Update: The PHX:fringe performance of The Soul Justice Project’s The Other Side of History, scheduled for Thursday, March 8, has been cancelled. Having PHX:fringe begin on First Friday had its pros and cons, from what I could see. There were, as usual, a shit-ton of people running around, but they…
There’s no particular reason that Sarah Ruhl’s Dead Man’s Cell Phone has to be colorful, silly, upbeat, or life-affirming. Actors Theatre’s Matthew Wiener could have directed it as a relatively serious play with a few very funny lines. It starts like this: Gordon, a self-centered man in a very questionable…
The Last Days of Judas Iscariot is an interesting, sometimes moving, sometimes funny play, well-staged by Stray Cat Theatre, and you can sit and enjoy it with or without believing in God (or, apparently, in Judas Iscariot, which is a separate thing, according to an acquaintance who remarked to me…
Joshua Foer probably never forgets is that he is, as writers tend to describe him, novelist Jonathan Safran Foer’s younger brother. But big friggin’ deal, really — the elder Foer probably wishes he had Josh’s mad skills, which he developed to win the 2006 U.S. Memory Championships and describes in…
We’re getting all jiggly with excitement for the unknown quantities that are the performances of PHX:fringe. Since sharing this preview, we’ve made plans to see and review a whole bunch of shows. And because we can’t be everywhere at once, we’re stopping by again to share what else we bet…
One of the cool things about Teatro Bravo! is that you can’t predict what kind of Latino theater they’re going to give you. It might be a socially conscious tale of contemporary people, with echoes of older myths; it might be a biography of a public figure, bringing light to…
Don’t worry — the characters in The Unexpected Man are still both relatable and ridiculous. The two people are still trapped together for a finite period by social convention, driven like pack mules by their pride and insecurity. But it’s just enough gentler, warmer, less pessimistic than playwright Yasmina Reza’s…
If you mourn the departure of RandomCon from the Valley’s strategic gaming scene — and really, who doesn’t? — cheer up at the debut Phoenix Vul-Con 2012. Aficionados of stuff like Dystopian Wars, Munchkin Zombies, cosplay, and world-creation in general will find not just merch, supplies (like terrain and cases…
No one gets stoned to death, and you only have to pay if you win — doesn’t get much better than that. Tickets for the Broadway tour of Wicked, which started its current Tempe run on Wednesday, are scarce and/or spendy. To make your last-minute, fingers-crossed bottom-feeding more potentially productive,…
Yikes. It’s always a risk to set yourself up in your production’s title or tagline, such as the one in the headline above, for ASU Tempe’s centennial show Untold Stories/Unsung Heroes — another trap that suggests the snarky “There’s a reason these were untold before now.” But I winced even…
Dramatist, poet, and composer Federico García Lorca — a classically educated Spaniard who was best known for writing about Gypsies and country people, in revered works like Blood Wedding and The House of Bernarda Alba — was quite the bundle of passionate contradictions. The exact circumstances of his death during…
A few highlights of Arizona Cocktail Week: -“Whiskey School: Bourbon,” 3 to 5 p.m. Sunday, February 19, $25 admission. Crazy learning, tastings and nibbles, and the chance to win dining credit if you ace the quiz. -Monday’s Old Town Bols Genever Punch Crawl, celebrating gin’s powerful precursor. -Tuesday’s Last Slinger…
It’s just polished and adorable silliness from beginning to end. That’s most of what there is to say about the Tony-winning lunacy of Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps, in a fine production transplanted from Minnesota’s Guthrie Theater by Arizona Theatre Company. Director Joel Sass has the four performers (one of…
History is written by the winners, they say. Memoir is even more selective, having generally been preserved by people who are not just literate, but literate in a language the victors understand (which weeds out quite a few), and often by those who think interesting things have happened to them…
For 11 days in March, we’ll get to revel in off-the-beaten-path (ideally) performances — 23 different ones, in 88 time slots at five locations — in the fifth annual Phoenix Fringe Festival. Local alt-Christian glam-rock-opera dude Paisley Yankolovich is back on the schedule (we missed him last year!), and some new…
Had we, like the heroines of Wicked, attended Shiz University, we’d be a powerful sorceress now. (Woulda been handy when we learned that our witchy roommate had burned through a Benjamin of our long-distance service.) Real life remains less thrilling, though, so it’s off to ASU Gammage (via Metro, not…
Have you ever been in so far above your depth that you could barely function? Of course you have; and those are great learning experiences, but you still pity the other people who had to watch. It’s no fun to tell you that’s what it appears to be like to…
Chocolate and peanut butter pot pie with grape jelly sauce and malted milk ice cream! When an event features star pastry chef Tracy Dempsey, this stuff just writes itself. But that’s only the dessert course of Dempsey’s visit to Phoenix Public Market’s Winter Chef Series on Tuesday, February 7, co-sponsored…
This month has been a whirlwind of great performances in relatively unfamiliar plays. And this weekend’s your last chance to catch iTheatre Collaborative’s 9 Circles, an example of just such a production. This small company, playwright Bill Cain, and local director/designer Steven J. Scally all have fine pedigrees, and the…
Would a sequel to Madama Butterfly bring in the NCIS investigators? After all, the tragedy falls right in the lap of U.S. Navy Lieutenant Pinkerton. And it makes sense that the top-rated TV drama would cross over to the most beloved of operas. Butterfly’s a primetime-ready tearjerker about an innocent…
Playwrights have to make several decisions in the course of their work (unless they’re lucky enough to be able to make great drama flying by the seats of their pants). One of the trickiest chores is what to do with your Big Idea, if you know what it is at…
We think our own alley cats are smarter than Samantha Martin’s Amazing Acro-Cats, because ours manage to snag premium deli snacks without doing circus tricks or playing in a three-piece band. On the other hand, Phoenix’s Evelyn, Raja, Violet, Bella, Clyde, Clementine, and Pants don’t tour to sold-out houses while…
