The Good Times Are Killing Me was a surprise off-Broadway hit a few years back, and the autobiographical play by syndicated cartoonist Lynda Barry–first a novel–tries to capture the mid-1960s Great Society frame of mind, when blacks were moving into aging, middle-class, white neighborhoods. Barry’s voice is that of Edna,…
Lampooning the shysters of evangelism has kept satirists busy ever since the faithful realized that the price of salvation was an empty pocket. What’s even more hilarious, the faithful never quite seem to grasp what’s going on. So I expected Lloyd’s Prayer to be funnier than it was. But playwright…
Lampooning the shysters of evangelism has kept satirists busy ever since the faithful realized that the price of salvation was an empty pocket. What’s even more hilarious, the faithful never quite seem to grasp what’s going on. So I expected Lloyd’s Prayer to be funnier than it was. But playwright…
According to the Arizona Shakespeare Festival’s production of Romeo and Juliet, Verona was full of crazy people who screamed a lot, mugged outrageously, told jokes and fell on the ground. Of course the title couple lived there as well, and they tried to go about their forbidden love affair, in…
Death and the Maiden turns out to be a lot like a political candidate: lots of promises, and always the hope of answers to it all. But South American playwright Ariel Dorfman sidetracks us with credibility problems–always a bad sign when it comes to politics–and ends up so muddling what…
Death and the Maiden turns out to be a lot like a political candidate: lots of promises, and always the hope of answers to it all. But South American playwright Ariel Dorfman sidetracks us with credibility problems–always a bad sign when it comes to politics–and ends up so muddling what…
According to the Arizona Shakespeare Festival’s production of Romeo and Juliet, Verona was full of crazy people who screamed a lot, mugged outrageously, told jokes and fell on the ground. Of course the title couple lived there as well, and they tried to go about their forbidden love affair, in…
The difficulty in reviewing Scott McPherson’s Marvin’s Room is knowing how much consideration to give to the playwright’s personal life. The cast of the production at Phoenix Little Theatre wore red ribbons at the curtain call, pointing out to audience members–if they hadn’t already read it in the program–that Marvin’s…
The difficulty in reviewing Scott McPherson’s Marvin’s Room is knowing how much consideration to give to the playwright’s personal life. The cast of the production at Phoenix Little Theatre wore red ribbons at the curtain call, pointing out to audience members–if they hadn’t already read it in the program–that Marvin’s…
No one served George Bernard Shaw’s satirical purposes better than the religious hypocrite. In The Devil’s Disciple, you can almost hear Shaw smacking his lips in anticipation as he sets forth his plot of the rogue and his pious family. The rogue, of course, ends up with the family fortune,…
Legend has it that movie mogul Louis B. Mayer once stated: “If you’ve got a message, send a telegram.” With Past History, a new play written by Arizona State University’s Michael Grady and presented at the school’s Galvin Playhouse, Western Union would be snowed under. Past History attempts to draw…
:The Seagull, as staged by Arizona Theatre Company, treats Anton Chekhov’s play about love, art and lost youth with the utmost respect. But not with passion, or tenderness, or intelligence, or even the tongue-in-cheek humor that would have breathed some life into the classic. The play doesn’t quite make it…
Somebody thought it was a good idea for a play. Four guys sit around and say what’s on their minds, sexual betrayal is discovered, somebody ends up getting shot. I don’t know. Maybe there’s an idea in there somewhere. But these are about the most boring four men to be…
For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf was an exotic sight to Broadway theatregoers of 1976: Onstage were black women speaking and dancing to the words of a contemporary, black, feminist writer, Ntozake Shange, and her black, women characters weren’t matriarchs, whores, domestics, Pinkie in…
