Admit it: You hear the name “César Chávez” and your mind goes straight to farm-worker strikes and cheesy one-liners about boycotting grapes. Who knew that Chávez was linked to a series of gorgeous Pop Art posters of ladies dancing and cool old airplanes? The folks at Tempe City Hall certainly…
I’ve made a career out of carping about what an unsightly city we live in, and bitching about our hellish, nine-month-long summers has become my avocation. But in December, I find it hard to be cranky about anything, because the weather here is idyllic and because so many of the…
Seussical: This cheerful tuner based on the much-loved books of Dr. Seuss screams to be seen by — dare we say it? — kids of all ages, even those who haven’t yet met Horton (who heard a Who) or visited the Jungle of Nool. Childsplay’s version, which has become its…
I’d been looking forward to Nearly Naked Theatre’s production of Metamorphoses ever since they announced it as part of their lineup two seasons ago. Back then, the folks at Nearly Naked wisely postponed the show once they realized that its elaborate set, which involves a full-size swimming pool right on…
She’s no princess, but Nearly Naked favorite Kerry McCue (starring this week and next in that company’s Metamorphoses) is as close to stage royalty as we have around these parts. Royalty that used to work at Dairy Queen, that is. I knew I wanted to be in show business when,…
Known far and wide for his coffee-table travel books (and privately for being something of a pack rat; his Silver Lake, California, home is reportedly overflowing with pole lamps and Krispy Kans and large plastic philodendrons), kitsch king Charles Phoenix is becoming even better known for his wacky comedy slide…
Known far and wide for his coffee-table travel books (and privately for being something of a pack rat; his Silver Lake, California, home is reportedly overflowing with pole lamps and Krispy Kans and large plastic philodendrons), kitsch king Charles Phoenix is becoming even better known for his wacky comedy slide…
His name will be forever modified by the phrase “the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of Angels in America,” which certainly is no hardship. But Tony Kushner’s name might as easily be tagged with the parenthetical “(and author of Caroline, or Change),” because this unusual musical is in many ways as moving…
When they painted over the Rose Johnson mural outside Paisley Violin, I was bereft. I doubted I’d find an outdoor mural I liked as much; I’m a Rose fan from way back. There’s something about her brightly colored, solemn-faced figures that I can’t get enough of, so I found myself…
One might assume that a play involving two people who awaken in a strange mountaintop house surrounded by water and wearing someone else’s clothing is going to end up treacly — one of those tales with an exasperating windup involving dead people and Heaven. But when the playwright is Lee…
Altar Boyz is musical theater for people who don’t really like musical theater, although Phoenix Theatre’s excellent production, currently on display on the company’s main stage, might change some anti-musical-theater minds. The vaguely irreverent one-act is staged as a concert from fictional Catholic boy band The Altar Boyz, so its…
Dog Sees God: Subtitled Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead, this irreverent, unsanctioned spoof of the Peanuts comic strip is this season’s surprise breakout. Originally slated to close last week, this turncoat cartoon has proved so popular that Stray Cat has extended the show’s run with two extra performances on the…
As a kid, I dreaded Sundays. Sunday meant also-ran cartoons (all the crappy animated shows that had failed the previous season seemed to end up on Sunday mornings; no child in 1971 wanted to watch The Bugaloos or The Curiosity Shop on any day — trust me) followed by the…
There are those of us who will do almost anything to hear someone sing “Alfie,” arguably the most famous and most-often-recorded of Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s many hundreds of pop standards. We (who also don’t mind hearing “What the World Needs Now Is Love,” “Baby It’s You,” and the…
There are those of us who will do almost anything to hear someone sing “Alfie,” arguably the most famous and most-often-recorded of Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s many hundreds of pop standards. We (who also don’t mind hearing “What the World Needs Now Is Love,” “Baby It’s You,” and the…
I whine a lot about what a teardown town Phoenix is, about how buildings, no matter their significance, get knocked over all the time, taking with them what passes for “history” and “sense of place” around here. But there’s another Phoenix-centric trend that bears mentioning, one that almost offsets the…
Debbie Does Dallas: The Musical: Artists Theatre Project launches its fifth season with a reprise of the company’s popular 2004 staging of this campy tuner about a whorish teen with her eyes on the big prize. This adaptation of the classic 1978 skin flick was already old news when @Pro…
Phillip Fazio, a youngish local stage director and artist in residence at Phoenix Theatre, e-mailed me recently to tell me, in effect, it isn’t fair that I’ve given up on the smaller East Valley theaters because I think they do only tired old shows everyone’s seen a hundred times. I…
“Two Ladies,” indeed! Cabaret director Phillip Fazio apparently has a thing for impersonating the fairer sex. Here, the former child actor fesses up to an affection for Maggie Smith and a likeness to Bridget Jones, and cops to preteen stints in full-on drag and a secret desire to be the…
One takes a mighty risk when one attempts Arthur Kopit’s Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feelin’ So Sad, a frantic farce that mocks the Theater of the Absurd even as it honors that form’s peculiar rhythms and deeply weird possibilities. Fortunately for local…
He loves his baby sister and the Marx Brothers, but actor-director Mike Traylor — who’s appearing this week in iTheatre Collaborative’s Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feelin’ So Sad — isn’t above admitting when he’s blown an audition or copping to his similarities…
Dracula: The Musical?: The question mark in this Scottsdale Desert Stages productions title screams Careful! Hyper-clever campiness awaits you! But who can resist any show that includes a song called The Tippy, Tippy Tap of Love? Playwright Rick Abbot is taking pokes at Bram Stokers classic monster story in this…
