Note: Tonight, Thursday, October 17, at 7 p.m., is a pay-what-you-can performance of Bless Me, Ultima. Donations will be accepted at the door. See the end of this post for location details. The setup: This week, Curtains reviews a stage version of a famous, popular, critically acclaimed 1972 novel that…
Ah, William Shakespeare, master of the tricky, ambiguous title (Much Ado About Nothing? Tell that to the characters — oh, okay, right. The Taming of the Shrew? As if. The Two Gentlemen of Verona, one of whom is not so gentlemanly, but maybe that’s because the real second gentleman here?…
We like wacky behind-the-scenes stories. Among other things, the drama going on offstage (whether literally or figuratively) helps one appreciate all the hard work that goes into what people are supposed to see. And the backstory is often funnier than the official, on-purpose part of life. That’s the nature of…
The setup: After surviving to adulthood (no mean feat for anyone born in 1832), Louisa May Alcott shunned marriage and motherhood and struck out on her own to minor literary success (with A Long Fatal Love Chase and other potboilers favored by readers of her era), partly to help support…
The profoundly silly four-person live stage version of The 39 Steps was originally billed as Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps or John Buchan’s “The 39 Steps” adapted by Patrick Barlow (who played Bridget Jones’ mom’s boyfriend!). But at this point, Phoenix Theatre trusts you to know it’s not a 1935…
The setup: Every three years, Arizona State University Tempe admits a cohort of Master of Fine Arts candidates in the allied emphases Theatre Performance (acting), Directing, and Performance Design (including components such as lighting, costume and makeup, and digital media). The gang spends an intense period of study and practice…
The setup: Tempe’s Stray Cat Theatre is the first U.S. company to present award-winning playwright Annie Baker’s The Flick since it premièred off-Broadway in March. It’s a long play in several scenes that take place entirely between co-workers in an otherwise empty Massachusetts movie house (called The Flick) before, between,…
Optical illusions. A mirror maze. Frock coats and hoop skirts. Merging. Fracture. Is the soul made of waves or particles? Poe meets quantum meets illustrator M.C. Escher’s surreal trippiness in The Fall of the House of Escher, a MainStage production of ASU Tempe’s School of Film, Dance, and Theatre running…
The second Celebración Artística de las Américas (CALA Festival) will spend the next month sprinkling Arizona with cultural delights celebrating the contributions of Latino heritage to our vibrant life in these Americas. New Carpa Theater Company’s The Mighty Vandals, an official CALA event, tells a gripping story of Arizona’s 1951…
Arizona State University’s Hugh Downs School of Human Communication is a milieu where, among other things, a lot of fascinating public performances happen. Way beyond what you might remember from your own college days, when it’s possible you even made fun of communications majors. (We all eventually learned that human…
The setup: After five years on Grand Avenue, utterly disgusting sketch comedy troupe Th [sic] Sense starts its 2013-14 season in the recently fitted Basement Theatre at Phoenix Center for the Arts with a new one-act hellride, Revenge of the Sic…
Herberger Lunch Time Theater’s 2013-14 opener is M Is for Marriage, a lively collection of courtship and coupling scenes from the plays of William Shakespeare. It’s part of a series called Alphabet Shakespeare, which has included Q Is for Queen and, if we’re lucky, will eventually bring us D Is…
In spring, swallows return to Capistrano. While we support swallowing in general, autumn reappearances are often even better — like The [sic] Sense Sketch Comedy Troupe, our fave performance group with a Latin editorial comment in its name. Formerly on Grand Avenue, the Siccies hit the comeback trail with Revenge…
The setup: Alice Childress was a pioneering African-American stage actress of the mid-20th century who also wrote several plays and the well-known young adult novel and film, A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ but a Sandwich. Her play Wedding Band, which features an interracial relationship in South Carolina during World War I,…
The setup: The traditional info about source material or theater history will not do justice to the extravagant stage musical Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. So, to build the necessary foundation, here’s some trivia not included in the press packet: It’s allegedly just one of those show-biz coincidences that the…
Playwright Annie Baker uses silence — the pauses before and after tangents — to capture an audience’s psyche. She told the New Yorker she doesn’t consciously write to an academically defined style: “Realism, naturalism — are you talking about, like, Ibsen?” (She, like, isn’t.) Baker’s The Flick, which enchanted and…
Comments from readers during signings for J.A. Jance’s fourth novel led the bestselling author to realize that her Seattle cop character J.P. Beaumont is an alcoholic, sending him to rehab near Wickenburg in the next installment. But it would be another 13 years before Beaumont met Joanna Brady, the Arizona…
Lowell Observatory’s famous for discovering Martian canals that aren’t there and Pluto, which is. Space feels dignified — out where we can’t hear each other scream, surely we’ll find truth. On the less high-minded hand, Lowell operations cost a cool $6 million annually, and the search for well-heeled life in…
The setup: For Curtains’ first visit to Brelby Theatre Company since they finally moved into their leased and rehabbed space in historic Glendale, the troupe presents a show in the Brelby Studio Series, in which unfamiliar plays receive modest productions. Telemachus, Darling is a one-act that, despite featuring a lot…
Vigilante redistribution of wealth is still frowned upon, and members of the 1 percent, while often philanthropic, rarely make it rain on the rest of us one on one. But you can enjoy the fantasy of taking from the rich and giving to the poor at Childsplay’s production of Robin…
Nearly Naked Theatre has a tendency to comb through the oeuvres of solid contemporary playwrights and bring us productions of their earliest works, some of which hold up better than others. If you appreciate writer David Lindsay-Abaire mostly from his comparatively serious, Pulitzer-winning Rabbit Hole, presented in Phoenix by Actors…
Nearly Naked Theatre has a tendency to comb through the oeuvres of solid contemporary playwrights and bring us productions of their earliest works, some of which hold up better than others. If you appreciate writer David Lindsay-Abaire mostly from his comparatively serious, Pulitzer-winning Rabbit Hole, presented in Phoenix by Actors…
