If there’s anything wrong with Steven Dietz’s plays, it’s that they’re so complex that audiences rarely agree on what they’re about. This isn’t a bad thing. In a town where theater companies repeatedly haul out Blithe Spirit and where any road company of Cats is guaranteed a sellout, a production…
My dissatisfaction with Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years is not about the quality of its production. The show’s current interpretation by Phoenix Theatre is well-acted and–with the exception of some dreadful age makeup–a technically proficient version of this well-regarded Broadway hit. But playwright Emily Mann’s adaptation…
It’s too bad that theater audiences aren’t usually interested in the evolution of a play. If they were, the new Guillermo Reyes comedy, now playing at Arizona State University’s Lyceum Theatre, could sell tickets as a specimen of a project that’s on its way to being a funny, thought-provoking piece…
For the first time in the seven years I’ve attended Planet Earth Theatre, I was not ushered to my seat by a drooling, incense-burning harpy. I was not panhandled in the lobby nor handed a program riddled with typos. More important, I was not made to sit through two hours…
Actors Theatre of Phoenix’s claim that its new play is “the biggest downtown Phoenix event preceding the opening of Bank One Ballpark” seems like something of an overstatement. Still, I’m hard-pressed to think of anything happening downtown that’s more stimulating than Below the Belt, Richard Dresser’s demented comedy about big…
It’s no longer enough that several legitimate stages are regularly afflicted with bad theater. Now it’s tailing us to the places where we go to eat and shop, as well. Just a week or so ago at a local mall, a man dressed as a taco followed me to my…
When he wrote Moon Over Buffalo, Ken Ludwig must have been counting on an audience that hadn’t seen the dozen or so funnier plays and movies that have been hung on similar show-biz hooks. And Phoenix Theatre seems to be hoping its ticketholders won’t be distracted by the shuddering sense…
The smallish audience with whom I saw Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction: The Stage Production seemed, on the whole, to enjoy it. I say this in the interest of fairness, before I confess that I fled the theater after the second act–the end of the “Gold Watch” segment. The show made…
In the past, I’ve carped about Arizona Jewish Theatre Company’s lamentable productions and its less-than-kosher choice of material. But the company more than makes up for past indiscretions with its current staging of Jonathan Tolins’ modern morality play The Twilight of the Golds. Unlike AJTC’s usual lite fare, Twilight is…
I attended The Heiress, a play about lost love, on Valentine’s Day in the company of a couple of reformed bachelors. Until recently, each of us had bombed at romance, and had resigned himself to whatever the equivalent of male spinsterhood is. Our postplay discussion–about leading with your heart instead…
Shakespeare purists or anyone who groans upon hearing the word “deconstruction” should stay far away from Desdemona: A Play About a Handkerchief, the latest offering from In Mixed Company. Playwright Paula Vogel’s hilarious one-act takes a sidelong glance at Othello, and asks: What were Desdemona and her gal pals up…
It’s a testimony to the talents of director Marshall W. Mason that the opening-night crowd for King Lear stayed to cheer his achievement. Because, despite Mason’s expertise, this Arizona State University production of Shakespeare’s most famous tragedy trades each triumph for a disaster: While the sets are wonderful, the costumes…
White Picket Fence is a show that’s built for failure. For starters, it’s a dramedy about race relations in which the principal characters are two 8-year-old boys played by grown men. In its premier production, the play is being co-produced by competing theater companies, a tricky proposition for which there’s…
It’s ironic that Phoenix Theatre is making such a big deal of Crooners–unlike the company’s other musical hits Forever Plaid and The Taffetas–being a book musical rather than a revue. Press materials stress that Crooners does more than just string together popular songs of a certain era; it tells a…
Our grandparents might consider male transvestism a daring subject for a drama. The rest of us, having seen plenty of this sort of stuff on TV talk shows, attend a program like PlayWright’s Theatre’s The Wedding Present with hopes for a new take on a tired topic. Unfortunately, this production,…
Abe Jacob, one of the country’s leading theatrical sound designers, has a complaint. Everyone’s a would-be expert about sound. “In a play, especially a musical, the sound is always criticized in one of two ways–either it’s too loud, or why do you need sound at all?” he grumbles. “I never…
At first glance, the lineup of this season’s holiday plays looks encouraging. In tandem with the usual sackful of Christmas Carols that gets trotted out every December, several small local companies are presenting alternative–sometimes even outrageous-sounding–holiday fare. About a third of the dozen Christmas plays treading the boards this month…
Remember that attraction at Disneyland that features a creaky, prosthetic Abe Lincoln who talks about his life and rattles off an animatronic Emancipation Proclamation? That’s what Ben Tyler’s Goldwater: Mr. Conservative could easily have been. But thanks to some unsentimental writing, this 90-minute, one-man commemoration of Arizona’s best-known former senator…
Despite the reputations of Death of a Salesman and The Crucible, it’s doubtful that Arthur Miller ever really topped his first major play, 1947’s All My Sons. With the possible exception of his 1964 Incident at Vichy–another neglected work–Miller hasn’t marshaled so much power with so little windiness. The current…
Athol Fugard has written some of the most important plays of our time. His Master Harold . . . and the boys and My Children! My Africa! have presented hard evidence of how South African politics have pried apart the lives of its people. But with the end of apartheid,…
The Ensemble Theatre’s production of Edward Albee’s The Zoo Story is the sort of theater we see precious little of these days: a spare, uncluttered production that emphasizes a well-written story and some good, solid acting. This small, unpretentious company was founded last year by Arizona State University theater alumni,…
Among this month’s local events commemorating the 50th anniversary of the State of Israel is a pair of thoughtful, Jewish-themed theater productions. Both detail the Nazi oppression of the Jews during World War II, and both are presented by companies funding the shows either with grant money from Jewish organizations…
