Normally I cower under furniture when a Neil Simon play takes any local stage, but I’d heard that Shawna Quain was doing a bang-up job in the title role of Theater Works’ Sweet Charity, so I tucked away my fear of Simon and headed to Sun City. My source was…
Old and gay with nowhere to go? Fear not — there’s a place for you, thanks to Vern Johnson, a former health-care worker who’s just launched Calamus Communities, Phoenix’s first gay retirement home. Johnson and a business partner have fitted out the former Les Jardins Hotel with posh accommodations for…
LeeAnn Dobbs was framed. The 15-year-old Ironwood High School student showed up at Tent City to do a story about Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s SMART Tents program for the school’s television news show (note to oldsters: high schools have their own TV networks now) and ended up in the slammer. SMART,…
Playwright Charlotte Mann has, according to her playbill bio, an outstanding handbag collection. What she doesn’t have, unfortunately, is a particularly engaging story to tell in Hysteric Studs, which is currently floundering on a late-night stage near you. I was surprised and sorry to see a mediocre production from Stray…
To this critic’s eye, a stage full of fake plants never looks like the real thing, and usually prefigures a production as false as silk-and-wire foliage. But D. Martyn Bookwalter’s gorgeous set for Arizona Theatre Company’s Talley’s Folly is as real as the people who walk through its lush, expertly…
Move over, Howard Stern. Rick Bloom is ready to take over the airwaves with his own peculiar blend of low-concept radio entertainment. Bloom’s three-hour show, which airs every day on KFNX-AM 1100, is a hybrid of top-of-the-hour news, talk and Bloom’s special brand of humor, which involves a lot of…
11/13-11/122 The Brazilian art form/dance/martial art Capoeira has been described as “a conversation between two bodies in motion,” a succinct description that doesn’t quite convey the complexity and historical significance of the art. Capoeira was invented in Brazil 400 years ago by African slaves as a method of expression and…
It’s been said that Noel Coward’s Private Lives is foolproof; that it’s such a well-written, tightly strung play that even a third-rate company can’t mess it up. But this isn’t something that’s being said by people who’ve been to Phoenix Theatre recently. There, despite the efforts of one leading lady,…
Pity Brian H. His life hasn’t been the same since a mysterious government agency, devoted entirely to controlling his mind, began dogging his every move. The 50-ish former investment banker has taken to sleeping in his car and hiding out in Wal-Mart parking lots just to get a little peace…
Over at the Herberger Theater Center, Cathy Dresbach is playing an extraordinarily ordinary woman. In Actors Theatre’s Frame 312, Dresbach is pretending to be Lynette, a typical suburbanite with a house, a yard, and two grown children — an angst-ridden daughter hooked on antidepressants, and a greedy son whose marriage…
Peter Petrisko is back from the dead. Literally. After a near-death experience a decade ago, the onetime wunderkind of Phoenix’s underground arts scene vanished without a trace. Five years before, Petrisko had made a name for himself by ravaging a yucca plant on East Van Buren on which the Virgin…
There are things about On Strivers Row — a handful of performances, a couple of funny line readings — worth waiting around for. But only if the many moments that surround these praiseworthy crumbs don’t drive you from Black Theatre Troupe’s borrowed space at Phoenix College, where the company is…
at the..
Famous people are often boring, and Jay Leno is very, very famous. A chat with the Tonight Show host and former Doritos pitchman often turns to his collection of vintage cars and motorcycles; his theories on staying funny; the evolution of the talk show. But fame isn’t enough for Leno,…
Like a lot of tract homes in Sun City, Stanley Lescewicz’s house is littered with Hummel figurines and cute snow globes and framed photos of a dozen different grandkids. But Stanley — or Nasty Stanley, as he likes to be called — has something none of his oldster pals can…
In a town where every arts organization is struggling to stay afloat, who would risk bankrolling an experimental, ethnocentric theater company devoted to producing the work of a single playwright? And who but a lunatic would invest in a theater company run by a man who refuses to promote the…
It’s a safe bet that one of the very first performances of the season will almost certainly live on as the best of the season, because it’s hard to imagine any other actor outshining Benjamin Stewart’s Big Daddy in Actors Theatre’s production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Stewart’s…
Marcia Rowlette’s life was full of pain and suffering. At age 2, a case of spinal meningitis left her mostly crippled. She lived her adult life in assisted-care facilities in her hometown of Prescott, where years of physical therapy were hindered by Marcia’s other medical conditions, which included psoriasis, arthritis…
Paula Vogel is some kind of a genius for having written a play about pedophilia that’s both amusing and provocative. While ASU’s mainstage production of How I Learned to Drive doesn’t entirely do Vogel’s work justice, it’s just sturdy enough to evoke the rage and ardor of the playwright’s bold,…
Maybe she read Charlotte’s Web one too many times as a kid. Maybe she got a bad slice of veal shank. Whatever the reason, Kari Nienstedt is devoted to saving cute little farm animals (and big, ugly farm animals) from being mistreated on their way to slaughter. Kari’s the Arizona…
Phoenix Theatre’s excellent production of Chicago is both a pleasant entertainment and a shrewd example of this 83-year-old company’s talent for mounting crowd-pleasing retreads. Director/choreographer Michael Barnard has borrowed from Chicago’s original 1975 staging and from the recent film version, and jazzed it up with some swell tricks of his…
Just when you thought it was safe to watch a reality TV show or two, television producers and former Phoenicians Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese have revamped the format of America’s favorite cheeseball genre. In the duo’s Joe Schmoe Show, which airs Tuesdays on cable’s Spike TV network, the gimmick…
