With Ruby Christmas, Planet Earth Multi-Cultural Theatre gives us another fine production. No frills, and not a false step in the dance: These people make theatre look as easy and natural as sliding into old jeans. Playwright Sarah Dreher transports us to a conjoint Christmas and 40th-wedding-anniversary celebration at the…
Black Theatre Troupe is taking people to church with Mama, I Want to Sing, the first production of its silver-anniversary season. With a program that reads more like a Sunday bulletin than a playbill, this production got a hearty “amen” from the opening-night audience: The powerful musical brought the full…
It’s the end of an era. Theater Works, arguably the best community theatre in the Valley, must be out of its Glendale facility by December 31. The troupe plans to move to a new site at 91st Avenue and Thunderbird in Peoria, but that venue won’t be ready until next…
The American Heritage Dictionary defines “creation” as “an original product of human invention or artistic imagination.” One of the things that makes creation in art so exciting is that you never know quite where the experience will take you. The Arizona State University theatre department’s current presentation of two one-acts–Angel…
Remember the days before political correctness, the days when we weren’t afraid to talk topeople for fear of offending them? Well, Arizona Jewish Theatre Company is presenting a delightful, slice-of-life comedy, King of the Kosher Grocers, which serves to remind us of those bygone days. Originally produced in 1992, Joe…
Arizona Theatre Company opens its 1995-96 season with an intriguing, eclectic version of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In an attempt to bring Shakespeare to a short-attention-span audience, director David Ira Goldstein has used scores of nontraditional approaches to Shakespeare’s work. The result is a must-see for Valley theatregoers. A…
Sporting some of the most lackluster acting this Valley has seen in a long time, the current play by Phoenix Theatre has proven that a wonderful story and a well-crafted script cannot save poor execution onstage. PT’s second production of this season, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, turns into…
Even in this fast-paced world of ours, are we ever able to embrace change? Imagine going back to 1948 to a small Kentucky town in the Cumberland River Gorge, to find people who know little of change. These are the characters currently being examined by Arizona State University’s theatre department…
To celebrate its 45th theatre season, Grand Canyon University continues to emphasize the works of Shakespeare with the pastoral comedy As You Like It. This whimsical tale of love is filled with all the unbelievable characters and situations we have now come to expect on TV sitcoms, but they are…
Theater Works has scored solidly with a winning production of John Guare’s darkly deranged comedy The House of Blue Leaves. Guare is the author of two pieces I have admired very much, the film Atlantic City and the play and film Six Degrees of Separation. But despite two acclaimed New…
Actors Theatre of Phoenix’s production of Ruthless! The Musical continues through Sunday, October 22, in Center Stage at Herberger Theater Center, 222 East Monroe. Eureka! Theatre Company’s production of The Woolgatherer continues through Saturday, October 21, at 7th Street Theater, 3302 North Seventh Street. For more details, see Theatre listing…
Remember camp? It was that over-the-top ironic sensibility that gained favor in the Sixties, and one assumed that, like Dada, in time it would find its way to the dung heap of history. But here we are 30 years later, and some people still have not lost their taste for…
“Maria! I just met a girl named Maria/And suddenly that name will never be the same to me.” Her real name is Katherine Stewart, and she is the main reason to see the revival of West Side Story, currently stirring up the sleepy suburbs at Mesa Amphitheatre. West Side Story…
The Eureka! Theatre Company has shown itself to be a bastion of controlled-risk theatre. Founder and artistic director Evann Wilcosky has consistently produced top-quality productions of plays most theatres in the Valley won’t touch. Last season’s roster included Christopher Durang’s Baby With the Bathwater and one of the year’s best…
Godspell has been a source of both controversy and inspiration since its first production in 1971. It was written in reaction to a lethargic Anglican church. John-Michael Tebelak, then a drama student at Carnegie Tech’s School of Drama, created the musical as an attempt “to weave God’s spell over the…
Between relatively mundane courses, Copper State Dinner Theatre is serving up a delectable comedy called I Hate Hamlet. This amusing morsel had a colorful run on Broadway in 1991 for 80 performances, but is remembered mainly for the disgraceful behavior of Nicol Williamson. Playing the role of John Barrymore to…
Childsplay has begun its 19th season on a triumphant note with a stunningly imaginative production of The Secret Garden. This version of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s classic novel is a new adaptation by Pamela Sterling, told in a straightforward narrative style that features a strong structure with a beginning, a middle…
Fife Symington’s partnership with Chicanos Por La Causa to build the Mercado retail and office center in downtown Phoenix was hailed by community leaders in 1986 as a visionary step that would help rekindle a deserted downtown. Nine years later, the Mercado sits nearly empty. Symington, now governor, has filed…
The most important theatre event of this decade, Tony Kushner’s epic masterpiece Angels in America, has arrived in Phoenix. It is the largest and deepest play since Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? hit Broadway in 1962, and joins A Streetcar Named Desire, Death of a Salesman and A Long Day’s…
Theater Works is turning out its annual miracle: a great, bloated Broadway musical on a tiny stage in a barn. The occasion is its revival of Jerry Herman’s Mame, featuring 156 costumes and a sterling star turn. When the literati debate the virtues of Stephen Sondheim versus Andrew Lloyd Webber,…
After a vagabond year, changing location with each production, Phoenix Theatre is celebrating its 75th season in a newly refurbished home. The ample lobby, rest rooms and plush seats make the facility, renovated at a cost of $5 million, an attractive destination for an evening out. To christen the theatre’s…
Harold Pinter is arguably the most influential English dramatist in the second half of the 20th century. Traces of Pinter’s spare and oblique dialogue can be found in the works of Edward Albee, Tom Stoppard, Arthur Kopit, Sam Shepard, David Mamet and John Guare. Pinter spent the first ten years…
