The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: Arizona Theatre Company’s favorite playwright, Jeffrey Hatcher (Turn of the Screw, Tuesdays With Morrie, Ella), has adapted Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic story of evil, dual personalities, and grisly murder for another ATC world première. Not to be confused with the wildly…
She may be playing the monster mom in Stray Cat’s Kate Crackernuts, but her friends and fans know that Johanna Carlisle is a real beauty — even when she’s barfing in the alley behind a convenience market. I knew I wanted to be in show business when I memorized the…
I worry I’ve lived here so long that I don’t notice my architectural surroundings as I’m driving through Phoenix. That landmarks, no matter how striking, pass me by simply because they — and I — have been here for decades. Lately, I’ve been trying to break myself of this habit…
Poor Anne. The former beauty has awakened this morning to discover a sheep’s head in place of her own. Hey, it could happen to you, but only if you were the princess heroine of Kate Crackernuts, Stray Cat Theatre’s amped-up theatrical translation of an old Scottish fairy tale. The story,…
Here’s a one-word review of Nearly Naked Theatre’s production of As Bees in Honey Drown: Phew! And here’s a 601-word one: What a relief it was to attend a show at Nearly Naked, one of my favorite theater companies, that I enjoyed nearly as much as I’ve enjoyed so many…
Fiddler on the Roof: It is, of course, too much to ask that we should make it through a single theater season without this kosher chestnut getting dusted off for our perusal. God forbid we should have to not hear “If I Were a Rich Man” or “Sunrise, Sunset” for…
I used to know a crazy lady who looked exactly like Cloris Leachman. Ella was the kind of crazy that can never be cured; the kind of crazy that struck fear in the hearts of her friends and family, that caused former employees to change their telephone numbers after she…
Roy Orbison rarely expressed anything celebratory in his work. In songs like “Blue Angel” and “Mean Woman Blues,” he — and we — found joy in heartache, beauty in the shades of gray in which Orbison’s music resides. So one wonders what the late singer would have made of the…
Anything subtitled “Confessions of a Flight Attendant” blares a warning equivalent to “proceed to the nearest emergency exit.” But despite its awkward title, Around the World in a Bad Mood has been collecting admirable notices across the country. Written and performed by real-life flight attendant Rene Foss, the comic one-woman…
I needn’t have worked very hard this week reviewing the show I saw, because the noisy dame who sat in front of me critiqued every musical number, every punch line in Arizona Theatre Company’s The Pajama Game. “That was good!” she bellowed to her seatmate after the cast busted moves…
JoAnn Yeoman’s played in everything from Becket to Bye, Bye, Birdie! (her fave role: Dulcinea in Man of La Mancha), from princesses to hookers (currently, in Algonquin Theatre’s The Oldest Profession). I knew I wanted to be in show business when I was 3 years old and my mom took…
The Oldest Profession: The cast of Algonquin Theater Company’s first show of the season features JoAnn Yeoman, Judy Rollings, Sharon Collar, Jacqueline Gaston, and Barbara McGrath — and that’s all you need to know. That this astonishing cast is performing Paula Vogel’s tart story about five aging hookers whose clientele…
I suck at New Year’s resolutions. Resolving to discontinue my various bad habits is, I know, nothing more than an exercise in good intentions. Stop eating crap? Curtail my endless shopping for useless ephemera I coveted as a child? Refrain from procrastination? These things will never happen. I’m smitten with…
To heck with James Cameron and his Leo-centric fantasy about the doomed ocean liner Titanic. In Christopher Durang’s stage version of the story, about to set sail (but hopefully not sink) in an Artists’ Theatre Project production, we’re seated far from the captain’s table with Richard and Victoria Tammurai and…
I’ve been thinking about strip malls again lately. They’ve been an on-again, off-again obsession of mine since the ’80s, when I started traveling and noticed that other cities didn’t seem quite so boxed in by as many of these long, low rectangles of grafted-together storefronts as is Phoenix. I also…
It’s likely none of us will be invited to come to the theater in our pajamas again anytime soon, so for that reason — and several others — it might not be unwise to visit Herberger Theater Center, where Arizona Theatre Company is presenting The Pajama Game this month. The…
Early in the year, I wrote that I wondered whether I’d see a scene all season that was as astonishing to me as the one I saw in Space 55 Theater Ensemble’s Book of Liz, where actress Shawna Franks attacked a tray full of flatware with such gusto that forks…
Pajama Game: Word from Tucson, where Arizona Theatre Company debuted this recently revived Broadway favorite last month, is that the company has come up with another winner. With direction by ATC artistic director David Ira Goldstein, and a return from New York by local favorite (and former Phoenix native) Bob…
What do you do while you’re waiting for your hit stage play to be adapted into a feature film starring Henry Winkler and Carrie Fisher? Why, you tour the country with a new production featuring scenes from the original play, along with a bunch of audience-participation gags grafted on, of…
Anything Goes: Not to be confused with the super-cheesy ’70s game show of the same name (Remember? Pie fights and challenge rounds featuring The DeFranco Family?), this popular book musical is among the better composer-centric homages. Sing-along standards from Cole Porter like “I Get a Kick Out of You,” “You’re…
If there’s a criticism to be leveled at Black Theatre Troupe for presenting Tony Kushner’s Caroline, or Change, it’s that attempting such a challenging piece of theater seems imprudent of any company that has failed in the past with musicals only half as complicated. But artistic director David J. Hemphill…
She’s got the lead in Black Theatre Troupe’s production of Tony Kushner’s Caroline, or Change, but actress Taylore Mahogany Scott has also got humbling memories of auditioning for a Miami Vice star and a deep fear of clowns. You can get to know here a little better here, but don’t…
