little shoulders Chicago Fest: Six shows by ageless kiddy star Bozo the Clown highlight Mesa’s annual salute to the City of Big Shoulders, scheduled for 3 to 10 p.m. Friday, March 15; 3 to 10 p.m. Saturday, March 16; and noon to 4p.m. Sunday, March 17, at HoHoKam Park, 1235…
thursday march 14 Cactus League Baseball: They struck out in 1995, but the real boys of spring are back for this year’s slate of preseason games, which continues daily, through Friday, March 29, at venues in the Valley and Tucson. For the schedule and other information, see the “Cactus League”…
When Martin Sherman’s play Bent premiered in England in 1977, the plight of homosexuals in the Holocaust was a little-discussed episode of the century’s history. In the two decades since, the pink triangle which gays were made to wear in the concentration camps–the equivalent of the yellow star worn by…
Canadian director Patricia Rozema’s sweet lesbian romance When Night Is Falling begins with the heroine, Camille, coming home to find her lovely little dog missing. She goes looking for him, and finds his pitiful, limp form lying in an alleyway. Unable to bear the thought of burying him yet, she…
Joe (Michael Maloney), a long-out-of-work London actor, is so hard-up to feel good about his career that he decides to take a sort of last stand against failure. He borrows a small stake from his agent (Joan Collins) to stage a low-budget Christmas production, starring himself, at a church in…
at the concert “Peter and the Wolf”: Clotilde Otranto conducts Phoenix Symphony in a performance of the Prokofiev classic at this event, the third entry in the orchestra’s Family Concert Series. Magic Circle Mime Company is also featured in the show, which starts at 2:30 p.m. Sunday, March 10, at…
thursday march 7 Cactus League Baseball: They struck out in 1995, but the real boys of spring are back for this year’s slate of preseason games, which continues daily, through Friday, March 29, at venues in the Valley and Tucson (two matches are planned in Las Vegas, Nevada, this week)…
“Image Conscious,” a juried photography show geared toward altered and experimental work, proves yet again that there’s viable photographic life after Ansel Adams and his arcane Zone System–and that it’s alive, well and being shown in, of all places, Mesa, Arizona–specifically at Galeria Mesa. “Our focus for this particular show,…
“Nothing human disgusts me, unless it’s unkind or violent.” So remarks Hannah Jelkes, the spinster-paragon of The Night of the Iguana. She could be speaking for her creator, Tennessee Williams. That’s very likely just what Williams had in mind–reading or watching him, one always has the feeling that Williams saw…
Phoenix Theatre’s moving Arizona premiere of Miss Evers’ Boys puts achingly human faces on a truly brutal episode of American racism. The year is 1932, and a group of black men in Macon County, Alabama, is chosen for a seemingly benevolent government study on how best to treat syphilis patients…
While watching Unforgettable, the third feature from that startling spinner of contemporary noir director John Dahl, I thought of the same cheap crack that every film critic in the country will make if unimpressed by the film: It’s forgettable. Indeed, it is not especially memorable. Certainly it isn’t upto the…
Julia Roberts plays the title role in Mary Reilly, roughly the bazillionth film to retell Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr.Hyde (see the related story on page 62). This one, from a novel by Valerie Martin, takes this apparently inexhaustible tale from a woman’s point…
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde began life when Robert Louis Stevenson, living in Edinburgh and broke, wrote the story as a potboiler. It’s said that the original draft so horrified his wife that he burned it and then–in a fit of commercial savvy–rewrote it. He structured the story as a…
small world “Exclusively Little”: This annual event for children age 6 and under features arts, crafts, face painting, a teddy-bear contest and more. It’s scheduled for noon to 3 p.m. Saturday, March 2, at McCormick Railroad Park, 7301 East Indian Bend in Scottsdale. Admission is $3 per kid. For details…
thursday february 29 Cactus League Baseball: They struck out in 1995, but the real boys of spring return for this year’s slate of preseason games, which starts with a couple of games at 1:05 p.m. Thursday, February 29: the California Angels host California State University at Fullerton at Tempe Diablo…
When Del Webb Corporation brought plans for its huge New River development to Maricopa County for approval early last year, the ensuing donnybrook was about as lively and entertaining as land planning gets. On one side was Del Webb, assuring the county that its 5,661-acre community–the Villages at Desert Hills–would…
One-act plays aren’t produced often, and that’s ironic given that the half-hour television sitcom has become America’s most popular dramatic form. That may be why the latest Black Theatre Troupe offering is so refreshing. Its current evening of oneacts provides comic and emotional extremes that would give Friends and Martin…
Although his film career prior to Richard III has consisted largely of forgettable supporting roles in films such as The Shadow, The Keep and Last Action Hero, Sir Ian McKellen has been one of the leading lights of the British classical stage since the early 1960s. Acclaimed in most of…
Jackie Chan is the Richard Clayderman of movie stars–he’s popular all over the world, and a cult favorite even in this country, but for the mainstream American audience he needs a letter of introduction. For Clayderman, that letter was the TV ads for his albums; for Chan, star of dozens…
thursday february 22 Don Pasquale: Arizona Opera continues its silver-anniversary season with Donizetti’s comic opera about the mutually exclusive properties of love and marriage. Performances are at 7:30 p.m. Thursday through Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday at Symphony Hall, 225 East Adams. Shows are sung in Italian, with English surtitles…
bone to run Wiener Dog Nationals 1996: The second annual running of the amateur hounds–specifically, dachshunds and bassets–is slated for Saturday at Phoenix Greyhound Park, 3801 East Washington. Various hot-dog heats take place between the regular greyhound competitions, which begin at 7:30 p.m.; the gates open at 6. General admission…
If you are desperate for some postmodern deconstruction or hankering for angst-ridden art, don’t bother to stop in at Lisa Sette Gallery to see “In the Garden,” the current exhibition of sculptural and two-dimensional mixed-media work by Valley artist Mayme Kratz. You won’t find much of either in the quiet,…
