Two women are weeping. A man dressed as a Disney dwarf arrives with a tea tray. References to Chekhov are made. It’s plain: We are watching a Christopher Durang play. Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike won the 2013 Tony Award for Best Play. It is, in many ways,…
If the crowds at Mejico Cocina Mejicana are any indication, there’s room for another Mexican restaurant in Phoenix. And if the well-prepared, northern Mexican-inspired fare there is a guarantee, this cool, contemporary restaurant, opened in February in the old Linda’s space, ought to be around for a long time…
Anyone waxing melancholy about the loss of Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse either hadn’t eaten there during the sad year before that venerable steakhouse was shuttered or has yet to dine at The Gladly, which moved into Ruth’s longtime location late last summer. Even if the owners of Scottsdale’s award-winning Citizen Public…
I was determined, while dining at Gertrude’s, not to be distracted by the chatter of tourists seated at tables on either side of mine at this Desert Botanical Garden hotspot. Fortunately, the food on Gertrude’s recently redesigned menu was mostly so dreary, it was impossible to think of much else…
My grandmother referred to it in the singular: calamaro. I saw her prepare squid only once, in the late 1970s while visiting my parents and me from her home in Ohio. I watched Grandma while she cleaned the ugly thing, removing the body from the tentacles; cutting the body in…
Winnie Ruth Judd is the stuff of legend. She murdered her two best friends one night in 1931, the story goes, and then, perhaps with help from an accomplice, cut one of them into pieces, packed both bodies in a couple of trunks, and hopped the Sunday night train to…
Vera Stark is, like so many actresses who start out hungry and wind up legendary, alone on her own stage. She works alongside other actors only because she needs someone to talk to, but none — in her estimation, and in ours — are her equals. Vera is a fictional…
If there’s a problem with Michael Rossato-Bennett’s Alive Inside: A Story of Music and Memory, an engaging, vaguely uplifting documentary about how personalized music therapy can help dementia patients, it’s that it ignores the very tune it’s playing. Rather than present its elderly, memory-impaired subjects as human beings who deserve…
One attends a community theater production of Neil Simon’s Biloxi Blues hoping to see pleasant performances and, if you’re a Simon fan, expecting to have a few laughs. One does not go expecting a powerhouse performance by a principal player — a performance so thrilling that it completely overshadows the…
Filmmaker Mary Mazzio’s Underwater Dreams is timely, because it deals (perhaps too tangentially) with immigration reform. And the movie, which recently played for a week on various cable networks and now has opened nationwide in commercial theaters, is pleasant to watch for locals because it’s set here in Phoenix, specifically…
This might be a story about the beginning of the end of Sunnyslope as we know it. Call it the Dumbing Down of Mayberry, or How We Lost Another Round to the Big Box Guys. Call it progress, or community evolution, or stop reading now before I get to the…
You think of them, perhaps, as garden pests. For me, they are a favorite meal. I eat snails. With a glass of good rosé and the proper amount of French bread, escargot are on my comestibles short list. I’ve eaten them in sauces and in phyllo purses, wrapped in sourdough…
Here is a true story about Bill Thompson, known for decades from Seligman to Scottsdale as Wallace of The Wallace and Ladmo Show: I ran into him in the lobby of the Herberger Theater Center about 10 years ago, and before I had a chance to introduce myself as someone…
The Legos are back. And, once again, these colorful interlocking plastic bricks and mini-figures are housed at a local museum — this time at the Heard, in an exhibition called “BUILD! Toy Brick Art at the Heard” that’s timed, no doubt, to cash in on The Lego Movie, recently released…
Summer is not yet half over, and we are hot and tired and want a chilled beverage. If we must be entertained, we want simple amusements, please, Beckett can wait until November. Actors Theatre — poor, beleaguered, recently almost-dead Actors Theatre — has delivered what we need. This professional theater…
The first time I visited the Pink Pony, following its floor-to-ceiling overhaul earlier this year, I was distracted. Where was the slightly shabby lounge singer, cracking us up with tacky renditions of ancient Pet Clark hits? The cozily dark bar, straight out of a 1930s Warner Bros. gangster film? Where…
I remember Caesar salads the way other people recall first dates. I can recite for you my best Caesar, and my worst; can list for you the most disappointing Caesars in my life, and how they fell short. I especially recall my first Caesar, prepared by my paternal grandmother, Giovanina,…
New Times’ Summer Guide is out and full of ways to escape this season — from spending a weekend at Chateau Marmont to your best bets for Phoenix staycations. Today Robrt Pela shares his guide to buying a home in the south of France. Start out an ugly American who…
I remember Caesar salads the way other people recall first dates. I can recite for you my best Caesar, and my worst; can list for you the most disappointing Caesars in my life, and how they fell short. I especially recall my first Caesar, prepared by my paternal grandmother, Giovanina,…
“I was too creeped out by people to go to camp as a child,” says Wendy Raisanen, curator of exhibitions and collections for Scottsdale Public Art. “But if I’d had a camp like Camp Dreamtree, I might have been tempted.” Raisanen, who grew up in Scottsdale, is talking about the…
Sedona Okay, so this hippy-dippy town is an obvious destination for any city dweller to head once Phoenix temperatures hit triple digits. Sometimes obvious is good. Known for its red rocks and preponderance of magical thinking, this gorgeous resort town about 120 miles north of Phoenix is a top-of-the-list getaway…
In 1971, when I was 9 years old, Cortez Pool opened for business at 35th Avenue and Dunlap. At last, for those of us too young to drink or drive a car away from this stultifying Northwest Valley suburb where I grew up, there was something to do. Back then…
