Something hilarious happens within the first few minutes of Chyro Arts’ Dearly Departed: A woman, played by Jacqueline Gaston, reads a wickedly amusing letter to her husband, who suddenly falls over in a dead heap just after she finishes. It’s a moment that’s shocking and witty and holds a good…
I’m not a praying man. If I were, my prayers — especially those offered up after watching a performance of Nunsense, Amen at Desert Stages Theatre earlier this week — might sound something like this: “Deliver us, Lord, from funny nun musicals, especially those in which each of the characters…
It’s that time of the year again, when playhouses are mostly dark and pretend awards take the place of real entertainment. This, the fifth Robbie Awards, is a black-tie event, so strap on your imaginary evening wear and take your make-believe seat. And remember: No text-messaging during the boring bits…
I’m sorry. It was my intention to review Desert Stages’ production of South Pacific this week, but I’m afraid I was so distracted by the obnoxious teenager who talked and yawned and text-messaged her way through the show’s opening-night performance that I missed much of what was happening onstage. Desert…
It’s a theater critic’s job, as he enters a playhouse, to leave at the door any attitudes or preferences he may have about a particular genre of play. Therefore, I abandoned my ennui about camp in the lobby of Nearly Naked Theatre as I headed in to see what they’d…
My friend Michelle and I were the only white people in the audience at last week’s performance of For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf, which made me all the more aware that I was a white man who doesn’t like poetry who’d come to watch…
I’ve seen Smokey Joe’s Café too many times over the past decade to have been very excited about attending Black Theatre Troupe’s current production last weekend. And as I sat in the Herberger Stage West, staring at Thom Gilseth’s shabbily constructed curtain drop, I thought, If the set design is…
Gross Indecency certainly lives up to its name. I was bored within three minutes of this play, subtitled The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, commencing. Renowned playwright Moises Kaufman has painstakingly Scotched together a seemingly endless litany of quotes, biographical sketches and transcripts from and about Wilde’s late-19th-century sodomy trials,…
The most sparkling bit of dialogue I heard the other night at Actors Theatre’s production of Speak Spanish to Me came from the charming lady seated on my left. At intermission, she leaned across the empty seat between us and, indicating my notebook, asked, “Are you reviewing, or plagiarizing?” I…
She’s what’s politely called a curmudgeon, but more commonly called a bitch. Ruth Steiner is a short-tempered, arrogant, bossy woman “of a certain age,” a celebrated writer of stories who’s been slumming as a literature professor for a little while. One of her students, Lisa, shows some promise, and Ruth…
I practically forgot where I was the other night (I was at Stray Cat Theatre, watching their production of Pulp) once the play commenced and Johanna Carlisle got busy playing a Sapphic saloon owner named Vivian Blaine. Carlisle always shines like a beacon, even when she’s appearing in crap, which…
To Kill a Mockingbird: The impossible has occurred: There is, at the Herberger, a professional production in which the entire (and rather long) first act is held merrily aloft by three child actors. Although one of them, Daria LeGrand, appears at first glance to be a young woman in an…
Tom, Dick, and Harry: Members of the Peter Hill fan club, rejoice! Your fave dog track director is not only at the helm of this Arizona première; he’s the star! Ray Cooney’s latest British farce has something to do with a better-than-middle-aged couple who’ve adopted a baby. The dame from…
If I have a quibble with Childsplay’s A Tale of Two Cities, it’s that it’s too smart for children. Kids tend not to notice the kind of subtle beauty that Dwayne Hartford has brought to his adaptation of the Charles Dickens classic; they aren’t built to appreciate the skill it…
The Sweetest Swing in Baseball: Rebecca Gilman’s comedy/drama is turning up just in time for spring training with a study of the cult of celebrity and how it can screw up both idols and fans. Gilman places baseball bad boy Darryl Strawberry at the center of her story, but this…
It’s impossible, watching Heather Raffo’s 9 Parts of Desire, not to be overcome by our powerlessness over the war in Iraq. I felt lazy, disconnected, oafish as Raffo’s remarkable one-woman show unfolded before me, moved not only by the depth of emotion she brought to each of her nine characters…
Kissing: Here’s proof that tiny Theatre Artists Studio is a force to be reckoned with: Their latest production stars Bob Sorenson, one of the few New York stage “stars” Phoenix can claim. Sorenson, fresh from his run in Arizona Theatre Company’s The Pajama Game, is joined by Christian Miller, Maureen…
The premise of The Full Monty is pretty simple: Six broke, unemployed Buffalo steelworkers decide to stage a one-night-only striptease act after noting the sell-out crowds drawn by a local Chippendales act. These guys are sick of being penniless and their leader, Jerry Lukowski, is worried that his son, who…
Folded somewhere into the cramped coldness of my tiny mind is a virtual list titled Things I Hope Never to See Again. I’ve compiled this list over several decades as a reminder to myself of things I have seen before that have frightened or unnerved me. Way at the top…
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: Arizona Theatre Company’s favorite playwright, Jeffrey Hatcher (Turn of the Screw, Tuesdays With Morrie, Ella), has adapted Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic story of evil, dual personalities, and grisly murder for another ATC world première. Not to be confused with the wildly…
About halfway through Act One of Stray Cat Theatre’s super-fashionable Kate Crackernuts, my middle-aged companion leaned over and whispered in my ear, “It’s always nice to see what the youngsters are up to these days.” I’m not sure I agree with him. Because while I found Kate energetically acted and…
I used to know a crazy lady who looked exactly like Cloris Leachman. Ella was the kind of crazy that can never be cured; the kind of crazy that struck fear in the hearts of her friends and family, that caused former employees to change their telephone numbers after she…
