Artist David Kroll’s paintings explore the relationship between humanity and nature. In hyper-realistic, oil-on-linen paintings (often depicting birds, fish, or bunnies), he asks about our place in the world today, and about what man has left for smaller creatures as we continue to reshape the world to our liking. The…
Jo Masterson is just trying to establish a law practice; she’s not interested in plumbing the depths of the true meaning of love. But her newest clients are a young white woman and a wealthy black businesswoman battling over the custody of a disabled black teenaged girl. As she leads…
I’ve been bowling exactly twice. Both times were when I was a kid, and my prevailing memory of the event is my horror at having to wear rented shoes. But I remember the bowling alley: Sunnyslope’s Northgate Bowl on 12th Street, just south of Dunlap. This still-charming, vaguely futuristic building…
Grey Gardens: The Musical is not for everyone. One’s ability to truly enjoy this camp musical depends on one’s knowledge of (and affection for) the documentary on which it’s based, and in how well the leading ladies impersonate the famous recluses at the center of its story. Fortunately for Tempe…
What has eight arms and likes to have anonymous sex with a roomful of guys? The latest play at Stray Cat Theatre, of course–this one directed by the company’s artistic director, Ron May, and featuring lead performances by a couple of talented veteran actors. Steve Yockey’s Octopus is a post-modern…
Maybe repainted old furniture is your thing. You like to pretend that the skuzzy flea market on Interstate 17 is a Provencal market. But one table lamp shaped like a plaster cherub isn’t enough to satisfy. You need more. Good news: Junkrestore Vintage Market at the Simple Farm is here,…
In filmland, sequels often lay eggs. In the theater, they pretty much never happen. But a couple of years ago, nearly a half-century after he launched his stellar career with The Zoo Story, Edward Albee has written what some are referring to as “the other half” of his premier one-act,…
Sunnyslope is weird — in a good way. I think so, anyway. But it took me a while to forget this oddball neighborhood’s reputation as a slum, because I grew up in Phoenix, where for many years Sunnyslope was the punch line to a local joke about “bad” parts of…
Squalor. Raccoons. The Kennedys. Blind cats pissing behind oil paintings, and a skirt worn as a cape over a blouse that’s actually a pair of Capri pants. This, as the hippest among us know all too well, is Grey Gardens. Named for the once-grand East Hampton mansion where Jackie Kennedy’s…
Billed as “a death-defying stunt show full of sick humor and amazing feats of the human body,” the Squidling Brothers Sideshow is hosted by someone named Jelly Boy T. Clown. We’re serious, and so is Jelly Boy, a living cartoon and self-described natural born weirdo with a shocking troupe of…
Last Thursday night, shortly before the curtain rose on Arizona Theatre Company’s Sex and the Second City Version 2.0, a young woman approached me and the three other theater critics with whom I was chatting in the lobby. “Excuse me,” she said, waving a camera at us. “Do you mind…
Editor’s note: On Tuesday morning, as this week’s issue was going to press, ArtLink announced it was going to create a map for this year’s Art Detour. I’ve been thinking about Art Detour. It’s been off my radar lately, ever since three years ago, anyway, when I was working on…
A Raisin in the Sun tells the story of fictional Walter Lee Younger, a black man in 1950s Chicago who represents the social transition of black men and women during the middle of the last century. As he grapples with taking his place in American society and as the head…
Josh Kornbluth’s Andy Warhol: Good for the Jews? is less about the famous pop artist – or about Jews – than it is about love and art. Somewhere in there, Kornbluth wedges a little history of Warhol, but his monologue, which he wrote and has been performing all over the…
COLLECTOR’S EDITION It’s not just stuff. Our collections are a statement we’re making about ourselves; a means of saying, “I was here!” when we leave them behind. Our great piles of things — carnival chalk figurines, vintage Star Wars dolls, carefully shined and inventoried war medallions — are a legacy…
Brightly colored undraped bosoms. Long, dangly scrotums. Swollen clitorises. If it’s February and you’re staring at a giant painting of some guy’s ass, then you must be at Alwun House. And this must be the venerable institution’s annual Exotic Art Show. “People always call this the Erotic Show,” says Alwun…
One can live for a very long time and never fully recover from the pleasure of having heard a big fuzzy puppet monster singing about internet porn. And not just because “The Internet is for Porn” is, like much of the rest of Avenue Q’s score, so dang catchy. But…
There’s nothing so fun, for some, than poking around in other people’s houses, checking out their décor, their art collection, and their sense of design. The Friends of Mexican Art know this, which is why they’re throwing open the doors to four Phoenix homes. The Casitas Encantadas Tour and Mexican…
It’s a shocking fact: One in 33 adults in Arizona are under some form of correctional control – either in jail or prison; on parole or probation. A quarter-century ago, this number was one in 79. What happened? In “It’s Not Just Black and White,” his new three-month-long residency exhibition…
At first glance, they appear to be pleasantly evocative black-and-white photographs that celebrate the beauty of the sky. In one, the graceful outline of a tree is silhouetted in dim, fuzzy light; in another, a bird soars out of a frame filled with sun-lit clouds. But wait. What are these…
Dearest Dear, I’m writing to apologize for having taken you to a dinner theater production of My Fair Lady. To be fair, you did agree to go with me to Arizona Broadway Theatre. And we were both excited to see Jeannie Shubitz in the lead — that’s why we were…
It’s become an annual thing, South Mountain Community College’s production of Black Women Walking. For the past three years, the school has celebrated Black History Month with the popular one-act play spotlighting the achievements of eleven notable African-American women. Playwright Karen F. Williams’ memory play considers the contributions of Harriet…
