Even though Curtains is a Woman of a Certain Age, productions meant for W. of a C. A. have left me almost violently unsatisfied, sort of like being trapped in a timeshare presentation in which the salesperson claims that it will become nearly impossible to go wherever I please with…

Massive theater geek that I am, no one had to tell me twice to attend Arizona Theatre Company’s newly commissioned unknown quantity, Ten Chimneys, once I’d learned it’s about Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, the renowned golden couple of the 20th-century stage, retreating to their summer place in Wisconsin to…

When playwright Greg Kotis was here a few weeks ago, he theorized that his script Eat the Taste — in which a playwright is kidnapped by mysterious operatives and urged to write a one-man Broadway show about and starring former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft — is not produced particularly…

“Shredding. Bathroom. Office. Doctor. Fart.” Those are some of the notes I made after seeing The Unhappiness Plays, a perfectly unique evening of short and short-short plays by Tony-winner Greg Kotis, author of Eat the Taste (which he claims has been produced only in Phoenix and Australia — so, you…

A few years back, Ron May directed [sic], a slightly twisted domestic comedy by Canadian Melissa James Gibson, at Stray Cat Theatre (where he’s also artistic director). The ensemble acquitted themselves respectably, the writing showed a bit more promise than the usual tale of single, dysfunctional, apartment-dwelling Manhattanites, but I…

Fandom being what it is, some of you may miss Mystery Science Theater 3000 more than I do, but I doubt you could’ve enjoyed it more than I did. Surely one of the series’ finest film features was The Brain That Wouldn’t Die, and it turns out the only thing…

If you’re not a huge Shakespeare fan but remain curious and open, it might help you to know that the Fresh Prince of Stratford was not a “pure” artist, one of those tortured souls who create because they must, are annoying, obscure, and unpopular in life, and inspire cult-ish devotion…

It’s not every day one has the opportunity to see a compilation musical based on a historical survey published by a Vanderbilt professor who’s also a Fulbright Scholar, a one-time United Nations delegate, and a member of the Bahá’í faith (that last tidbit should be irrelevant but isn’t, for a…

Oh, 2010, how is it that you can have gone by so quickly, yet we can still be so glad to see you go? What I will miss, even though they’re already all a blur, are the many great shows the year brought — and even the dozens of just…

It took attending Learn to Be Latina with a very smart date (who often consumes journalism the day it appears) for Curtains to hear that not everyone thinks the latest from Stray Cat Theatre is about identity politics in any serious, up-to-the-minute way. In fact, this script, Stray Cat’s production,…

Space 55 Theatre Ensemble defies pinning down, even in the world of offbeat, tiny companies. The dump they perform in is nowhere near the neighborhoods that are alleged to be bohemian — it’s crammed between some faux loft apartments and ASU Downtown. The folks who run the place are super-multi-talented…

Not all children’s shows are grippingly entertaining for grownups, but their audiences always are. Careful eavesdropping on the moppets who attend Childsplay’s Junie B. in Jingle Bells, Batman Smells! will take you back to your own days of wonder and excitement. “Whoa! It’s her school!” exclaimed one girl, when she…

Film critic Leonard Maltin coined the term Mumbo-Jumbo Quotient (MJQ) in his capsule review of The Matrix, and it comes in handy as a way to describe art that’s so freaking weird that some other element ideally needs to cross into the red zone as well, to balance the weirdness…

All living beings deserve respect. On the other hand, if you’re famous and take advantage of it to have a ridiculously bad book published, put on your big-girl panties, because people will make fun of your book and you don’t need to take it personally. That’s what happens during Celebrity…

The inside of the Galvin Playhouse at ASU Tempe smells just awful, like a huge malfunctioning bathroom. (Like sewage, but in a domesticated way — I don’t want to make it sound even worse than it is.) If I were an investigative reporter, I’d try to find out why and…

Alcoholism is an illness that destroys careers, health, relationships, families, and lives. It keeps both children and adults from growing up strong and functional. Alcohol endangers and kills people, sometimes even when used in moderation. And I can be cynical, snarky, and insensitive (though not quite this bad), so the…

The hardworking grad-school geniuses of ASU Theatre’s Interrobang program who brought us And What She Found There (which is being revived for one night only on Tuesday, November 9) have formed their own local company, festina lente, and their current workshop, The Revenger’s Tragedy, is scary and sexy, partially masked,…

Love is weird — I don’t have to belabor that point, right? — and everyone sees and feels it differently, and if you spend more than about two weeks with the same person, things get more and more complex, and it is definitely not like what literature and the arts…

I last studied Mexico in second grade. How about you? Since then, I’ve learned that an eagle on a prickly pear eating a snake is a pretty safe bet if you’re looking for a sign to found your city just about anywhere in this climate zone. But I haven’t learned…

Woo-hoo! Happy Breast Cancer Awareness Month! My, how time flies. And if it’s a traumatic human experience, you know there’s got to be a wildly successful one-person show about it. This week’s tribute to the heartbreaking killer of women (and men) is Saving Tania’s Privates, from local writer/performer/activist (yes, she…