As Black Theatre Troupe deserts its longtime home, the dilapidated downtown Helen K. Mason Center, for the polished Herberger Stage West, the 33-year-old company has found a marketing niche. Dinah Was, Oliver Goldstick’s biography of blues singer Dinah Washington, is the latest in a string of tune-filled profiles of ill-fated…
Lee Blumberg swears that the way we’re brought into the world can affect every minute of the rest of our lives. That’s why she’s crusading for hypnobirthing, a drug-free, painless means of popping out babies. Recently appointed by the Pennsylvania-based Prenatal Parenting Institute as Arizona’s official hypnobirthing practitioner, Blumberg is…
Fonsia Dorsey and Weller Martin are old. They have, like so many elderly people, been abandoned to the American health-care system and have landed in an old folks’ home where they meet one Sunday afternoon. He’s a crotchety codger, she’s a peevish fuddy-duddy, and, for two hours plus intermission, they…
May Showers won’t set foot in Sportsman’s Fine Wines. “I’m not goin’ in there,” May tells me, “if there’s smoking and spirits.” I try to tell her that Sportsman’s is just a wine and cheese shop, but she’s adamant — and so we settle in at a curbside table –…
Chris Powell is a nice guy. A really, really nice guy. So nice that his friends call him Senator Powell, because he’s always shaking hands and kissing babies. Cosmopolitan magazine thinks Chris is more than just nice, and to prove it, it’s just named the 24-year-old fitness trainer “Arizona’s Hunkiest…
Tammie Hanson-Ferguson doesn’t cry until after I turn off my tape recorder. For more than an hour, she sits with me at Christopher’s Fermier and talks about her brother, Wade Jess Jordan, who was gunned down by Mesa police last December. Hanson-Ferguson never sheds a tear while she describes her…
With Blue, playwright Charles Randolph-Wright set out to tell a story about African-Americans that isn’t about race relations; a black family drama that’s not about oppression but about good old American dysfunction. Randolph-Wright succeeded — not wisely, but too well. Blue is a ceaselessly pleasant shaggy dog story dotted with…
You can talk to Taggart Barron about sex, just don’t show him — or his kids — any photographs of it. Barron has become a tireless anti-porn advocate ever since Castle Megastore opened in his Deer Valley neighborhood two months ago. Although the sex boutique is protected by city zoning…
The wine list at Chili’s Grill & Bar is pretty lame, but my subject is too young to appreciate a good Pinot Grigio anyway. Fourteen-year-old Chris Cottrell is the author of the just-passed Proposition 103, also known as Chris’ Law, a constitutional amendment that will prevent accused sexual predators from…
Equus was first produced in the early ’70s and quickly became a modern classic. Peter Shaffer’s morality play just as quickly became passé, its postmodern approach to religiosity and sex nullified by the go-go ’80s, when money was power and religion was usurped by “spirituality.” Which isn’t to say that…
Deep in the dark, scary heart of downtown’s warehouse district, the fledgling Stray Cat Theatre has scored another success. With The Dianalogues, this inventive young company kicks off its second season in a drafty hangar that’s well off the beaten path but well worth finding. Laurel Haines’ collection of comic…
Steve Dart is an hour late for our meeting at Coach’s, a west-side bar that tonight, coincidentally, is hosting a dart tournament. He’s late because he fell asleep on the couch watching Spiderman cartoons — a perfectly appropriate excuse, given that Dart’s been in the spotlight lately for scaling a…
There was a hearse in the parking lot on opening night of Desert Foothills Theater’s Simply Sammy, perhaps waiting to cart off audience members who died of disappointment. The tip-off that this tribute to the late Sammy Davis Jr. was going to be a dog came with the first strains…
Avery Wiseman has never eaten anyone. But he’s written about it, in The Next Taboo: Curing Cancer Through Cannibalism. Wiseman’s newest book has been receiving national attention, mostly from people who have mistaken the good doctor’s first novel for nonfiction. Wiseman doesn’t seem all that concerned about the mix-up. The…
My favorite characters in Neil Simon’s Rumors are Charlie and Myra, because they never once take the stage. They are only ever talked about, never seen — a condition that might improve this tired farce if it were to exist in every corner. Phoenix Theatre last week joined the parade…
David Hans Schmidt won’t drink with me. The infamous media flack is determined to be a model parolee, so he talks me into leaving Devil’s Martini and joining him at his place, where we sip parole-sanctioned bottled water. Schmidt has been a free man for less than two weeks, and…
Thespians, take note: Barbara Harris has moved to town, and she’s hung up her teaching shingle. Local acting students could do worse; Harris’ brief but notable Broadway career snagged her a Tony Award for The Apple Tree in 1967, and she was nominated for her role in On a Clear…
From the stage of Phoenix College’s John Paul Theatre, the Black Theatre Troupe has scored another triumph. The Trial of One Short-Sighted Black Woman vs. Mammy Louise and Safreeta Mae is a smartly executed, vividly written political satire full of sharp performances. It’s a morality play that’s never preachy; a…
A year ago, architect Bill Tonnesen launched a career in modern art. His 12-month goal: to create 100 significant pieces, and to land a one-man show in a notable gallery. He chronicled his experience in the self-published Tonnesen: 12 Months to Fame and Fortune in the Art World. The book…
Bell, Book and Candle is a fusty perennial of high school drama clubs and community playhouses, a ’50s parlor comedy that’s not particularly funny. Theater Works, for unfathomable reasons, has mounted a production of this programmer that’s every bit as phony as the stuffed cat the lead actress drags around…
His business card reads “Gil Gordon-Hall, Intuitive,” but the one-time restaurateur is better known these days for finessing the spiritual energy of local businessmen. Gordon-Hall is a feng shui master who specializes in tweaking the yin and yang of corporate types who believe that where they park their Rolodex will…
