Performing Arts

Vampire Lesbians of Sodom

In the imaginary world of Howard Crabtree, the reprimands of a mean-spirited guidance counselor can lead to a full-blown musical comedy revue. In the real world, local highflier Lyman Goodrich took Crabtree’s cue (to “just put on a show!”) and has staged his own production of Howard Crabtree’s When Pigs…

You have to practically leave town to find anything resembling summer stock this season. Way out west, just this side of Sun City, tiny Theater Works has wedged a couple of months’ worth of live entertainment onto its cozy stage. Among the usual retreads is a surprisingly sturdy production of…

Elizabeth Egloff’s The Swan is a terrible play. Poorly written and stuffed with repetitive dialogue, it stands stock-still, flapping its wings but never taking off. And in its Ensemble Theatre production, the program is — with one important exception — inexpertly acted. That exception, Ken Matthews’ remarkable performance in the…

First it was competition from the new sports arena downtown. Then it was the general lack of cultural sophistication that reportedly plagues all Phoenicians. Lately, it’s been the “risky” material chosen by artistic directors.Every season, our local theater companies offer a different reason for their diminishing returns. And several local…

The Boomer-inspired version of entertainment, in which a portion of pop culture is regurgitated in two tidy hours, has run amok. This scary subgenre has resulted in no fewer than six network specials about the making of The Brady Bunch, and a slew of musical revues that attempt to recap…

I expected to be wowed by Michael Grady’s new play, one of two programs by local playwrights to première here this week. I’ve never seen a Grady play that I didn’t enjoy, and The Arizona Project — which winds up Actors Theatre of Phoenix’s 15th season — is one I’ve…

In each of the shows that opened here last weekend, there’s a scene in which the tormented lead demands that his male lover tell him “I love you.” The replies are as different as the productions; one of them a comedy, the other a drama. Both plays deal with issues…

On the last night it played Tucson, The First Hundred Years by Arizona Theatre Company drew more than an appreciative crowd. As the audience filed out, local paramedics filed in, reportedly to remove an ailing patron who’d collapsed during the evening’s performance. He certainly hadn’t laughed himself sick. This one-act…

Despite the lack of a single compelling reason to create — or to witness — a remount of Hair, the version now playing at Planet Earth Theatre is as good a production as you’re likely to see. This Hair — which really ought to be retitled Hairpiece, given the number…

To hear Jeff Nolan tell it, murdering Scott Sullivan was an unfortunate accident. According to Pastor Tim, it was an indiscretion. And to David, the teenager who planned Scott’s death, it was a delight. The story of Scott’s grisly murder leaks out of Lummox, Texas, playwright/actor John Haubner’s fictional Southern…

You know the joke about the actor who misses his entrance cue, leaving his fellow players to improvise like mad until he shows up? I have finally — after a decade of writing about theater — witnessed this horror firsthand. At the opening-night performance of Black Theatre Troupe’s Joe Turner’s…

The idea that we are each separated by no more than six acquaintances has become more commonplace than the play, Six Degrees of Separation, which popularized the notion. John Guare’s oft-produced one-act (which is, amazingly, making its local debut with this Phoenix Theatre production) is a masterwork of dark comedy…

Having twice reviewed Parallel Lives: The Kathy and Mo Show in the past half-dozen years, I’m looking for a new angle. The folks at Actors Theatre of Phoenix, which last week opened its third production of this popular show, are quick to arrange a lunch meeting with its stars, former…

Someone sent me a Ladmo Bag. It arrived just as I was sitting down to my monthly poker game with a pair of bitter characters I’ve known since high school. Our game usually dissolves quickly into mean-spirited hollering and insults, but on this day, prompted by the arrival of this…

We tumbled out into the chilly courtyard of ASU’s Galvin Playhouse, my friends, colleagues and I, where we were quickly joined by the audience for the school’s current horror, a bald misrepresentation of the all-time worst Shakespeare comedy in the Bard’s canon. It was intermission, and my companions’ faces were…

I had high hopes for Guillermo Reyes’ Men on the Verge of a His-panic Breakdown. The show has the reputation of being very hip, and PlayWright’s Theatre, where Men on the Verge is playing, has — in its first full season — proven itself a reliable source of arty entertainment…

As a result of having recently witnessed Phoenix Theatre’s production of Tintypes, I am much too ill to write a theater review this week. Instead, I am submitting the notes I made while watching this program, a musical revue about turn-of-the-19th-century America, which should (despite several lively performances by some…

Warren Leight’s Side Man is both a perfect example of the American memory play and proof that a Broadway season filled with revivals and imports can produce a Tony win. Side Man won that award last year, despite its rather old-fashioned narrative structure and at least partly because it wasn’t…

Hedda Gabler’s come to town, and she ain’t, as the saying goes, what she used to be. That’s mostly because, in Actors Theatre of Phoenix’s production of Henrik Ibsen’s masterpiece, director Matthew Wiener has taken some unusual liberties with Rolf Fjelde’s popular translation. This classic story of a mean-spirited, batty…

Time was when you went to the theater to be entertained, not to be entertaining, and nuns were scary creatures whose sexual repression made them want to beat little kids senseless. Those days are mostly gone. Today, theater comedy often relies on audiences to augment the shtick of the actors…

Angie Tidwell is a total loser. She’s 37 and lives with her mom. Her favorite singer is Helen Reddy. She collects vintage dollhouse furniture, works as a guest greeter at Wal-Mart, and is still a virgin. But what makes Angie a total washout is that she’s only seen The Phantom…