Curtains: Copperstate Dinner Theater’s Trust Me, I’m a Doctor

Man, if I  had to choose between: a. making a living in the arts by presenting plotless musical revues and exploitive, offensive, witless bedroom farces andb. not making a living in the arts at all, I’d probably sit up a lot with insomnia. To be fair, audiences who love this stuff skeeve me out way…

Desert Stages’ Jekyll and Hyde Is a Monstrously Powerful Performance

Terry Helland, director of Desert Stages Theatre’s Jekyll and Hyde, took the stage just before curtain. “This show is the most difficult I’ve ever worked on,” he announced cheerfully. “But I think I got a handle on it.” That didn’t seem likely, somehow. Directors typically produce crap and think it’s…

Curtains: Bye Bye Birdie at Arizona Broadway Theatre in Peoria

Martha J. Clarke and the costume shop of Arizona Broadway Theatre have done it again. From the cowboy-print pajamas on little brother Randolph to the huge, crinolined confections on the wives and mothers, ABT’s Bye Bye Birdie is a vinyl overnight bag crammed with the ginchiest Barbie and Ken outfits…

Curtains: Hale Centre Theatre’s April Ann in Gilbert

You may not realize it, but we have a Hale Centre Theatre in the Valley because a nice young couple, Ruth and Nathan Hale, moved from Salt Lake City to the L.A. area in 1943 and discovered they could get more acting work if they opened their own theater. The…

Curtains: Sondheim’s Into the Woods at PV Community College

Stephen Sondheim is not America’s most hummable, road-trip-sing-alongy composer (unless you run with a really esoteric crowd). He’s known for polyphony, occasional purposeful dissonance, and using meter and rhythm to reinforce subject matter and plot developments — sometimes even writing songs that sound like a pointillist painting (Sunday in the…

Curtains: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang at Gammage

For every person who claims that Tempe’s Gammage Auditorium is a marvel of acoustic excellence, you can probably find one who’s been subjected to plays that sound like talking mud. Apparently, it has to do with where you’re sitting and what kind of performance it is — whether it’s instrumental…

Curtains: Childsplay’s Rock Paper Scissors in Mini-Revival

By the end of the summer, a lot of parents will probably be thinking, “The last thing my kid needs is more creativity and self-esteem.” But you know that’s just the vacation desperation kicking in; really, we all need to be dragged away from our glowing screens, and Childsplay’s little summer revival of last season’s…

Blood Brothers Proves Nearly Naked Can Do More Than Alternative Theater

It seems Nearly Naked Theatre has been doing “naughty” plays for so long now that the company can appear subversive only by presenting a traditional musical. But the 10-year-old troupe isn’t pulling a stunt with its production of Blood Brothers, Willy Russell’s celebrated smash hit about twins separated at birth…

Curtains: Heartlight Productions’ You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown

You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, the first musical based on Charles Schulz’s Peanuts comic strip, is a warm-hearted, straightforward appreciation of the joys and challenges of being a regular little kid. Little kids in the audience tend to enjoy the scenes about lunchtime, Valentine’s Day, romantic crushes, struggles with…

Teatro Bravo’s Little Queen Proves Katie McFadzen Can Play

I’ve been working on a list of people or things that Katie McFadzen possibly can’t play. Here’s what I have so far: a pencil sharpener; Stalin; a venereal disease. But don’t quote me on any of these, because it’s likely that next month she’ll show up on a local stage…

Curtains: Space 55’s The Seduction of Almighty God

Oh, these crazy contemporary English playwrights, always messing with us one way or another and making us feel like wet-behind-the-ears Colonial idiots. Prime example Howard Barker, who created a movement called Theater of Catastrophe, plunks his nasty, alienating scenarios into historical settings the U.S. public schools tend not to touch on (so for…

Curtains: iTheatre Collaborative’s Bug at Herberger

Shannon Whirry and Steven J. Scally play people with problems in Bug. I could see from the promo photos that iTheatre Collaborative’s production of Bug re-uses Christopher Haines’ evocative cheap-motel box set from Eat the Taste earlier this season, which is great by me. I can think of several other plays that would also look…