There might be something that David Ira Goldstein loves more than theater: Perhaps his wife; possibly his cats; maybe a good game of golf. But you’d never know it watching Arizona Theatre Company’s world première of Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure, which ATC artistic director Goldstein has helmed. This sublime…
After Diff’rent Strokes was canceled, The Bird gave up on sitcoms as a diversion. Fortunately, this squawker lives in Phoenix, where politicians provide almost endless yuks with their foolhardy antics, so who needs TV? The Bird’s new laugh riot came from none other than Mayor Phil Gordon, who announced his…
Laura Durant is a triple threat of a different kind: a film and stage actor who also markets and photographs local theater productions. When she isn’t onstage (as she was last month as Rosie the Riveter in Sentimental 1940s Journey at the Herberger) or appearing in films (most recently opposite…
Derek Benz and J.S. Lewis might be just another couple of writers cashing in on the Harry Potter craze with their new young adult novel, The Revenge of the Shadow King. But unlike most post-Harry fantasy writers, the Phoenix authors have struck a chord with critics and adult readers alike…
Good help’s hard to find, it seems, particularly at the Maricopa County Department of Public Health. Now, The Bird’s always considered “Public Health” an oxymoron, so this inquisitive quail’s eyebrow arched a few months ago when word began to spread that not all was right with Jacquelynn Meeks, the department’s…
Natives: Arizona Jewish Theatre Company artistic director Janet Arnold stars in Janet Neipris’s contemporary comedy as Viola, a middle-aged divorcée trying to get on with her life after her three grown daughters are gone. When they come for a visit, it’s just in time to interrupt Viola’s romantic summer trip…
Janet De Berge Lange, 59, grew up in Arizona — a fact that’s evident in her popular assemblage art, which often includes bits of old neon signs from Phoenix businesses or even a photo of Lange herself as a 6-year-old in cowgirl drag. She’s survived the downtown art scene’s various…
It’s a humid summer day in 1976, and my sister and her kids and I are going someplace in her big blue Plymouth. I’m up front with Sis; the kids are in the back, and all three of them are singing something called “The Very Strange Medley” at the tops…
This just in from the How Stupid Is Andy Thomas Department: Everybody’s favorite local race-baiter had a pile of angry motions filed against him the other day from at least four Phoenix defense lawyers, who argued that the Maricopa County Attorney unintentionally disqualified his staff from prosecuting Superior Court cases…
Her fans include Helena Bonham Carter and film director Tim Burton, and her line of funky Chicano folk art has been featured in better boutiques for more than a decade. Kathy Cano Murillo is everywhere these days: a regular on KPNX-TV Channel 12’s Arizona Midday; author of a nationally syndicated…
Firefighters! You gotta love ’em. They save lives, they put out fires, they make a nice pot of chili. And one of them tried to bone a sheep, too. Now, The Bird tried desperately to fly above this story, which the Arizona Republic played straight (natch) in two tiny, buried…
Nicolas Glaser was one among a handful of A-list stage actors who called Phoenix home in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Like most of the rest of them, Glaser lit out for the Great White Way, where he’s made a success playing good guys, gangsters, and everything in between…
Michael Frayn’s better plays tend to be overshadowed by his best-known work: the superlative backstage farce Noises Off, or any of his several clever novels (most notably Headlong, a Booker Prize contender). Frayn’s Benefactors, which won the Olivier Award in 1984 and was later revived in London, is one of…
The Bird’s nesting better at night knowing that, while local politicians wrangle over how and why to secure the Arizona-Mexico border, someone’s keeping an eye on the opportunistic bums who’ve taken policing the border into their own hands. In fact, Democratic state Representative Kyrsten Sinema has done more than spy…
Deathtrap: Theater Works is trotting out this frankly done-to-death perennial, one that’s better remembered for the excellent film version starring Michael Caine and Christopher Reeve. Regardless of who’s playing it (and this production features mostly local unknowns), Deathtrap really only works if you don’t know the windup huzzah. Which is…
The only thing The Bird hates more than a bag of seeds and stems (see the recent column on bong laws, dude) is a bag of hot air. Which’s why it loves politicians so much. Especially ones who cultivate the appearance of getting all puffed up about the deep injustices…
Kimberly Akimbo: David Lindsay Abaire’s cautionary tale about a teenager with a rare condition that causes her body to age faster than it should was a runaway smash when it debuted in Manhattan a few years ago. The author of Wonder of the World, an early hit for Stray Cat…
Okay, so you never miss an episode of The Golden Girls. It’s telecast pretty much constantly — the Lifetime network airs about a dozen episodes of the popular ’80s sitcom every day — and you never miss the show about four grumpy old bags who sit around their Florida condo…
Unlike most of us, award-winning photographer Timothy Archibald isn’t content just wondering what a giant mechanical two-headed penis machine looks like. He wants to take pictures of it. He wants to interview the guy who built it. Which is exactly what the former Phoenix New Times staff photographer has done…
The Bird likes nothing better than watching what Hollywood does with real-life catastrophes and miscreants. Whether it’s softly lighted and eyelinered queer cowboys (Brokeback Mountain, my feathered ass!) or desert island plane crashes peopled by a bevy of sexy supermodel survivors (this taloned scribbler isn’t too proud to admit that…
It’s not enough that filmmaker Thomas Jason Davis’ new movie is called Scab, or that it’s a gay vampire flick about promiscuous sissies who want to suck another guy’s, um, blood. The real kicker is that the subtitle for the film, which makes its local debut this week at the…
“You know, when I get high, I always get horny for white women,” Tommy Chong told The Bird just last week. Yes, that Tommy Chong, of Cheech and Chong fame. This winged wordsmith had been having difficulties lately at local head shops, so it decided to give the world’s most…
