropriately bizarre) event that’s quite unlikely to be much like anything…
BIG OL’ HOLIDAY THEATER UPDATE: Because of you people and how much you love to go to good plays, White Christmas has added two performances, one this Sunday evening, December 15, and one on Christmas freakin’ Eve! Back to our regularly scheduled weirdness: The setup: Can it be only three…
If you’re not feeling suicidal around the holidays (we’ve heard it’s common), there’s always homicidal. Though the family in Black Theatre Troupe’s new musical Tellin’ It on the Mountain isn’t quite trying to kill each other, the Deans are a tempestuous bunch — and trying to reunite the girl group…
Some of Great Arizona Puppet Theater’s oldest puppets, handmade by its founders in 1976, star in The Elves and the Shoemaker, continuing through Sunday, December 22. Perfect for kindergarteners on up and including original music, it’s one of our favorite fairy tales, too, because nothing too scary happens — just…
A Christmas Carol is a moving, witty, smoothly written piece of 19th-century propaganda about being a nice person all the time — and maybe just being extra-nice at Christmastime — and removing that stick from up your butt already. It works so well and is so very in the public domain…
Zach Braff of Scrubs is also a writer (e.g., Garden State). His first and very funny stage play, All New People, presented by Stray Cat Theatre through Saturday, December 21, finds main character Charlie hoping to be alone and miserable at a New Jersey beach house in the middle of…
Weary of Christmasy entertainment? There’s almost no writer less Christmasy than Federico García Lorca, whose remains weren’t found in his purported grave, but that sounds more Eastery — and we’re still looking. Orange Theatre Group’s Blood Wedding, through Saturday, December 21, is inspired by Lorca’s 1933 play of the same…
For the second year, Chow Bella is hosting “Eating Christmas,” during which some of our favorite writers (and artists) will read pieces about food and the holidays. Join us at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, December 17, at Crescent Ballroom, 308 North Second Avenue. Admission is free, but we’d love it…
The setup: Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s third blockbuster sung-through musical collaboration, 1978’s Evita, was revived in a new production on London’s West End in 2006. That restaging, which ran 337 performances on Broadway last year, began its U.S. tour this fall and visits Gammage Auditorium through Sunday…
The setup: Though Childsplay first presented The Velveteen Rabbit 25 years ago and it was the company’s go-to holiday offering for many years, the past several seasons have featured alternates such as Seussical, Junie B. in Jingle Bells, Batman Smells! and, one memorable year, Lyle the Crocodile, who I hope…
