It’s becoming more difficult to crow about live theatre in Phoenix. For a couple of years, it looked like the local theatre scene was evolving away from the sort of mask-and-wig clubs that trotted out another production of Blithe Spirit every season. Small, daring new troupes were unfolding every couple…
The Two Gentlemen of Verona is not the most amusing of William Shakespeare’s comedies. It’s clumsily constructed and makes an awkward shift into melodrama toward the end of the first act. All that makes Arizona Theatre Company’s colossal production of the 16th-century satire all the more impressive. Frankly, I’ve had…
Last year, Arizona State University’s Gammage Auditorium hosted a special showing of Sergei Eisenstein’s masterpiece The Battleship Potemkin, accompanied live by the Phoenix Symphony, performing a score cobbled together from various Shostakovich works. I wrote about the event, focusing mainly on Potemkin’s importance in film history, and on the validity…
Trying to decide whether the Million Man March was good or bad, heartening or depressing, can give you a headache. At the center of the ambiguity is Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, the march organizer. It’s a stretch to believe that the anti-Semitism and xenophobia attributed to him in…
at the fair “The Disney Fair”: The Southwestern premiere of the nationally touring, special-effects-laden show fills up about two acres at this year’s Arizona State Fair, and features some of the studio’s biggest stars, including Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Buzz Lightyear, Captain Hook, Aladdin, Jasmine and Ariel. Shows are scheduled…
thursday october 17 Arizona State Fair: The annual corn-dog carnival opens Thursday, October 17, and continues through Sunday, November 3, at the fairgrounds, bounded by McDowell Road and Encanto Boulevard between 17th and 19th avenues. Along with the usual attractions–midway rides and games, livestock and agricultural exhibits, etc.–this year’s fair…
It’s no mystery why Lionel Bart’s Oliver! is occasionally trotted out for another go-around. This classic British musical, adapted from Charles Dickens’ 1838 novel Oliver Twist, features some wonderfully bent characters and a magnificent score. The real puzzle is why Southwest Shakespeare Company is producing this show, which has no…
That Thing You Do! is perfectly beguiling, perfectly skilled, perfectly smart and perfectly harmless. Coming from anyone else, it might seem slick and calculated, but as the debut of Tom Hanks as a writer-director, it seems like an unusually personal piece of moviemaking. The story, which Hanks claims to have…
Corky, a parolee, gets a job fixing up a Chicago apartment next door to one occupied by Ceasar, a gangster, and Violet, his luscious moll. The moment Corky’s and Violet’s eyes meet on the elevator, the sexual tension between them is palpable. Eventually, they become lovers and hatch a daring…
hot stuff Firehouse Healthy Kids Day: Ten Valley fire stations and seven others across the state will open their doors from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, October 12, for public activities such as safety and educational demonstrations, tours and immunizations. The event is co-sponsored by the Arizona Partnership for…
thursday october 10 Ween: Nervy New Jersey alt. rockers Dean and Gene Ween traveled to enemy territory, Nashville, to record their skewering of Music City, the faux tribute album 12 Golden Country Greats (Elektra), which includes titles like “Help Me Scrape the Mucus Off My Brain” and “Piss Up a…
There are better reasons to strap on a bustle than Christopher Hampton’s Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Something, perhaps the popularity of the film versions, has convinced theatre producers that people want to see this play. But while both the 1988 movie based on Hampton’s dramatization and 1989’s Valmont were small masterpieces…
All over the country, film reviewers who have just seen Big Night are frantically straining to think of a different way to say what they know perfectly well all their colleagues are going to say. Which is that Big Night will make you hungry. Here’s my variation: Recommending this movie…
The first play by David Mamet to receive wide notice was American Buffalo, a three-hander set in a junk shop, about marginal smalltime crooks planning to rob a coin collection. After an Obie-winning off-Broadway run, it hit Broadway in 1977, with Robert Duvall, Kenneth McMillan and John Savage, and it…
thursday october 3 Coppelia: Ballet Arizona has opened its season with a revival of E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Frankenstein-style work about mad Dr. Coppelius and the strange bond he forms with his mechanical creations, especially the beautiful title automaton. The score is by Delibes, and the set is great. Final performances are…
good sports NFL Punt, Pass & Kick Competitions: NFL Properties sponsors preliminary contests, open to boys and girls ages 8 to 15, at 3 p.m. Saturday, October 5, at Chandler High School, 350 North Arizona Avenue (call 786-2323); and at 2 p.m. Sunday, October 6, at Paseo Racquet Center, 63rd…
Nowadays, send-ups of old movie musicals tend to play about as well as the films they spoof. There are enough such satires that they’ve become a subgenre themselves; we’ve seen so many stage, film and television takeoffs on Busby Berkeley, et al., that the lines between the parodies and their…
Short Cuts meets Pulp Fiction! That, no doubt, is how the script for 2 days in the valley was sold, but it’s not quite either movie. It’s more engaging than the former, less imaginative and intelligent than the latter, and a good deal more sentimental than either. This comedy-thriller sets…
In a kitschy, sappy way, Grace of My Heart is a likable movie. It has a lively period flavor, some terrific music and an excellent lead performance. Now and then, for a scene or two at a time, it’s even touching. But it’s still a show-biz soaper, and it’s not…
thursday september 26 “William Lesch: Painting With Light”: Scottsdale Center for the Arts, in conjunction with its pricey opening-night gala featuring Gregory Hines on Saturday, September 28 (see the Dance listing), presents this exhibit of lovely, hyperrealistic, manipulated desert landscapes by Tucson photographer Lesch, whose forte is using “colored lights…
at the concert Melon Ball Music: Mickey Mouse once covered a tune by this Arizona duo, which performs selections from and signs copies of its new album, Land of the Diamond Sun, at 11:30 a.m. Saturday, September 28, at Borders Books & Music at Biltmore Fashion Park, 24th Street and…
In the bumpy 1960s, a number of irascible artists reached the neo-Dada conclusion that an “installation” could be something other than a military depot with radar, missiles and rusting weapons from earlier wars. It could be a room filled with unlikely materials and even more unlikely experiences in the arts…
