It’s a testimony to the talents of director Marshall W. Mason that the opening-night crowd for King Lear stayed to cheer his achievement. Because, despite Mason’s expertise, this Arizona State University production of Shakespeare’s most famous tragedy trades each triumph for a disaster: While the sets are wonderful, the costumes…
White Picket Fence is a show that’s built for failure. For starters, it’s a dramedy about race relations in which the principal characters are two 8-year-old boys played by grown men. In its premier production, the play is being co-produced by competing theater companies, a tricky proposition for which there’s…
It’s ironic that Phoenix Theatre is making such a big deal of Crooners–unlike the company’s other musical hits Forever Plaid and The Taffetas–being a book musical rather than a revue. Press materials stress that Crooners does more than just string together popular songs of a certain era; it tells a…
Our grandparents might consider male transvestism a daring subject for a drama. The rest of us, having seen plenty of this sort of stuff on TV talk shows, attend a program like PlayWright’s Theatre’s The Wedding Present with hopes for a new take on a tired topic. Unfortunately, this production,…
Abe Jacob, one of the country’s leading theatrical sound designers, has a complaint. Everyone’s a would-be expert about sound. “In a play, especially a musical, the sound is always criticized in one of two ways–either it’s too loud, or why do you need sound at all?” he grumbles. “I never…
At first glance, the lineup of this season’s holiday plays looks encouraging. In tandem with the usual sackful of Christmas Carols that gets trotted out every December, several small local companies are presenting alternative–sometimes even outrageous-sounding–holiday fare. About a third of the dozen Christmas plays treading the boards this month…
Remember that attraction at Disneyland that features a creaky, prosthetic Abe Lincoln who talks about his life and rattles off an animatronic Emancipation Proclamation? That’s what Ben Tyler’s Goldwater: Mr. Conservative could easily have been. But thanks to some unsentimental writing, this 90-minute, one-man commemoration of Arizona’s best-known former senator…
Despite the reputations of Death of a Salesman and The Crucible, it’s doubtful that Arthur Miller ever really topped his first major play, 1947’s All My Sons. With the possible exception of his 1964 Incident at Vichy–another neglected work–Miller hasn’t marshaled so much power with so little windiness. The current…
Athol Fugard has written some of the most important plays of our time. His Master Harold . . . and the boys and My Children! My Africa! have presented hard evidence of how South African politics have pried apart the lives of its people. But with the end of apartheid,…
The Ensemble Theatre’s production of Edward Albee’s The Zoo Story is the sort of theater we see precious little of these days: a spare, uncluttered production that emphasizes a well-written story and some good, solid acting. This small, unpretentious company was founded last year by Arizona State University theater alumni,…
Among this month’s local events commemorating the 50th anniversary of the State of Israel is a pair of thoughtful, Jewish-themed theater productions. Both detail the Nazi oppression of the Jews during World War II, and both are presented by companies funding the shows either with grant money from Jewish organizations…
It is a few minutes before midnight on a recent Saturday and I am about to relive my childhood in a dark, smelly moviehouse in Tempe. Now surrounded by people half my age who are excited just to be awake at this hour, I required an afternoon nap just to…
All through Shakespeare’s great, self-questioning war whoop Henry V, the Chorus keeps coming on, apologizing to the audience for the theater’s limitations in presenting grand scenes like battles or troop movements. It’s false modesty, of course–Shakespeare, the “bending author” through whose “rough and all-unable pen” (fishing for compliments, are we,…
“Gay men are supposed to be this highly evolved, artistic band of people,” says theater producer Christopher Wynn, “so how come our plays are sold to us with the promise of 10 swinging dicks onstage at every performance?” Wynn, an actor and former Phoenician, moved to Manhattan four years ago…
You can recognize a lady by her elegant hair/but a genuine princess is exceedingly rare . . . –Once Upon a Mattress In the states, we make up for not having our own actual royalty by slinging regal titles as insults: Welfare Queen, Jewish American Princess, royal pain–even kingpin has…
When Neil Simon’s name appears in print, it’s usually set off by one of those nearly epigrammatic phrases like “a name that is synonymous with American comedy,” or “Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright.” Given the number of Simon plays that was produced here last year, his name might well have been appended…
“Can’t you feel the weirdness?” asks Brandon Scott. I’m in the grand ballroom of the Crown Plaza Hotel in downtown Phoenix, in the company of nearly 200 people who have gathered for a sorcerer’s apprenticeship. A large percentage are 50ish, balding guys with ponytails, and 40ish women in oversize tie-dye…
Gay jokes are nothing new to comedian Scott Thompson. After all, he’s gay and he tells jokes. But Thompson, a charter member of TV’s Kids in the Hall and a part-time player on HBO’s The Larry Sanders Show, sometimes tells gay jokes that aren’t very funny, at least not to…
In 1978, the building at the southeast corner of Scottsdale Road and Shea Boulevard was known as the Windmill Dinner Theatre. The name quickly paints the picture: rubber chicken followed by broad bedroom farce. The snowbird audience members laugh dutifully through act one and spend act two nodding into their…
Last week, two very different plays about ethnic minority cultures opened at local Equity houses. August Wilson’s brilliant Seven Guitars is a study of 1940s black America haunted by the author’s recent statements against multicultural theater, while Our Lady of the Tortilla is Latino playwright Luis Santiero’s satire of old…
The Actors Group production of Love! Valour! Compassion!, Terrence McNally’s Tony Award-winning epic about friendship and fealty told by a lot of frequently naked gay men, is a manipulative, richly comedic three-act that probably plays better to a gay crowd than a straight one. Its frequent references to campy old…
College theater depends heavily on the largess of its audience. It may be fair to expect a workmanlike performance from an Equity player, or to grumble about a crummy community-theater production, but it’s unreasonable to expect greatness from theater-student shows. Student productions–the bulk of whose audiences are usually blood-related–beg our…
