It’s not what you think. Sarah Ruhl’s In the Next Room (Or the Vibrator Play) is, like so much of the playwright’s work, a smart and compassionate look at the mistreatment of women in the late 19th century. Set in a spa town near New York, Vibrator isn’t about dildoes…

Part world music concert, part documentary, Laya Project is a musical film journey that pays tribute to the survivors of the December 2004 Asian tsunami that killed thousands. Hundreds of hours of recorded film footage and music, logged during a two-year journey through six countries (India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand,…

One rarely hears R. Murray Schafer’s shocking musical gambol “A Medieval Bestiary” these days, but fans of melodious naughties will be delighted to know that our own Phoenix Chorale is performing the number in its new fall concert. Nature Sings! celebrates earth, wind, fire, and water in gone-green pieces including…

Motti Lerner’s Hard Love tells a story that’s part Lifetime movie of the week (young couple’s marriage falls victim to issues of faith and religion) and part After School Special (Oh, no! Our kids from our second marriages have met and fallen in love!). But Lerner’s intelligent drama rises above…

One rarely hears R. Murray Schafer’s shocking musical gambol “A Medieval Bestiary” these days, but fans of melodious naughties will be delighted to know that our own Phoenix Chorale is performing the number in its new fall concert. Nature Sings! celebrates earth, wind, fire, and water in gone-green pieces including…

Before there was such a thing as “retro” – back when stockings were made from silk and had seams, and before twenty-somethings had the ability to Google Benny Goodman to find out who he was – there was big band music. Born from swing-era jazz, big band’s orchestral sound typically…

CityScape smells like hamburger meat. The scent of comfort food probably wasn’t part of RED Development’s plan when it hired Callison Architecture to sketch out Phoenix’s latest downtown urban infill development. (Although I secretly like the idea of a meeting in which the guys from RED tell Callison, “And make…

When John Lithgow’s father became ill late in life, the actor moved in with his parents to help care for his dad. John knew that his father, the actor Arthur Lithgow, needed something more than good medicine and time to heal: He needed access to the Lithgow family legacy of…

Art fans worried that Tlingit mythology would remain under-represented this season can breathe a sigh of relief: Preston Singletary has a new show at the Heard Museum entitled, “Echoes, Fire, and Shadows,” that brings together the symbols, patterns, and legends of his Tlingit heritage with the work of the Studio…

She didn’t do it. Most folks forget — or don’t know — that Winnie Ruth Judd did not, in fact, hack up the body of one of her friends and shove it into a steamer trunk in October of 1931. Many of us are convinced, in fact, that she didn’t…

She didn’t do it. Most folks forget — or don’t know — that Winnie Ruth Judd did not, in fact, hack up the body of one of her friends and shove it into a steamer trunk in October of 1931. Many of us are convinced, in fact, that she didn’t…

Choreographer Lisa Starry was onto this whole sexy vampire thing long before it was faddish. Her annual production of Scorpius Dance Theatre’s A Vampire Tale is all the proof you’ll need, come Halloween. Fans have made attendance at this danced-through show a kind of ritual, and this year Starry is…

The Color Purple is a musical that wants us to arrive at the theater already familiar with its story, most of which has been swept away as keenly as a “colored” maid might have “rid up” the floor of the kitchen, circa 1932. And because little is left of Alice…

Its title suggests sketch comedy involving beer bongs and the repeated use of the words “babes” and “doobage,” but Dudes Gone Wild is written and directed by playwright Guillermo Reyes, so one expects commentary on friendship, sexuality and, perhaps, an ethnocentric bromantic crush or two. Following a successful run at…

It’s a grand undertaking: Seven actors performing 50 roles to tell the story of Mexico’s turbulent history, in a tale that commences in 30,000 B.C. (what must the costuming for that section look like, one wonders?) to present day in a little less than 90 minutes. The Eagle and The…

Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca is back — this time on the silver screen. Puccini’s melodramatic opera, based on the French-language play La Tosca Victorien Sardou, is celebrating its 110th birthday by touring the country in a filmed version. There may not be sexy teenaged vampires in this movie, but there’s still…

The local theater season has commenced, and Stray Cat Theatre is celebrating this fact with the third installment of Neil Labute’s trilogy about the importance of how we look. Reasons To Be Pretty follows The Shape of Things and Fat Pig (both plays Stray Cat has previously produced) in that…

If you wait long enough, everything that’s played on Broadway in the past decade will make its way to Phoenix — usually in the form of a road company that docks for two weeks at Gammage Auditorium. This week it’s Young Frankenstein, the glitzy musical translation of Mel Brooks’ 1974…