I’ve begun to wonder how it would be to see a mediocre production of Angels in America. Somehow, I’ve only seen resplendent, near-perfect stagings of this new American classic, most recently Actors Theatre’s current production of both halves of the eight-hour play. Angels in America, for the uninitiated, is two…
I figured I wouldn’t like Nova Gyna. I confess to being creeped out by the whole he/she thing, which Nova Gyna (pronounced “no vagina,” and Latin for “new woman”) writes about in her new book, The Occasional Woman. I expected to find a scary drag queen, maybe even one of…
I dreamed I was in a nude cabaret with a married couple I didn’t know. They wanted to tell me about a new book they’d written, but it was hard to communicate because the music was loud and we were distracted by the naked lady who was rubbing her crotch…
In a dark bar, two men are conversing. One of them, a politician, is telling the other, his campaign manager, about a recent rendezvous with a third man, a sexy but unscrupulous fellow with whom the politician is smitten. Suddenly, the politician says to his companion, “Let me show you…
It’s September 11, 2002, but Richard J. Botto isn’t at home watching the relentless CNN coverage of last year’s terrorist attacks. Instead, the native New Yorker has agreed to meet me for drinks at Sapporo to talk about Razor, the national men’s magazine he launched two years ago. Botto is…
No theatergoer should be made to stare at an ugly set for three hours. If one must, however, one should do so at Phoenix Theatre’s new production of Into the Woods. Its dreary gray forest, designed by usually dependable scenic designer Gregory Jaye, is hung limply with unsightly rope and…
No matter how wide his triumphs, Ron Dible will probably always be known around these parts as Porno Cop. Dible was sacked by the Chandler Police Department earlier this year when naughty photographs of himself and his wife were discovered on an adult Web site. Never one to take his…
The Fantasticks is not. What begins as a promising rerun quickly becomes — somewhere after its third or fourth musical number — just another small-time production of a big-deal show. Pleasant performances and familiar tunes aren’t enough to elevate this tuneful repeat, and so Stagebrush Theatre’s season opener winds up…
I hesitate to expect too much from any theater season, but the upcoming calendar of plays and musicals certainly looks more interesting than the last several have. This season, old Will is hotter than ever, and there are more musical tributes than you can shake a baton at. If there…
Marla Wing begins talking before we actually meet. She comes huffing up the stairs at Nixon’s Lounge, trailing scraps of paper and shiny pamphlets that sneak out from the pile of mangled folders she’s got clutched to her chest. We settle into an upstairs booth, and, surrounded by the bar’s…
Two weeks along, the theater season is already shaping up to be the finest in years. Three of our smaller companies have weighed in with real contenders: The Last Wallace & Ladmo Show has filled Theater Works’ stage with more Equity actors than it hosted all last year. And Is…
Matt Smith is praying. The waiter at DJ’s, an Old Town Scottsdale bar that serves darn good burgers and even better kamikazes, has just dropped off Smith’s chicken sandwich, and now — like every good Catholic boy — he’s bowing his head and clasping his hands and muttering quietly to…
Color me surprised. An upstart theater company has kicked off the new season with a real long shot: an out-of-the-box smash delivered by a stageful of amateurs and first-timers. Is What It Is Theater’s production of Studs Terkel’s Working shouldn’t work at all. This company had never produced a musical,…
Michael Crow has arrived. The former executive vice provost and science policy expert from Columbia University is now Arizona State University’s new president. Crow doesn’t mind discussing his successes in stuffing Columbia’s coffers (the college consistently ranked first or second among all U.S. universities in income from patent and license…
I nearly drive my car straight into Portland’s, the downtown bar and restaurant where I’ve arranged to meet local craftsman Jim Bell. My near crash is caused by the scary tangle of life-size mannequins hanging out of an oddball vehicle (Bell tells me later it’s a three-quarter-ton 1952 Dodge M-27…
Twenty miles north of Kearny, Arizona, a pistachio tree grows. Strangers turn up from time to time to trim its branches, or to snip away the weeds growing near its trunk. Some leave notes or handwritten poems that, like the tree, are dedicated to the memory of Ladmo, the late,…
Every high-energy minute counts with Jeff Barthold. He’s already networking when I arrive at Maloney’s, one of several Valley bars that carry Liquid X, the “euphoric party energy drink” that Barthold invented. He’s here to tell me about the caffeine-infused beverage, which he hopes will give Red Bull, the energy…
The cocktail waiter at Barmouche is staring longingly out the window at Laurie Notaro. “Hey, man,” he says to me. “That’s Laurie Notaro, huh?” I assure him that it is. “Wow,” he says. “I love Laurie Notaro. I read her all the time. She’s absolutely the best. Hey, how come…
Tim Hart is having a hard time concentrating. He wants to tell me the complex, nasty story of how his Ensemble Theater Company got booted from its performance space — a story rife with bomb threats, infighting, even a Seinfeld connection. But the story isn’t coming easy to Hart, who…
All signs were pointing to a lousy evening of theater, even before the curtain came up on White Byson Theater Company’s production of Remember My Name. The show’s publicist phoned me at 7 a.m. the day before, to ask that I not review the show — never a good sign…
Her name sounds like the answers to a multiple-choice question on a catechism quiz, but the Reverend Doctor Lady Bishop swears she’s all of the above. She is America’s premier voodoo priestess, a messenger of a mélange of disciplines including black magic and Mormonism who’s here, she explains, to “work…
I’m the only adult male at the Mason Jar tonight who isn’t wearing a black tee shirt with sawed-off sleeves. My Kenneth Cole polo sweater marks me as a loser, but at least I’m a loser waiting for a former punk goddess to join me for drinks. Lucy LaMode, once…
