CURSE AND EFFECT

In the Western storytelling tradition, going back at least as far as King Midas, “gold” is more or less a synonym for “trouble.” It’s the symbol for everything for which you should be careful of wishing, because you might get it. You’ll only be able to keep it by losing…

RANT’S TOMB

It’s moan and groan time at the Herberger again. We’ve got yet another message/relationship play, this time called Sight Unseen. Written by Donald Margulies and staged by the Arizona Jewish Theatre Company, it treats us to two hours of four dysfunctional characters explaining how they feel about each other. It’s…

FRAYED KNOT

Rope, presented by Banzai Entertainment at Planet Earth Multi-Cultural Theatre, is a murder mystery but not a whodunit–the play begins with the two murderers strangling their victim, hiding his body, then serving their guests a buffet from the trunk into which the corpse has been stuffed. The story examines why…

TROPICAL ANESTHESIA

God, we’re sometimes told, is in the details. Most of us have had some epiphanic moment or another at which it seemed likely that this notion was true, but the Vietnamese period film The Scent of Green Papaya may lend it a different kind of credence. It’s intensely focused on…

X WITHOUT GUILT

Threesome has the look, and the all-important soundtrack, of another entry in the Generation X youth-movie sweepstakes, along the lines of Reality Bites. It’s a comedy set on a college campus, and it has just three characters of any significance–dormmates Eddy (Josh Charles), Stuart (Stephen Baldwin) and Alex (Lara Flynn…

STRIKE THREE, YOU’RE ART

Maybe I’m just getting old. Or maybe Art Detour is just getting too complicated. After spending seven straight hours boarding buses and pounding the pavement on Art Detour Sunday, I still didn’t see half of the stops on the two separate art routes offered. And much of what I saw…

STRIKE THREE, YOU’RE ART

Maybe I’m just getting old. Or maybe Art Detour is just getting too complicated. After spending seven straight hours boarding buses and pounding the pavement on Art Detour Sunday, I still didn’t see half of the stops on the two separate art routes offered. And much of what I saw…

STRIKE THREE, YOU’RE ART

Maybe I’m just getting old. Or maybe Art Detour is just getting too complicated. After spending seven straight hours boarding buses and pounding the pavement on Art Detour Sunday, I still didn’t see half of the stops on the two separate art routes offered. And much of what I saw…

VICTORIAN PRINCIPLE

Hugh Grant, star of Mike Newell’s current Four Weddings and a Funeral, is also the star of the Australian John Duigan’s new Sirens. Grant plays a young, vaguely liberal English vicar who is sent by the bishop of Sydney to the outback. His mission is to persuade painter Norman Lindsay…

SOUTH AMERICAN GOTHIC

Chilean novelist Isabel Allende’s epic The House of the Spirits is set in a fictitious South American country. About the most charitable term one can apply to the South American setting of the film version, which was directed by a Dane and shot in Denmark and Portugal, is that it’s…

VICTORIAN PRINCIPLE

Hugh Grant, star of Mike Newell’s current Four Weddings and a Funeral, is also the star of the Australian John Duigan’s new Sirens. Grant plays a young, vaguely liberal English vicar who is sent by the bishop of Sydney to the outback. His mission is to persuade painter Norman Lindsay…

VICTORIAN PRINCIPLE

Hugh Grant, star of Mike Newell’s current Four Weddings and a Funeral, is also the star of the Australian John Duigan’s new Sirens. Grant plays a young, vaguely liberal English vicar who is sent by the bishop of Sydney to the outback. His mission is to persuade painter Norman Lindsay…

SOUTH AMERICAN GOTHIC

Chilean novelist Isabel Allende’s epic The House of the Spirits is set in a fictitious South American country. About the most charitable term one can apply to the South American setting of the film version, which was directed by a Dane and shot in Denmark and Portugal, is that it’s…

SOUTH AMERICAN GOTHIC

Chilean novelist Isabel Allende’s epic The House of the Spirits is set in a fictitious South American country. About the most charitable term one can apply to the South American setting of the film version, which was directed by a Dane and shot in Denmark and Portugal, is that it’s…

GREAT SOCIETY’S CHILD

The Good Times Are Killing Me was a surprise off-Broadway hit a few years back, and the autobiographical play by syndicated cartoonist Lynda Barry–first a novel–tries to capture the mid-1960s Great Society frame of mind, when blacks were moving into aging, middle-class, white neighborhoods. Barry’s voice is that of Edna,…

GREAT SOCIETY’S CHILD

The Good Times Are Killing Me was a surprise off-Broadway hit a few years back, and the autobiographical play by syndicated cartoonist Lynda Barry–first a novel–tries to capture the mid-1960s Great Society frame of mind, when blacks were moving into aging, middle-class, white neighborhoods. Barry’s voice is that of Edna,…

THE BEATEN PATH

Lieutenant Commander Orlando is the kind of guy who deserves to be shot in the back. He tortures political prisoners by day, and just when his wife decides to take a trip, he inconveniences her by borrowing the strap from her suitcase to tie up his sex slave. Maria Irene…

THE BEATEN PATH

Lieutenant Commander Orlando is the kind of guy who deserves to be shot in the back. He tortures political prisoners by day, and just when his wife decides to take a trip, he inconveniences her by borrowing the strap from her suitcase to tie up his sex slave. Maria Irene…

GREAT SOCIETY’S CHILD

The Good Times Are Killing Me was a surprise off-Broadway hit a few years back, and the autobiographical play by syndicated cartoonist Lynda Barry–first a novel–tries to capture the mid-1960s Great Society frame of mind, when blacks were moving into aging, middle-class, white neighborhoods. Barry’s voice is that of Edna,…

THE BEATEN PATH

Lieutenant Commander Orlando is the kind of guy who deserves to be shot in the back. He tortures political prisoners by day, and just when his wife decides to take a trip, he inconveniences her by borrowing the strap from her suitcase to tie up his sex slave. Maria Irene…

THE BEATEN PATH

Lieutenant Commander Orlando is the kind of guy who deserves to be shot in the back. He tortures political prisoners by day, and just when his wife decides to take a trip, he inconveniences her by borrowing the strap from her suitcase to tie up his sex slave. Maria Irene…

GREAT SOCIETY’S CHILD

The Good Times Are Killing Me was a surprise off-Broadway hit a few years back, and the autobiographical play by syndicated cartoonist Lynda Barry–first a novel–tries to capture the mid-1960s Great Society frame of mind, when blacks were moving into aging, middle-class, white neighborhoods. Barry’s voice is that of Edna,…