Your Guide to 6 A Christmas Carol Productions in Metro Phoenix

A Christmas Carol is a moving, witty, smoothly written piece of 19th-century propaganda about being a nice person all the time — and maybe just being extra-nice at Christmastime — and removing that stick from up your butt already. It works so well and is so very in the public domain…

Andrew Dice Clay Is Kind of an Asshole, But You Already Knew That

To call Andrew Dice Clay’s comedic career long and storied would be an understatement. Since first appearing on a Rodney Dangerfield special in the late 1980s, Clay’s leather-jacket-wearing, chain-smoking mug has become synonymous with the kind of raunchy comedy that dominated the scene in the 1990s. He became the first…

Childsplay’s The Velveteen Rabbit Hops Back Onstage in Tempe

The setup: Though Childsplay first presented The Velveteen Rabbit 25 years ago and it was the company’s go-to holiday offering for many years, the past several seasons have featured alternates such as Seussical, Junie B. in Jingle Bells, Batman Smells! and, one memorable year, Lyle the Crocodile, who I hope…

Jim Breuer Isn’t High, That’s Just the Way His Face Looks

Though Jim Breuer has been performing stand-up comedy for over 20 years, he’s had success in other creative areas as well. Breuer showed his talent for portraying a pothead in his role as Brian, Dave Chappelle’s lovably high best friend in the stoner cult comedy Half Baked. He showcased his…

Ragtime at Theater Works in Peoria Is Close to Perfect

An old friend who knows theater phoned me last week. “I’ve just seen the most perfect production of Ragtime,” she said. “At Theater Works. You should go!” Oh, dear, I thought. A community theater production of Ragtime. No. But I went — fortunately. This well-crafted production of Terrence McNally’s musical…

Doug Stanhope Is Arizona’s Darkest Comedian

“Most comics are pretty dark people,” Doug Stanhope says. Few comics are quite as dark — or willing to get as pitch black — as Stanhope. Our conversation with him, following the terrible news that his best friends and Bisbee neighbors Nowhere Man and a Whiskey Girl, had passed away,…

Mrs. Klein: An Absorbing, Disturbing Play About Professional Psychotherapists at Theatre Artists Studio in Paradise Valley

The setup: Melanie Klein (1882-1960) was a psychiatric pioneer whose insights into the development of children’s personalities, including the introduction of play therapy, supplemented the work of Sigmund Freud, changed analysis forever, and caused the British Psycho-Analytical Society to quarrel internally for decades like a bunch of babies in poopy…

CALA PHX! Fest Brings Encores of Latino Theater Downtown This Weekend

The biennial Celebración Artística de las Américas (CALA Festival) first celebrated the contributions of Latino heritage to our vibrant life in these Americas in the fall of 2011. A kind of rolling, virtual festival in spirit, it presented and helped sponsor plays, musical and dance events, art exhibits, food, food,…

A Steady Rain Is a Classic Morals Tale from Phoenix Actors Theatre

Actors Theatre returned last week from a self-imposed sabbatical with a reminder of why we might have missed them if they’d gone altogether. Keith Huff’s stagey police drama, A Steady Rain, is the sort of tightly wound, finely crafted morals tale that this troupe has long done so well. Rain,…

Actors Theatre Returns with A Steady Rain, and It’s a Good Thing

Actors Theatre returned last week from a self-imposed sabbatical with a reminder of why we might have missed them if they’d gone altogether. Keith Huff’s stagey police drama, A Steady Rain, is the sort of tightly wound, finely crafted morals tale that this troupe has long done so well. Rain,…

Poefest 2013: Downtown Phoenix Can’t Get Enough Creepiness

The setup: For five years now, Arizona Curriculum Theater has been sharing with public audiences some damn frightening stories and poetry by Edgar Allan Poe, thereby raising the company’s profile and funds for their great work introducing literature and the arts to students. The individual selections rotate, new ones are…

The Movement Source to Perform The Danse Macabre at MonOrchid in Phoenix

If there’s a dark but beautiful side to the undead, it will be exposed and explored in The Movement Source Dance Company’s upcoming show, The Danse Macabre. The original work will be a collaboration between the contemporary dance company and other local artists. They’ll come together at Phoenix’s MonOrchid gallery…