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
Late in the 19th century, Marius Petipa choreographed a confectionery story ballet on Tchaikovsky’s music based on E.T.A. Hoffmann’s tale The Nutcracker. Russian choreographer George Balanchine’s version has been enchanting children and adults since 1954. Yet he is one Russian not represented in the Nutcrackers around the Valley this holiday…
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…
After kicking off with a cheerily conventional, highly entertaining Barber of Seville, Arizona Opera kicks its season into high gear with a superb, much less conventional staging of Carmen. Maybe because of its lurid tabloid plot, Bizet’s masterpiece, regarded as scandalous when it premièred just months before the composer’s death…
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,…
The sky to the north flashed with white lightning as I pulled off the 101 onto McDowell and turned into the rutted driveway. It was after 10 on a school night, so parking was easy and the crowd was sparse. The perfect time to check out Arizona’s Original Scream Park.Scaring…
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…
Twenty bars in, you couldn’t help but smirk. Or I couldn’t, anyway. The overture to Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville), with which Arizona Opera kicked off its season last weekend, was executed with lightness and verve under the baton of Kirk Muspratt. The Tucson audience sat…
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…
No more dancing around the issue: Kinga Nijinsky Gaspers wants to set the record straight about her grandmother, Romola Flavia Ludowika Polyxena DePulzky-Nijinsky. Better known as the wife of world-renowned dancer Vaslav Nijinsky, Romola is mostly remembered as the reason Nijinsky was institutionalized at the height of his career. Gaspers…
The hottest thing about In Heat is the theater in which it’s playing. Sweatbox conditions prevail at Planet Earth, a fusty warehouse with no central cooling. I left the theater lightheaded, but not with glee over the program I’d just seen.A musical revue about love and sex, In Heat means…
John Sankovich hasn’t once raised his voice, yet it booms above the clank and roar of the crowded restaurant where he’s dining. He’s discussing the 30-plus years he’s spent pacing local stages and — after a long hiatus — his return as the lead for In Mixed Company’s controversial Quills.Above…
There’s an old story, perhaps apocryphal, about the original 1914 production of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. Apparently, Mrs. Patrick Campbell, the celebrated actress who originated the role of Eliza Doolittle, stopped the show one night. Stepping to the footlights halfway through her performance, she called out, “If Mr. Shaw does…
