I used to tell people that I grew up on the same block as a local TV legend who owned a giant flower shop in downtown Phoenix. Neither of these things were true. But as a very small child, I was convinced that Gladys Vaught, the old woman who lived…
As usual, the summer theater season here is a vast, parched desert. Tried-and-true retreads are again the June and July standard: Hale Centre Theatre is doing To Kill a Mockingbird; Desert Stages is trotting out And Then There Were None. A Herberger remount of Ben Tyler’s charming The Wallace and…
I was busted recently for not knowing my downtown buildings. Imagine my mortification. I was remembering the neon-lit majesty of the Valley National Bank sign that twirled for a little more than a decade atop the Valley Bank Center at 201 North Central Avenue. An old friend of mine who,…
With his new play, The Color of Stars, Dwayne Hartford offers fulfilling, adult entertainment that doesn’t pander to kids. Much as I did with Hartford’s gorgeous adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities a few years ago, I found myself wondering whether children would even much like this…
A couple of years ago, I telephoned one of my editors to ask where Ikea was located. “You just wrote a feature about it,” she said. “Don’t go all Stephen Glass on me. You have been there, haven’t you?” I had. But even when I’ve visited a place before, I…
Caridad Svich’s theatrical translation of Isabel Allende’s bestselling The House of the Spirits arrives on the stage as a mere shadow of its former self. Which isn’t to say that the production, now at ASU’s Galvin Playhouse, is anything other than praiseworthy. It’s just that there’s so very little left…
It’s hard to miss: a giant, neon-trimmed steer’s head, towering over Van Buren Street and slugged with the goofball legend, “Let’s Eat!” Bill Johnson’s Big Apple is one of only a few notable restaurants that have stuck around long enough to become part of our town’s history (see main story…
When one writes of her here, she is “Broadway’s Kathy Fitzgerald.” In New York, for which she left us more than a decade ago, she is one among a few: a character actress who’s always in demand; who’s appeared in Broadway shows like Wicked, 9 to 5, and in the…
Public hangings are back in vogue. At least the one hosted by Art Detour, the much-beleaguered annual tour of galleries and artist studios that this weekend is celebrating its 24th anniversary.The Art Detour Public Hanging will feature 40-odd artists, both amateur and professional, whose work will be hung at Artlink’s…
Desert Stages Theatre artistic director Terry Helland clearly is mad. Onto the tiny black box stage of his Actor’s Café, he continues to wedge dark, offbeat plays that no doubt strike terror in the hearts of the mainstream theatergoers who turn up in droves for the more bland fare on…
Arizona is exactly twice my age. Both born in February, we’ve had a complicated relationship for most of my 50 years. The state has offered me mild desert winters and comparatively low property taxes but won’t allow me to legally wed my spouse of 15 years. We’ve always fought. Arizona…
I like downtown Mesa. Every time I return from there, I have the same thought: Cool. I like the ma-and-pa book shops and antique stores and cafes, all the nice, tidy old strip malls that, rather than being repurposed or reconfigured, are simply still there. Downtown Mesa reminds me of…
One of the holiday gifts I received this year was a sweatshirt printed with the slogan “I Phoenix,” which was intended, by the gift-giver, as irony. I’m still trying, after a half-century, to truly love our town. It’s a lot easier than it once was — there are plenty of…
Theater fans are anticipating Nearly Naked Theatre’s upcoming production of Spring Awakening, but I’ll venture that nothing else the company does this year will surpass its remount of Shakespeare’s R & J, playing now at Phoenix Theatre. The bare bones of Romeo and Juliet (interspersed with other Shakespearean verse) provide…
Editor’s note: This story has been altered from its original version. The Arizona Opera reports it’s holding steady, even in a difficult economic climate for the arts. Dmitri Hvorostovsky is to opera what David Beckham is to soccer. What Brad Pitt is to Hollywood. He’s the Lady Gaga of the…
Not far from where I sit typing this, theater people are wringing their hands. That’s what I picture, anyway: The folks at Actors Theatre, pacing and moaning and occasionally stopping to grab the backs of their necks. This, our most interesting professional theater company, has only a few weeks to…
If the Nathan Sawaya exhibit at Mesa Contemporary Arts is underwhelming, it’s only partly because there’s so little of it. “People keep coming up and saying, ‘Is that all?'” the nice woman at the front desk told me when I stopped to ask if I’d somehow missed a big hunk…
It is, as the song goes, that most wonderful time of the year. The weather is mostly bearable; I have an excuse to listen, nonstop, to my vast collection of cheesy 1960s holiday albums; and people are filling their yards with the ugliest Christmas junk imaginable, which always pleases me…
Capitalist mass production owes a lot to Charles and Ray Eames. So, too, do post-Modern design and architecture. Not to mention our fannies, most all of which have resided occasionally in one of the renowned and comfortable chairs that this talented duo designed in the Fifties. The Eames couple is celebrated…
I finally made it into the Westward Ho. Big deal, you say? You try getting past the security guard in the lobby of this downtown landmark. I attempted it often over the years and always failed. Once, I claimed to be looking for a place for my elderly parents to…
One of my fondest childhood memories is of sorting cranberries in ice-cold water early on Thanksgiving morning–something I’ve done every year since I was four years old, when my mother first gave me that task to keep me out of her way while she addressed her turkey. (Apparently, Mom basted…
Tolstoy was right: It’s more fun watching people be miserable. And so we have David Mamet, the American playwright who has brought us the delightful anguish of Oleanna (in which a young woman accuses her professor of sexual harassment) and the stunning treachery of Glengarry Glen Ross (about disreputable realtors…
