Getting through the summer is no mean feat, and I find myself buying a lot more crap in July and August than I do any other time of the year, if only for the distraction. Recently I’ve found an amazing place to shop for really great stuff, but I can’t…
I’ve seen Smokey Joe’s Café too many times over the past decade to have been very excited about attending Black Theatre Troupe’s current production last weekend. And as I sat in the Herberger Stage West, staring at Thom Gilseth’s shabbily constructed curtain drop, I thought, If the set design is…
by Robrt L. Pela I love kitchen crap. Spatulas, mixing bowls, those fake wooden spoons from the dollar store that are actually made of plastic. I have more junk in my kitchen drawers and cupboards than you’ll find in the stockrooms of all the Linens ’n’ Things combined. And because…
by Robrt L. Pela I love kitchen crap. Spatulas, mixing bowls, those fake wooden spoons from the dollar store that are actually made of plastic. I have more junk in my kitchen drawers and cupboards than you’ll find in the stockrooms of all the Linens ’n’ Things combined. And because…
“One of a kind” is a worn-out phrase used to describe everything from baked beans to hand-painted vases. One hesitates to use it to describe Eartha Kitt, for fear that she might pounce — and that is the very last feline reference this short article will contain. So how shall…
You have to hand it to the subjects of Giulio Sciorio’s “Faces of Ecstasy: Real People, Real Orgasms” exhibit, which has been claiming column inches all over the country for some little while now. The men and women, some depicted as couples, were all photographed fully clothed while having an…
I made some new friends the other day, and they live in Verrado. I’d always wanted to know someone who owned a home in this peculiar development — way the hell out in Buckeye, where each house is a replica of an old home — so I would have an…
The Spanish version opened in Madrid last October. The Swedish take opened in Karlstad shortly afterward. The Japanese production opened recently in Tokyo, and other foreign-language adaptations are scheduled to première soon in Finland, Germany, and South Korea. But Phoenicians will have to settle for the original English production of…
A single, quick glance at Billie #14 is all it takes to burn the name Lyle Ashton Harris into one’s brain forever. Ashton’s transfer print from an old Polaroid is so evocative of a long-gone glamour era, so transformative of Billie Holiday’s unmistakable visage, that no one who sees this…
Gross Indecency certainly lives up to its name. I was bored within three minutes of this play, subtitled The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, commencing. Renowned playwright Moises Kaufman has painstakingly Scotched together a seemingly endless litany of quotes, biographical sketches and transcripts from and about Wilde’s late-19th-century sodomy trials,…
It’s an age-old story: Boy is committed to insane asylum; boy meets schizophrenic girl in insane asylum; boy and girl perform interpretive dance moves and fall in love. David and Lisa is a story that, sans the dance moves, has been told in many formats, first as a well-regarded novel,…
I lost my virtue in a shopping mall. Sort of. It was actually in my boss’s office at the Mexican restaurant where I had my first-ever job, in what’s known as Metro Parkway, the shopping complex surrounding Metrocenter Mall at I-17 and Peoria. This was in the late 1970s, when…
Crispin Glover doesn’t want to be misquoted. He’s worried that journalists don’t understand his peculiar new film, What Is It?, so he asks that interviews about the movie be conducted via e-mail. In fact, Glover is so concerned that his oddball movie will be misunderstood that he only allows it…
The most sparkling bit of dialogue I heard the other night at Actors Theatre’s production of Speak Spanish to Me came from the charming lady seated on my left. At intermission, she leaned across the empty seat between us and, indicating my notebook, asked, “Are you reviewing, or plagiarizing?” I…
She’ll never be allowed to live down that oddball wig she wore in her most famous film role, but Carrie Fisher has so much more to offer than Princess Leia and her Star Wars cinnamon-bun ’do, and she’ll prove it with the new Spy in the House of Me. Fisher…
I’ve gotten pretty good at acting bored when I meet someone who feels as I do about old buildings — that we don’t have enough of them here, that we tear them down too readily, that without them we’re a city with no sense of place — but inside, I’m…
In her 2005 Queen of the Oddballs, author Hillary Carlip announced that a lifetime of trying on different personas (juggling instructor, actor, singing telegram) had convinced her that being herself was her most fulfilling role. Apparently, she’s changed her mind, at least temporarily. In Carlip’s new à la Cart: The…
She’s what’s politely called a curmudgeon, but more commonly called a bitch. Ruth Steiner is a short-tempered, arrogant, bossy woman “of a certain age,” a celebrated writer of stories who’s been slumming as a literature professor for a little while. One of her students, Lisa, shows some promise, and Ruth…
Stray Cat Theatre presenting a musical is, in terms of local show biz, rather like New Times publishing a word jumble. “We just don’t do them,” says Stray Cat artistic director Ron May about producing tuners. “I’m not a big fan of the form, anyway. I do like Sondheim, but…
James Garcia’s new one-act couldn’t be more timely. Dream Act, a co-production of Colores Actors-Writers Workshop and ASU Gammage, tells the story of grad student Victoria Nava, who came to America from Mexico as a baby with her parents. Because her folks crossed the border illegally, Nava is an undocumented…
You could, we suppose, wander around some of the Valley’s more upscale neighborhoods looking for contemporary homes and hoping to bump into the folks who designed and live in them. But why not, instead, head to the Phoenix Contemporary Design Fair, where people who love things stylish and modern go…
I don’t recycle. Seriously, if you come to my house and want to toss out your empty water bottle or your paper cup from Starbucks, you can put it right in with last night’s leftover sashimi and the packing peanuts from my latest eBay purchase, because there’s just one trashcan…
