I usually wind up on the sofa every night, watching those badly dubbed episodes of Sex and the City that are breeding like rabbits all over late-night cable stations. Probably you’ve seen them, squeezed between carpet-cleaning commercials and sanitized to the point of absurdity, all the “twats” and “fuckers” re-looped…
Dead Man Driving In one way, the ticket James Hamburg got for running a red light on Country Club Drive in October wasn’t so unusual. He was heading south when the light at University Drive turned red, and he kept going. Woo hoo! The camera snapped his picture, and the…
She’s played Shakespeare festivals and appeared on soap operas and been directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman, and right now Erika Rolfsrud is appearing all by her lonesome in Arizona Theatre Company’s one-woman Bad Dates. Here, she considers rug burns and lazy eyes and the horrors of slow-mo screaming. I knew…
Arizona State University president Michael Crow’s stepped up his campaign to turn the most populous main campus in the nation into America’s most sterile institution of higher learning. Having already neutered ASU’s unruly fraternity community and squashed any display of politically oriented window decorations in dorm windows (because college kids…
Okay, so it’s a furniture store. But one of the most popular items for sale at IKEA is its two-and-a-half-pound bag of frozen Swedish meatballs, the very same meatballs that customers line up for at the store’s indoor cafes around the globe. But county health inspectors are busy trying to…
It’s getting near closing time at Tempe’s IKEA, and Kelli Quinn is inching farther away from the front entrance. Like some lonely patron in a smoky bar during last call, she’s hesitant to leave. But instead of horny drunks, Quinn is surrounded by screwed-together chairs and heat-veneered tables and polystyrene…
You don’t have to know who the mad King Ludwig II is (he ruled Bavaria in the mid-19th century) to enjoy the naughty comedy of Paul Rudnick’s remarkably funny Valhalla. You don’t even need to know who Rudnick is (for my money, one of the most talented comic writers of…
Welcome to America, where our fearless leader’s busy golfing and barely bothered by reports that the CIA’s been hiding al-Qaeda prisoners in secret Eastern European jails formerly operated by the Soviet KGB. Where our entertainment’s provided by Team America’s second-in-command, Dick “Terrorist Your Game Is Through” Cheney, who’s lobbying Congress…
You’ll never find him, as Lee Grant famously uttered in The Valley of the Dolls, “posing undraped on the stage.” But director/actor/artistic director Damon Dering, who gave up life as a drag queen to co-found Nearly Naked Theatre some half-dozen years ago, gets naked in other ways. Like here, where…
Until it saw some stupid cow with her left tit hanging out in the middle of a Target parking lot, The Bird was squawking with glee about the new, just-passed Chandler ordinance allowing mothers to breast-feed in public. This avian thought, “Why shouldn’t moms of every stripe — even ugly,…
1. Start out as an overly solemn and often pretentious child with a more-than-passing interest in Gilbert and Sullivan. Worry your parents with constant criticisms of their clothing, their taste in furnishings, and their favorite television shows. Ask Santa for an IBM Selectric and a velvet-lined cape. Brood. Be sent…
Christopher, who may be insane, believes that the oranges in the bowl in the psychiatric hospital are a bright, luminous blue. His doctor, Bruce Flaherty, believes that this is evidence that Christopher is still mentally ill and shouldn’t be sent home today, his intended day of release. Thus begins the…
The Bird’s nested in Phoenix long enough to know that this place has its share of shady, self-important, half-witted yokels. Even so, it’s still occasionally surprised by how Mayberry this backward burg can be. Take our fearful leaders’ recent response to a city council vote that will allow Donald Trump…
I was walking out of Trader Joe’s last week when an extra-smiley man in a tie-dyed dashiki stepped in front of me. “Would you like to invite Jesus into your life to be your Savior and Lord?” he asked, beaming maniacally. “Actually, no,” I replied. “I would like to go…
Perhaps the only thing more unusual than producing a program about 9-year-olds with nothing to live for is having actual fourth graders show up to audition for parts in the show. “I was floored,” says Ron May, who’s directing The Fourth Graders Present an Unnamed Love-Suicide for Stray Cat Theatre…
It helps to love good acting and the writing of Jane Austen in order to really appreciate Arizona Theatre Company’s lush, immaculate production of Pride and Prejudice. This practically flawless adaptation, crammed as it is with wonderful acting and gorgeous technical design, should come with a snooze warning for anyone…
There’s a message folded into Armentine Duryea’s The Sun City Cannabis Club, a self-published murder mystery suspense novel about a drunken granny who stumbles onto a medical marijuana ring in Wrinkle Town. That message, wedged craftily into scenes involving gun-toting, pot-smoking oldsters with black belts in karate who take out…
Actors far and wide owe some kind of debt to dialect coach Dianne J. Winslow, who teaches them how to say what they say when there’s a an accent involved. Winslow’s talents can be heard in Arizona Theatre Company’s Pride and Prejudice at the Herberger; here, she considers Harpo Marx,…
1. Start out as a more-than-slightly neurotic child, perhaps with a nervous tic or a speech impediment — or at least as a kid whose parents are divorcing. Having an emotionally distant father and/or alcoholic mother is helpful, too. Homosexuality is a definite plus. Start small: Reenact toothpaste commercials in…
There are so many reasons Desert Stages Theatre’s production of A Man of No Importance shouldn’t work: the cramped quarters of the company’s Actor’s Café space, into which this odd musical has been squeezed; the mostly amateur cast; an unusual, time-bending script; the curse that blights most all stage musicals…
In the bad old days, Wyatt Earp was — depending on whom you asked — a famed lawman or a rascally bandit. Today he’s a brand of coffee and a steak sauce and a slew of Web sites (most prominently wyattearp.biz) and, in most parts of the world on any…
The road to stardom may be paved with some kind of intentions, but Lisa Murray’s was slick with hand lotion. The Scottsdale publisher’s assistant is now Hollywood-bound, thanks in good part to her recent win on Entertainment Tonight’s “Caress Confidante” contest. (Although her new title suggests a career spent listening…
