Follow Friday: Funny Tweeters From #PHX

With Stand Up Live opening up a permanent home this weekend in downtown Phoenix, we bring you a list of our own favorite (and pretty damn funny) tweeters from Arizona.After the jump, meet a few — in no particular order — that we recommend you follow … if you ever…

Phoenix Theatre’s Nine Might Just Be a 10

In Venice, I’ve looked for evidence of movies I’ve seen that are set there. I’m always peeking into shop windows, looking for the timepiece Capucine brings to Rex Harrison in The Honey Pot, and I once spent an entire morning sitting opposite the little antique store where Rossano Brazzi worked…

Lenin’s Embalmers Is Dead on Arrival at Theatre Artists Studio

I have seen Theatre Artists Studio’s Lenin’s Embalmers, and, oh, the wisecracks I could make about dead comedies and performances by walking corpses. I’ll refrain. But I will say this: I can’t imagine who could make this tedious black comedy shine. At just under two hours, it’s a full 90…

Octopus from Stray Cat Theatre

Two things you have to know right away: Tonight, Thursday, April 7, student tickets to Octopus are $10 with ID. (!!!) And Friday and Saturday nights, April 8 and 9, playwright Steve Yockey will be in town and at the theater for a post-Octopus discussion with director Ron May and…

festina lente Presents Two Powerful Solo Shows at PHX:fringe Festival

If you’re available to really immerse yourself in this year’s PHX:fringe Festival, starting Friday, April 1, a bicycle might be the way to go, one’s mobility permitting. No performance venue is far from the Roosevelt-to-McDowell corridor, between Seventh Street and 13th Avenue, and it’s getting too warm out to sprint…

The Blue Room at Nearly Naked Theatre

Arthur Schnitzler was both a doctor and a playwright (as was Anton Chekhov) in turn-of-the-20th-century Vienna. His play Reigen, most commonly known as La Ronde, is about a lot of things, but it’s partly about how easy it is to spread syphilis.Demonstrating that lesson involves a lot of sexual promiscuity,…

Sex and the Second City Is Neither Sexy Nor Funny

Last Thursday night, shortly before the curtain rose on Arizona Theatre Company’s Sex and the Second City Version 2.0, a young woman approached me and the three other theater critics with whom I was chatting in the lobby. “Excuse me,” she said, waving a camera at us. “Do you mind…

Ten Chimneys‘ Tale of Broadway Royalty Charms and Challenges

Massive theater geek that I am, no one had to tell me twice to attend Arizona Theatre Company’s newly commissioned unknown quantity, Ten Chimneys, once I’d learned it’s about Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, the renowned golden couple of the 20th-century stage, retreating to their summer place in Wisconsin to…

Stage: My Fair Lady

When faced with a dinner theater version of My Fair Lady, the least a theater critic can be is…well, fair. Such is the case in this week’s “Stage” column in which Robrt L. Pela recounts his experience with Arizona Broadway Theatre’s version of Lady. Robrt L. Pela on Arizona Broadway…

Being Fair to Arizona Broadway Theatre’s My Fair Lady

Dearest Dear, I’m writing to apologize for having taken you to a dinner theater production of My Fair Lady. To be fair, you did agree to go with me to Arizona Broadway Theatre. And we were both excited to see Jeannie Shubitz in the lead — that’s why we were…