While the war against gay marriage wails in the background, a traveling exhibition titled “Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals, 1933-1945” has settled in at Burton Barr Central Library. It’s the first in a series of exhibitions from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum about the non-Jewish groups persecuted by the Nazis…
Aside from a single, tatty staircase that could use a good coat of paint, David Weiss has created a plush, gorgeous set for his directorial bow with Nearly Naked Theater. Unfortunately, he’s filled this resplendent stage with an unremarkable performance of The House of Yes, playwright Wendy MacLeod’s spectacularly vulgar…
Ever since Tucson’s District 29 Representative Linda Lopez proposed a statewide smoking ban in restaurants and bars, Mark Brnovich has been steamed. Lopez and Brnovich, who’s the director of the Goldwater Institute Center for Constitutional Government, have been duking it out in print ever since she and something called Arizonans…
ASU law professor Gary Lowenthal wrote a book about interning in the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office. Down and Dirty Justice went easy on Rick Romley and his staff for standards and practices that others have widely disparaged, but word is that Romley and pals aren’t amused by Lowenthal’s book. New…
Arizona State University’s production of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard is director Marshall Mason’s 180th theater production and, unfortunately, his last for the university. Mason will retire his post as ASU theater professor at the end of this semester and will leave the Valley, thus turning us back into what…
The Mars Exploration Rovers represent the most ambitious Mars study undertaken to date, and (surprise!) our very own Arizona State University is more involved in the mission (with four space scientists playing major roles) than any other university in the country. Scott Nowicki, a graduate research associate at the ASU…
In a better world, Alicia Sutton would appear on stage constantly. She’d be handed her Actors’ Equity card, given her choice of roles, and would perform in a different production each month for one of our 70-odd local theater companies. She’d do Hedvig in The Wild Duck, and Nickie in…
Jim Strait isn’t one of those whacked-out Star Trek fans. He doesn’t have a roomful of memorabilia from his favorite TV show; he doesn’t have a secret Klingon name; he doesn’t show up at my house in a Starship Enterprise crew shirt. Okay, so he does bring with him a…
Although he’s been here all along, Charles Busch has finally arrived. After an estimable 30-year career in nearly every aspect of show biz — as an actor, illusionist, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, and a film and TV star — Busch became a national celebrity when his The Tale of the Allergist’s…
Actors Theatre’s Stones in His Pockets is something of a conundrum: It’s a better-than-capably acted, expertly directed comedy that’s never more than amusing. It’s filled with goofy antics performed by silly characters (normally a winning combination in a comedy) who are often less than lovable. On opening night, this neatly…
WaIt’s not so unusual to be bitten by a snake in Arizona. But it’s at least a little out of the ordinary to keep an Internet journal of your snakebite travails, especially when you refuse traditional treatment and attempt to cure yourself with prunes and meat tenderizer. Which is precisely…
The free music debate rages on, with artists fuming against a digital machine that allows slobs like us to download their music for free. But John-Scott Dixon thinks he has the answer to music-royalty theft. The former senior VP of PC conglomerate Insight has built RateOurBand.com, an Internet battle of…
There’s a moment in TheatreScape’s Eleemosynary that’s so moving, so perfectly theatrical, it nearly trumps all that came before it. Following her curtain call, tiny Michelle Chin, her eyes filled with tears, crosses the stage to retrieve the paper wings that are her character’s prized possession. The play is over;…
It’s First Friday. I’m at my third gallery opening in as many hours, drinking cheap wine from a plastic glass and eavesdropping on yet another conversation about Nicole Pesce. “But have you heard her ABBA medley?” one wanna-be fashionista is saying to another. “Oh, please,” her gal pal is saying…
Regional and community theaters have an annoying habit of promoting their productions as “Tony Award-winning,” and of quoting reviews of the original New York cast, as if the quality of the original had anything at all to do with the local version. But early raves for Arizona Theatre Company’s It…
Movie critics, beware: Former film student Andrew Ramsammy wants to replace you with a bunch of wanna-bes — Middle American moviegoers whose membership in Ramsammy’s Reel Truth “film community” gets them free movie passes in exchange for their appraisals. The heck with informed opinion, Ramsammy says; let’s let the people…
The theater year kicked off from the impossible heights of an excellent road company of The Producers and wound up, as ever, with a lot of cheesy Christmas shows. This was the year that Chicago’s eccentric Theatre Eclectic relocated to Phoenix, and Awake and Sing Productions bowed with an exquisite…
Depending on whom you talk to, Richard Wizardry is either a madcap genius or just another crackpot artist with a lot of leftover scrap metal and too much time on his hands. Either way, Wizardry wants to make up for all the bland art he’s encountering in local galleries, and…
Yo, Janet Napolitano! Charles Goodson is still gunning for you. The Tempe resident and dyed-in-the-wool Confederate soldier is pressing on with his Recall Janet campaign, which must collect more than 300,000 votes by early next month to begin your ouster. The good news is . . . he doesn’t care…
November 17: It must be Christmastime — I’m averaging three calls a day from publicists trying to persuade me to review their upcoming holiday shows. The woman from the Rockettes’ Radio City Christmas Spectacular called twice today. She didn’t laugh when I asked what’s Christmassy about a bunch of girls…
Preteen boys may dog Michael Jackson, but at least he’s not saddled with a bunch of dead kids who want to become famous. Schoolteacher turned yoga instructor William Cooper Robert channels a group of “spirit angels” whose 5-year-old ringleader, a dead boy named Little Billy, is bent on becoming the…
While the inanities of the Phoenix Festival of Lights schlepped noisily past last Saturday night, Nearly Naked Theatre wowed an almost full house with yet another fine piece of complex, compelling theater. This tireless troupe’s take on Joe Calarco’s smart, sexy Shakespeare’s R & J drowned out the idiotic honking…
