Paul Bartel’s musicalization of his 1982 black comedy, Eating Raoul, is a blast. This is an excellent example of a musical theater subgenre that has dogged the stage ever since Little Shop of Horrors launched the low-budget-cult-film-as-musical craze that same year. Funny, campy, and crammed with catchy tunes and over-the-top…
It’s that time of year when some of us are a bit more free to get out of town occasionally, and whether you want to go or have to go, you might need a guide to diversions in strange places. Curtains is happy to visit such exotic locales as Anthem…
Do sketch comedy long enough, and you’ll even be able to compile The Best of Tim Meadows. It’s taken Valley troupe Th [sic] Sense far less than 25 years, though, to whomp up a Best Of show that, while lengthy, includes almost nothing you wouldn’t want to see again (and…
My friend Ruth Beaumont often says, “If the play is boring, you can always just stare at the stage décor.” Unfortunately for me, the set for Stray Cat Theatre’s Abraham Lincoln’s Big Gay Dance Party was austere and simple; there wasn’t much to look at. Too bad. Because I was…
courtesy of Space 55 Theatre From left, Patti Hannon, Shawna Franks, and Clifton Highfield in The Bakers of Lakewood. If there’s a more consistently employed Valley stage actor than Patti Hannon, I’ll be very surprised to hear it. Ever since Maripat Donovan’s nationwide hit, the interactive Catholicism-inspired hoot Late Night…
Last year, Lisa Starry’s original fashion-meets-dance work, Catwalk, pranced into Phoenix Theatre’s Little Theatre with a splash. The production featured fun, upbeat numbers set to familiar pop rock and classical tunes, with the dancers modeling clothing created by local designers. The idea was attractive enough to audiences that Starry was asked…
School’s out, summer’s here, and your (productive) schedule is looking a little … empty. Luckily, there are plenty of local and national galleries, theaters, and organizations looking to put your creative skills to use. 1. “Villains, Pick Your Poison” an open platform Vinyl Toy showPhoenix Comicon is around the corner,…
It’s so freaking cool when someone adapts a classic book or story for the stage and gets everything right while also helping the literature grow into a captivating multisensory experience. British writer Charles Way has accomplished this feat with The Borrowers, based on the first two of Mary Norton’s series…
You know the economy’s in the toilet when the state’s largest professional theater is presenting a rerun. The Mystery of Irma Vep, the rather beautiful and amply staged Charles Ludlam farce that closes Arizona Theatre Company’s season, is one it’s done before — in a widely acclaimed 1999 production starring Bob…
Pay close attention to the costumed performers in large frames at the Phoenix Art Museum this Saturday. They aren’t participating in the latest flash mob, nor are they excited art fans about to get thrown out of the museum. The dancers are part of a one-night-only performance by the internationally acclaimed Heidi…
Billy Elliot the Musical opened in London in 2005, but it didn’t cross the pond until 2008, and the first national tour company has visited only a few large North American cities. The second touring company based on the Tony-winning Broadway version (which is still running) arrived in Tempe last…
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…
“I have always depended on the kindness of strangers,” the character Blanche Du Bois famously said, in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. Given, she was being toted off by men in white coats, but that makes her observation no less trenchant, not to mention worthy of a big musical…
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…
Oh, you guys, it’s terrible luck in the world of theater to have peacock feathers in your set or costume or props. And as Judy Garland’s mother, Valerie Saunders wears a passel of them (in one of several mostly striking and accurate costumes by the show’s author, local writer Richard…
If you’re not in school, there’s no real downside to “misinterpreting” a work of art. Curtains thinks that if you’re enlightened (or just plain entertained) by a book or song, then that’s part of the art that happened. Many artists not only don’t care exactly how you respond, they’re bemused…
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…
Here we are, smack in the middle of PHX:fringe, with just three days to go. So many shows; such a plethora of choices! Curtains wishes Big Blue or Watson could have plotted out what showed promise, what coincided with Curtains’ uncommitted time, what allowed time to write about it for…
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…
Most of the kidnapping Arizona’s famous for is the imprisonment and torture of undocumented immigrants held hostage by smugglers who attempt to extort additional payment from loved ones, or by other gangs who kidnap them from their original coyote. Similar (and often more deadly) situations face Central Americans who cross…
In our world of choreographed flash mobs and revolution-by-Twitter, it may seem odd that an arts festival takes time to grow and develop over the years. But it does. Ideas lead to plans lead to experience leads to word of mouth, which generates new plans and experiences, until something reaches…
Downtown’s Space 55 has been home to local actors and has provided a space for local and traveling theatre for four years. The space, on Seventh and Pierce streets, is known for popular performances including “7 Minutes in …” and world premieres of Denny Guge’s “A Bloody Mary Christmas” and…
