Actors Theatre returned last week from a self-imposed sabbatical with a reminder of why we might have missed them if they’d gone altogether. Keith Huff’s stagey police drama, A Steady Rain, is the sort of tightly wound, finely crafted morals tale that this troupe has long done so well. Rain,…
The setup: For five years now, Arizona Curriculum Theater has been sharing with public audiences some damn frightening stories and poetry by Edgar Allan Poe, thereby raising the company’s profile and funds for their great work introducing literature and the arts to students. The individual selections rotate, new ones are…
If there’s a dark but beautiful side to the undead, it will be exposed and explored in The Movement Source Dance Company’s upcoming show, The Danse Macabre. The original work will be a collaboration between the contemporary dance company and other local artists. They’ll come together at Phoenix’s MonOrchid gallery…
The setup: Most scholars think The Two Gentlemen of Verona was William Shakespeare’s first play (that anyone knows about). It’s a lightweight romantic comedy with a terrible, terrible ending. A guy forgives his best friend for attempting to rape his fiancée, everyone forgives everyone for everything else (about 400% more…
The setup: Let us thank whatever weird show-biz quirk has kept the 1986 script Epic Proportions from being as popular in community and regional theater as it seems it should be. Because it’s really, really funny, and I bet you’ve never seen it before!…
Note: Tonight, Thursday, October 17, at 7 p.m., is a pay-what-you-can performance of Bless Me, Ultima. Donations will be accepted at the door. See the end of this post for location details. The setup: This week, Curtains reviews a stage version of a famous, popular, critically acclaimed 1972 novel that…
Some theater experiences leave you overwhelmed by somber themes and dense dialogue. However, Arizona Theatre Company’s production of The Importance of Being Earnest can pretty much erase all that darkness in the course of two and a half hours with its extravagant costumes and sets, playful blend of modern and…
For a tale about the undead, Lisa Starry’s A Vampire Tale certainly does make you feel alive. From the first scene, filled with discordant pounding drums, Scorpius Dance Theater transports the audience to an almost-scary world of hissing, writhing, and cackling characters. The nearly two-hour show blends classical dance styles…
The setup: After surviving to adulthood (no mean feat for anyone born in 1832), Louisa May Alcott shunned marriage and motherhood and struck out on her own to minor literary success (with A Long Fatal Love Chase and other potboilers favored by readers of her era), partly to help support…
Dancers and cheerleaders interested in rooting for a Phoenix team with a winning record ought to know that auditions for the Arizona Rattlers dance team, the Arizona Sidewinders, are just around the corner. But don’t worry, because there’s still time to get ready. This week, the team will host the…
Director Stephen Wrentmore brings one of Oscar Wilde’s most beloved comedic plays, The Importance of Being Earnest, to Phoenix’s Herberger Theater Center starting Thursday, October 10, as the season’s opener. Judging from Tucson audiences’ reception, it’s sure to be a hysterical show. Although the Arizona Theatre Company director is a…
If you’ve seen Forgetting Sarah Marshall, in which Jason Segel’s character lives out his dream of creating an all-puppet Dracula musical, then you might have a pretty good idea of what a puppet satire of 50 Shades of Grey would look like. Imagine people dressed in black acting out sexy…
This fall will be the 10th anniversary of Lisa Starry’s A Vampire Tale, the cult classic that Starry and her troupe have taken to Edinburgh and back as of this summer. Over the years there have been more than a few changes to the production, as Starry’s tweaked her choreography…
The setup: Every three years, Arizona State University Tempe admits a cohort of Master of Fine Arts candidates in the allied emphases Theatre Performance (acting), Directing, and Performance Design (including components such as lighting, costume and makeup, and digital media). The gang spends an intense period of study and practice…
The setup: Tempe’s Stray Cat Theatre is the first U.S. company to present award-winning playwright Annie Baker’s The Flick since it premièred off-Broadway in March. It’s a long play in several scenes that take place entirely between co-workers in an otherwise empty Massachusetts movie house (called The Flick) before, between,…
Despite his onstage agitation, Bill Burr is in a very good place. The longtime comedian has secured his seat in the who’s-who of stand-up without falling victim to bad TV sitcoms, publicity stunts, and other perils of growing celebrity status. But that’s not to say the man isn’t busy…
Arizona State University’s Hugh Downs School of Human Communication is a milieu where, among other things, a lot of fascinating public performances happen. Way beyond what you might remember from your own college days, when it’s possible you even made fun of communications majors. (We all eventually learned that human…
The setup: After five years on Grand Avenue, utterly disgusting sketch comedy troupe Th [sic] Sense starts its 2013-14 season in the recently fitted Basement Theatre at Phoenix Center for the Arts with a new one-act hellride, Revenge of the Sic…
By Jose Gonzalez Warning: Spoilers follow. This past Sunday, the penultimate episode of Breaking Bad, “Granite State,” seemed to set the stage for tying up of all the loose ends from the past five years in the finale of AMC’s hit TV show. Well, almost every loose end is accounted…
Twenty years ago or more, Phoenix Theatre operated a black box, where those of us who liked edgier plays and musicals could go for offbeat theater. Last week, the now 93-year-old company unveiled, as part of its multimillion-dollar renovation, a new black box space. Those of us who once laughed…
For those of you who missed the Oddball Comedy and Curiosity Festival, we have some good news and some bad news. The good news: Roastmaster General Jeffrey Ross closed out the four-hour stand-up special by thanking everyone for attending the “2013 Oddball Comedy and Curiosity Festival.” That subtle denotative remark…
The setup: Alice Childress was a pioneering African-American stage actress of the mid-20th century who also wrote several plays and the well-known young adult novel and film, A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ but a Sandwich. Her play Wedding Band, which features an interracial relationship in South Carolina during World War I,…
