It’s a hot, muggy July night — and still they come. A crowd of hundreds of mostly young adults, flashing acres of tattoos and ironic hairdos, cram the sidewalks of a section just north of downtown known as Roosevelt Row, where — even on this holiday weekend, when the rest…
My friend David and I are driving through downtown Phoenix on a Tuesday afternoon. I point to a gorgeous, frescoed façade as we whiz past and say, “I wish someone would repair the plaster on the Luhrs building.” David, who moved here from Cleveland in the 1970s, shoots me a…
Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella has an interesting pedigree. Originally seen as a live television broadcast in 1957, this three-act musical was viewed by the largest audience in history at the time of its première. More than half of America — some 107 million people — tuned in to hear Julie…
I am walking through rows of radishes and kale in the two-acre refugee garden at the corner of 39th Avenue and Dunlap, and my tour guide, a nice man who works at the church across the street, is talking about hoeing and irrigation and reclaiming the land. But what I…
As we were leaving for a matinee this past Sunday, my spouse said to me, “This has got to be the low point in your career.” It was hard to argue with him, but I was hopeful that the play we were headed to — a live-action re-enactment of the…
A couple of years ago, a friend and I made a pact: We would pass an entire summer without once complaining about the heat. Each of us met our goal — amazing, since we’re both world-class kvetchers — and, having done so, went right back to complaining about the relentless…
Paul Bartel’s musicalization of his 1982 black comedy, Eating Raoul, is a blast. This is an excellent example of a musical theater subgenre that has dogged the stage ever since Little Shop of Horrors launched the low-budget-cult-film-as-musical craze that same year. Funny, campy, and crammed with catchy tunes and over-the-top…
Super-square aspiring restaurateurs Paul and Mary Bland are broke. Rather than applying for a loan or mortgaging their house to raise money, they take a unique approach to finance: They become sex counselors who kill swingers for profit while their business partner, the janitor Raoul, dispatches the bodies. And, in…
Another nice old building was coming down. That’s what I thought when I noticed that the Park Lee Apartments were fenced off late last year. I started driving up 15th Avenue more often, certain that opportunities to admire the stately brick colonial-style buildings were limited; that any day now, I’d…
My friend Ruth Beaumont often says, “If the play is boring, you can always just stare at the stage décor.” Unfortunately for me, the set for Stray Cat Theatre’s Abraham Lincoln’s Big Gay Dance Party was austere and simple; there wasn’t much to look at. Too bad. Because I was…
Ghost children. Failing marriages. Dying parents. The women playwrights who penned the emotionally charged contemporary works making up Arizona Women’s Theatre Company’s Pandora Festival certainly cover plenty of potent subject matter. They don’t seem to pull any punches either, tackling each of these tough topics in unblinking and dramatic fashion…
The week after he died, I kept bumping into Michael Kemper Goodwin everywhere I went. At a studio visit with the artist Jason Hill, I spotted a photograph of Goodwin’s iconic Tempe City Hall among Hill’s work. During a meeting with historic preservationist Steve Weiss, Goodwin’s name came up when…
Inside a dimly lit jazz club, a lone pianist plunks the keys of an old Baldwin upright before launching into Woodrow Johnson’s “I Wonder Where Our Love Has Gone,” as a tall woman with a flower in her hair takes the stage. Sounds sexy, no? Squint your eyes just a…
You know the economy’s in the toilet when the state’s largest professional theater is presenting a rerun. The Mystery of Irma Vep, the rather beautiful and amply staged Charles Ludlam farce that closes Arizona Theatre Company’s season, is one it’s done before — in a widely acclaimed 1999 production starring Bob…
Joan Crawford had a rather infamous reputation, although it wasn’t for her acting skills. Sure, she won an Oscar for her performance in the Warner Bros. classic Mildred Pierce, and was among Hollywood’s top-grossing film stars for five decades. She also revolutionized women’s fashions and answered every one of her…
I was recently in Ohio, where my plans included taking a walk in the snow. It would, I announced to anyone who listened, clear my head and allow me a privilege I never enjoy in Phoenix: the pleasure of a pleasant stroll in real weather. I imagined lungfuls of clean,…
In Venice, I’ve looked for evidence of movies I’ve seen that are set there. I’m always peeking into shop windows, looking for the timepiece Capucine brings to Rex Harrison in The Honey Pot, and I once spent an entire morning sitting opposite the little antique store where Rossano Brazzi worked…
Perhaps you are a motherless British boy who has traded a pair of boxing gloves for some lovely ballet shoes. Maybe your personal struggle — which involves wanting to dance when everyone you know expects you to act like a boy — is somehow tied to the UK miner’s strike…
I could have lived happily never having seen downtown Scottsdale’s Soleri Bridge, which was completed and dedicated late last year. I’d put off seeing the bridge not because I don’t like Paolo Soleri’s work, but because, in fact, I’m a fan of the world-famous 91-year-old architect, the creator of “arcology,”…
Those who prefer their movie star bios to be all about tragedy might not enjoy Judy: The Musical — From Gumm to Garland, since it chronicles the life of the Wizard of Oz starlet, but doesn’t focus on her long and hard road through showbiz. Instead, local scribe Richard Sullivan,…
Boo Radley is back — and he’s celebrating his 51st birthday. It’s been more than a half-century since Harper Lee first published her stunning novel To Kill a Mockingbird in 1960, taking hostage the conscience of an America immersed in racial strife and prejudice. The theatrical version, which was first…
I have seen Theatre Artists Studio’s Lenin’s Embalmers, and, oh, the wisecracks I could make about dead comedies and performances by walking corpses. I’ll refrain. But I will say this: I can’t imagine who could make this tedious black comedy shine. At just under two hours, it’s a full 90…
