What’s funny? High-density theories on the nature of humor have clogged the arteries of many a fathead. Henri Bergson thought humor resulted when human behavior began to resemble the predictable repetition of machines, while Sigmund Freud saw humor as sublimated aggression. Of course, Henri and Siggie were infamous for their…
The theatre as an art form seems to be receding from relevance to our lives. With the exception of Tony Kushner’s epic Angels in America, plays about contemporary problems have yielded to film as the art form of preference in our contemporary culture. But theatre in America, which has been…
An injudicious case of grand larceny is taking place at Dial Corporate Center’s Playhouse on the Park in downtown Phoenix. It might be termed “Crimes of the Art.” The occasion is Phoenix Theatre’s production of Beth Henley’s 1981 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Crimes of the Heart, and it blatantly steals from…
Presumed by many to be Shakespeare’s first play, The Comedy of Errors is a terrible comedy. Based on an ancient Roman farce written by Plautus 1,800 years or so before Shakespeare, the plot is so mechanical and the exposition so cumbersome, it is amazing a writer of any skill would…
If overheated histrionics is your bag, Dingo Troupe’s production of A Prayer for My Daughter delivers a fix to satisfy the most insatiable melodrama junkie. The first play by Thomas Babe, a protege of the late Public Theater impresario Joseph Papp, this potboiler premiered in the mid-Seventies, so it is…
Stacking the Decadent The Academy Award-winning movie Cabaret is available at your local video store (even supermarket), with career-defining performances by Joel Grey, Liza Minnelli and Michael York. So why not snuggle up with some microwave popcorn and give it a replay? Why would you want to drive all the…
Mutilated human corpses pile up in Port-au-Prince, severed body parts strew the roads of Rwanda, blood flows in Bosnia to cleanse Yugoslavia of ethnic impurity. Even on the eve of an invasion, ruthless dictators cling to power in the name of the people, ignoring the will of the electorate. And…
The Phantom of the Opera is not just a musical. It is an industry. Written by the richest man in the theatre, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and produced by the second-richest man in the theatre, Cameron Mackintosh, Phantom has been marketed to Phoenix as the biggest thing ever to hit the…
