the ice is right The Wizard of Oz on Ice: Dorothy and pals don skates in this chilly touring extravaganza, based on the L. Frank Baum fairy tale. Jeri Campbell stars as the Kansas farm girl, and Bobby McFerrin provides the speaking and singing voices for all of the principals…
According to artist Hans Haacke, all art becomes purely nostalgic after a period of ten years. Haacke’s own 1991 mixed-media sculpture “Collateral,” included in Phoenix Art Museum’s “Old Glory: The American Flag in Contemporary Art,” falls premature victim to this gloomy, but fairly accurate, pronouncement about the staying power of…
Inspector, I confess! I love stage mysteries and thrillers. From the time, as a youngster, I saw the film classic Witness for the Prosecution–based on Agatha Christie’s play–I’ve been guilty of harboring a secret thrill for the mechanical intricacies of a spine-tingling whodunit. Phoenix Theatre has mounted one of the…
Safely ensconced in its comfortable new home in a strip mall at 99th Avenue and Peoria Avenue, Theater Works is presenting Robert Bolt’s turgid, talky historical pageant A Man for All Seasons. In its new location, the theatre has painstakingly reproduced the exact layout of the bucolic barn it previously…
Ira Levin succinctly defined the stage thriller as “the one-set, five-character moneymaker.” That’s the basic design of Faithful, Paul Mazursky’s film of Chazz Palminteri’s play, adapted for the screen by and co-starring the author. Apart from a few expendable bit players, there are five characters and, except for a few…
At the end of Sgt. Bilko, there’s a gag title thanking the U.S. Army “for its total lack of cooperation” in the making of the film. Presumably, the Army felt it couldn’t very well officially sanction a movie in which the hero was a gleeful, unrepentantly corrupt master sergeant who…
hop to it The Bunny Brigade and Peter Rabbit: Great Arizona Puppet Theater presents final performances of the Easter-specific Brigade at 10 a.m. Thursday, April 4; 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Friday, April 5; 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Saturday, April 6; and 2 p.m. Sunday, April 7, at the…
thursday april 4 Phoenix Firebirds: The AAA affiliate of baseball’s San Francisco Giants, led by new skipper and former Firebird infielder Ron Wotus, opens its 33rd Pacific Coast League season with a home stand against the Salt Lake Buzz. Games are scheduled at 7:05 p.m. Thursday, April 4; 7:05 p.m…
A Coen brothers movie wouldn’t be a Coen brothers movie if it didn’t take a snide view of its characters, and the oddball filmmaking team’s latest, Fargo, is no exception. The lads dearly love a protagonist they can humiliate, and the contempt they show for Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy)…
The intense need of so many adopted children to connect with their biological families can be puzzling to those of us not in their shoes. Reengaging with the people who gave you up as a baby has the potential to damage one’s link with the people who then took you…
hop to it Easter County Fair: Duncan’s Sunfresh Farms, 17203 West Indian School in Goodyear, hosts a celebration of the season from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, March 30; and the same hours Sunday, March 31. Highlights include an appearance by the Easter Bunny, an egg hunt, an Easter-themed…
thursday march 28 An Inspector Calls: Critic Harvey S.Karsten described Royal National Theatre’s touring production of J.B. Priestley’s thriller as “Mad Max meets Masterpiece Theatre.” The Tony Award winner, a noir-inspired mystery set in Edwardian England, centers on a snobbish British family and itsmembers’ indirect complicity in the suicide of…
Deposit all linear thinking at the shadowy portals of “Buried Secrets,” Bill Viola’s five-part, multimedia installation at ASU Art Museum at Nelson Fine Arts Center. That’s because this potent visual and auditory experience is consciously designed to be understood on a purely intuitive plane, a level on which just about…
When the two cast members in Actors Theatre of Phoenix’s production of David Mamet’s Oleanna start talking to each other in act one, it sounds forced. Away they chatter in the herky-jerky verbal rhythms for which Mamet is so celebrated, finishing each other’s sentences and not finishing their own, taking…
In Two Much, Antonio Banderas plays a financially strapped rascal of a Miami art gallery owner who poses as twin brothers–one brainy, one a smooth operator–in order to romance two rich, gorgeous sisters (Daryl Hannah and Melanie Griffith). His character’s name is “Arturo Dodge,” which may give you an idea…
If you’re planning to see Executive Decision, you may wish to stop reading this for now, as I’m going to reveal a significant plot development within the next couple of paragraphs. I don’t do this to spoil anyone’s fun–I don’t think it will–but because I think the twist isn’t a…
thursday march 21 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”…
heads and tales Roadbug and Junebug/Jack: Whitesburg, Kentucky-based troupe Roadside Theater and New Orleans company Junebug Productions have joined forces for these educational and entertaining presentations, which will be performed at separate venues. Roadbug, acompilation of “stories and songs from two cultures,” starts at 8 p.m. Thursday, March 21, at…
It’s doubtful that any country ever produced finer socialists than those of Great Britain–of the literary sort, at least. Perhaps because the class system is so plainly laid out on that little island, writers like Shaw and Orwell could oppose, even hate, the ruling class without failing to recognize that…
No genre should ever be written off completely. Just when you think there’s no room for any more hipster crime films of the Tarantino stripe, along comes Bottle Rocket, a crazy and wonderful little picture that reinvents caper comedy by bouncing its conventions off real life. This startling feature debut…
The birdcage has one of the better opening shots in recent movies. To the accompaniment of “We Are Family,” the camera comes hurtling in over the ocean at night toward a glittering Florida skyline, flies over the beach, straight up to the front door of the title nightclub, and then…
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…
