I’ve been dodging invitations to see the Oxymoron’Z improvisational troupe for nearly a decade. The materials, faxed or sometimes mailed to me by the group’s founder and guru, Louis Anthony Russo, promised “great big laughs” and “spontaneous fun.” It sounded to me like quite the opposite, and year after year…
Linda Eder sounds bored. If what her publicist says is true, Eder would probably rather be out riding one of her horses than yakking long-distance with another journalist about her career as a fabulous Broadway star. Perhaps in the hope of speeding up the interview, Eder quickly mentions her upcoming…
The enormous pleasure of American Safari begins even before the curtain rings up on this nostalgic pseudo-comedy. As playgoers settle into their seats at the Herberger Theater Center’s Stage West, a picnic table sails dreamily around the stage, attended by a smiling couple who silently toast one another with Kool-Aid…
Deep in the heart of Scottsdale, tucked into a forgotten strip mall, tiny Metro Theatre — home to the often brilliant but financially troubled Ensemble Theatre — is bustling tonight. While Ensemble shows generally play to half-empty houses, this second-night performance is teeming, its capacity crowd spilling onto the makeshift…
If fame is fleeting, it also has its own geography. While New York types and theater buffs the world over revere Stephen Schwartz as a superstar, much of the rest of the world has never heard of him. Although he’s among the most successful composers working today, and despite a…
Halfway through Black Theatre Troupe’s Waiting to Be Invited, I decided that the three women seated in front of me were more entertaining than the three women emoting up onstage. The actors were giving it their all, but turgid direction and a talky script were doing them in. My trio…
If there’s a heaven, it surely contains a room with David Ira Goldstein’s name on the door. Goldstein has, with Arizona Theatre Company’s new production of H.M.S. Pinafore, resuscitated Gilbert and Sullivan’s most beguiling operetta without deflating its integrity. The director has done away with the stale, mannered nonsense that…
A recent decision to stop using mechanized music instead of live musicians in some theater productions has temporarily healed a rift between artists and producers here. Theatre League, a regional troupe that stages its Phoenix shows at the Orpheum, announced last week that it will no longer use “virtual musicians”…
It’s no wonder that actress Cathy Dresbach looked disappointed during her second night curtain call for In Mixed Company’s The Mineola Twins. Although she’d delivered a fine performance in a splendid production, much of Paula Vogel’s knotty dialogue had fallen, that night, on deaf ears. The audience had responded tentatively…
Children of Eden
Despite the recent collapse of several small theaters, new playhouses are springing up like Christmas tree lots. Would that these companies were offering something other than a handful of interesting performances in shows no discerning playgoer will want to see.Hidden away in a tiny, unmarked storefront, D and D and…
Crumbs From the Table of Joy is far more insightful and entertaining than the archetypal African-American history play. I expected a wistful, nostalgic comedy, but Lynn Nottage’s rarely sentimental story — which Arizona Theatre Company opened at the Herberger last week — is a complex memory play that overcomes its…
It’s 1942, the final year of John Barrymore’s life, and we’ve joined the once-great actor in a tiny playhouse, where he’s come to recapture his former glory. Instead, he delivers a sodden recitation of his days as the clown prince of Broadway’s Royal Family, recalling many of his famous friends…
I stopped attending certain of our “little” theaters some years back. After seeing my share of creaky standards wrecked by bad acting and inept direction, I figured I’d done my duty and deserved a reprieve. But Phoenix Theatre has ended my respite with its current production of Arsenic and Old…
Maybe it’s because I’m an atheist. Or perhaps I’m tired of cheap, humorless rehashes of last year’s big moneymaker. Then again, it might have been the dimwitted material and unsubtle setups. Whatever the reason, I loathed nearly every moment of The Bible: The Complete Word of God (Abridged). Chances are,…
Grace and Glorie
A few years ago, I visited the home of a local museum curator. He took me on a tour of his private collection, a series of dreary sculptures and oversize canvases and a scary assemblage made from old mascara brushes and plastic Dairy Queen spoons that he swore represented the…
Mention Betty Buckley to a half-dozen people and you’ll hear about six different performers. When I told a colleague that Buckley was bringing her one-woman show to town this weekend, he remarked, “Oh, right, that lady from Eight Is Enough.” The doorman in my building knows her as the star…
As yet another theater season gets under way, publicists are doing their annual best to tempt us with their ticketed entertainments. But no one is heralding the amusing performances presented by those in attendance; while the cast and crew of every production are acknowledged in the program, those of us…
Phoenix Theatre is celebrating its 80th anniversary by resuscitating a lot of tried-and-true favorites — the sort of popular fare normally confined to community theater and junior-college companies that cater to a “neighborhood” crowd. But this Equity house’s current production of Man of La Mancha is so perfectly realized and…
A half-hour before the opening-night curtain rises on Dale Wasserman’s new show, the man himself is nowhere to be found. The producer of the show and several of Wasserman’s biggest fans are scouring the lobby of tiny Stagebrush Theatre, hoping to wish him well and congratulate him on his celebrated…
The title of Planet Earth Theatre’s most recent show proved to be prophetic. Only a few days after the final performance of In Heat, the 15-year-old company was in hot water with its landlord, who served notice to evict the troupe from its downtown warehouse home after a complaint was…
