I’ve often admired playwright Michael Grady’s work, and Nearly Naked Theatre has staged some of the best theater I’ve seen in the last couple of years. Imagine my surprise and disappointment to discover a subpar production of Grady’s Baylin’s Monster at Nearly Naked last weekend. It seemed like a perfect…
When Phoenix Memorial Hospital recently shuttered its emergency room, tongues began wagging that the national epidemic of ER closures had arrived in Phoenix. ER doctor Kevin Veale, who cures various urgent ills at John C. Lincoln Hospital, says it ain’t so. But Veale, a Cave Creek resident who looks more…
About 45 minutes into Phoenix Theatre’s Cole, members of the cast fall into a superb jazz ballet that elevates the production from what it had been up to that moment: a pleasant near-miss. Cole is jammed with such showstoppers, which makes for an entertainment that’s both exhilarating and exhausting. Not…
You don’t know this, but it’s your eyebrows that are holding you back. Probably the size of your nose is keeping you from getting that promotion you’re after. If you haven’t gotten laid in a while, it might be because your mouth is too small. Just ask Boyé Lafayette De…
When the state’s Joint Legislative Budget Committee recently released a budget proposal that zeroed out future funding for the Arizona Commission on the Arts, the wailing commenced. Artists who count on ACA grant money began wringing their hands; arts organizations chairs whose seed money is supplemented by the ACA reached…
No one can accuse Kenneth Lonergan of romanticizing the dilemmas of deluded, self-destructive rich kids. His This Is Our Youth is a gritty, moving, sometimes funny examination of the advantaged that perfectly captures the youthful horrors of the Me Generation. Lonergan’s 1996 play was nominated for a Drama Desk award,…
During the week, he’s Chuck Feuquay, builder of jails for Sheriff Joke. On weekends, he’s Charlie FitzRoi, builder of spoons at Renaissance festivals. Feuquay is politely referred to as a reenactor, and as Charlie FitzRoi, he’s one of those folks who gets garbed in 18th-century duds and wanders around a…
The Yellow Boat is the true story of a young boy who’s dying, and about how love and art can transform tragedy. It’s a much-produced children’s play that succeeds on several levels: as an educational tool, as a morality tale, and as entertainment for kids and grown-ups. Mostly, though, The…
What becomes a tragedy most? Expression, according to director Marshall W. Mason, whose upcoming production of J.B. at ASU’s Herberger College of Fine Arts considers ages-old questions of loss and suffering. “I’m looking at the story in the context of September 11,” Mason says. “The question that came boldly out…
It’s been weeks since the last clump of mistletoe was yanked from Gilbert’s doorways, but the town is still ringing with Christmas jeers. That’s because, like a hunk of holiday fruitcake, the memory of Gilbert Mayor Steve Berman’s Christmas card lingers with townsfolk, who are still grumbling about his cheeky…
The heck with Tent City. Sheriff Joe should start sending miscreants to Stagebrush Theatre, where the Scottsdale Community Players have been doling out punishments galore these past several months. The company’s latest catastrophe, a bastardization of Rodgers and Hart’s Babes in Arms, has all the charm of a day spent…
It’s more than a book sale. The VNSA Book Sale is an annual event a Phoenix tradition that for the past 48 years has drawn collectors from as far away as Manila; one that finds book nuts and savvy dealers lining up for hours at the Arizona State Fairgrounds on…
Brittany Evans is not that kind of girl. Sure, she took off every last stitch of clothing for Playboy this month, and she hangs out at Hugh Hefner’s mansion in a bikini and high heels, but she’s really just the girl next door. She collects old books and loves her…
There’s an unusual and relatively new trend in theater that finds actors performing monologues written by and specifically for other performers. The latest evidence of this trend is Actors Theatre’s production of Gray’s Anatomy, one of Spalding Gray’s better-known monologues now being read by Phoenix actor Jon Gentry at the…
“I’ve been sitting here making props all day,” says actor Christopher Haines, “which is what you end up doing when you start a theater company with no money and no staff.” It’s what you do, too, when your union won’t let you hire any help. Haines is a professional actor…
The Producers is more than theater. It is, like a handful of other shows, an event. Mel Brooks’ record-breaking Tony-winner is one of those programs attended by people who never set foot inside a theater unless it’s to witness a road company of a show that’s received so much press…
Homer Simpson would be horrified. The ever-vigilant City of Mesa has targeted Winchell’s Donut House franchisee Edward Salib for daring to put pictures of doughnuts in his windows. The giant glossies of glazed rounds that once stared out from Salib’s shop at Country Club and Main are no more, thanks…
I don’t find married couples particularly amusing, but I do enjoy watching Bob Sorenson and Debby Rosenthal perform. Good thing, too, because these two local institutions are the only reason to sit through I Do! I Do!, the passé paean to matrimony with which Phoenix Theatre is currently torturing unsuspecting…
If Charlie Arntzen has his way, your next flu shot will be administered in the form of a tasty banana frappe. Arntzen is the ASU biologist recently singled out by Time magazine for his work in creating edible vaccines. He hopes they’ll save the lives of millions of kids threatened…
The heck with the New Year what you need, according to Cynthia Peden, is a new moon. Her start-up business, Moon Money, will bring you heaps of dough and other goodies, if only you believe. Cynthia made me promise I wouldn’t reveal Moon Money’s mystical secret, but she swears that…
Rats! Barry Paceley’s got them, but like the guy with the proverbial pile of lemons, Paceley has made lemonade — which, as residents of the tony Arcadia neighborhood know, is a roof rat’s favorite beverage. It’s been a year since Paceley and his fellow Arcadians went public about their ongoing…
I deplore The Fantasticks. Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt’s hyper-popular, record-breaking chamber musical is on my short list of shows I wish had never been written — just below Cats and a few notches up from anything adapted from a Disney cartoon. I’ve endured this show numerous times over the…
