Before it was a radio drama performed live before an audience and broadcast into millions of homes, the script for Peter Goodchild’s classic The Real Dr. Strangelove: Edward Teller and the Battle for the H-Bomb was a courtroom transcript. Taken directly from the trial of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the American…
I love our Capitol building. Not just because it looks like something erected by MGM in 1930 onto which someone has dropped a colossal tin-foil hat. But because it is, like so very much of Phoenix, not at all what it appears to be. Our infamous copper-domed Capitol, designed by…
It starts with a silly party game, and ends by forever changing the lives of the people who are playing it. Melissa Jane Gibson’s This considers sorrow, loss, and the ways in which we all eventually “grow out of” our childhood friends in a story about a group of college…
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…
The next time you walk out the front door of Burton Barr Central Library, look directly across the street and to your left, and you’ll see a gorgeous building that I’m guessing you haven’t noticed before. The beautiful Mission-style edifice you’ll see there is now home to the Arizona Jewish…
You probably know him as the grouchy grandpa with a heart of gold in Little Miss Sunshine. Perhaps, if you’ve been around long enough, you recall his yowza performance in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter or his star turn in Norman Jewison’s The Russians are Coming, The Russians are…
It means “devil” in Italian, but Diavolo – the brainchild of the Parisian mastermind who’s created shows for Cirque de Soleil – is actually a group of dancers trained in ballet, modern dance, martial arts, and acrobatics. They perform what The Minneapolis Star Tribune calls “a wild mash-up between Cirque…
The trouble with Mama and Jack Carew is that there’s so very much of it. Hal Corley’s full-length play, at least as presented by Theatre Artists Studio, is too long by a good 90 minutes. Its sluggish 2½ hours unfold as slowly as a dental exam; its underwhelming lead male…
The writer and monologist Spalding Gray thought of himself, he said, as a collage artist. “I can’t make anything up . . . I’m cutting and pasting memories of my life. And I say, I have to live a life in order to tell a life. I would prefer to…
You know Jack Jones from his mega-hits — pleasant pop million-sellers like “Wives and Lovers” and “Lollipops and Roses” — songs that (along with more sophisticated hits like “Call Me Irresponsible” and “The Impossible Dream”) put him on the musical map. But it’s likely you haven’t heard him sing “Julie”…
I think I need a break from camp. I realized this after attending Devil Boys from Beyond at Nearly Naked Theatre last weekend. It was, I thought, a perfectly executed send-up of old Z-grade science fiction films. But just the fact that I’m typing the phrase “send-up of old Z-grade…
Any opportunity to see new work by Mayme Kratz is one worth taking. The artist, known internationally for her gorgeous cast-resin wall works and sculptures that trap the beauty of the desert landscape in lovely translucent shells, is offering her newest work at Lisa Sette Gallery this month. The show,…
Don’t ask me how I came to be a gallery curator. I suppose it happened because I finally grew tired of complaining about how the downtown art scene just wasn’t giving me enough of what I wanted. And about how, not so many years ago, one went, on any given…
You’re feeling lost. Your job sucks; you can’t compete for attention from the world with all the supermodels and brainiacs out there; you’re not sure what the hot new coffee shop is, and wouldn’t know how to get there if you did. Poor you. You’ve got nothing on Sarah Hurwitz…
You’re feeling lost. Your job sucks; you can’t compete for attention from the world with all the supermodels and brainiacs out there; you’re not sure what the hot new coffee shop is and wouldn’t know how to get there if you did. Poor you. You’ve got nothing on Sarah Hurwitz…
Perhaps you don’t care for classical music. A large ensemble of musicians who variously play cellos, basses, oboes, and French horns fails to move you; you don’t know what timpani are; can’t tell a symphony from a concerto or a violin from a viola. It may not matter to you,…
Eventually, American theater will run out of 20th-century musical troubadours to venerate. In the meantime, there is Woody Guthrie’s American Song, a sort-of biography told in tunes and travelogues written by Guthrie himself. And though we may leave the playhouse knowing as little about Guthrie the folk singer as we…
Just when you thought it was safe to go back to forgetting who the godfather of folk music is, Arizona Theater Company stages a musical that honors the man’s legacy. Woody Guthrie’s American Song charts both the folk singer’s life and Guthrie’s deep fondness for his country while spinning a…
Once upon a pre-PC time it was considered okay — even humorous — to depict Native Americans as savages. In everything from cartoons to big-screen epics, Indians were feather-wearing warriors with plaited hair who began every discussion with the greeting “How!” We’ve evolved. Today, the white man would never dream…
Just as one eventually must set aside one’s belief in Santa Claus, it’s now time for another holiday tradition to be laid to rest. Farewell, then, to Actors Theatre’s A Christmas Carol. You’ve resided on our Christmas list, just above figgy pudding and immediately beneath sleigh bells in the snow,…
I long to take the month of December off from writing, so that I can focus on tree-trimming and card-making and other seasonal events. December deadlines are usually a nightmare, largely because printers keep such odd holiday schedules, and writing January copy the week before Christmas usually means I’m missing…
Don’t tell Malvolio, who would that we have no more cakes and ale, but Southwest Shakespeare has forgone a traditional holiday show (thank Santa!) in favor of, well, Shakespeare. In this case, it’s the Bard’s Twelfth Night, one of the darker of Old Will’s dark comedies. Fear not, fans of…
