Phoenix Theatre is celebrating its 80th anniversary by resuscitating a lot of tried-and-true favorites — the sort of popular fare normally confined to community theater and junior-college companies that cater to a “neighborhood” crowd. But this Equity house’s current production of Man of La Mancha is so perfectly realized and…
A half-hour before the opening-night curtain rises on Dale Wasserman’s new show, the man himself is nowhere to be found. The producer of the show and several of Wasserman’s biggest fans are scouring the lobby of tiny Stagebrush Theatre, hoping to wish him well and congratulate him on his celebrated…
The title of Planet Earth Theatre’s most recent show proved to be prophetic. Only a few days after the final performance of In Heat, the 15-year-old company was in hot water with its landlord, who served notice to evict the troupe from its downtown warehouse home after a complaint was…
No more dancing around the issue: Kinga Nijinsky Gaspers wants to set the record straight about her grandmother, Romola Flavia Ludowika Polyxena DePulzky-Nijinsky. Better known as the wife of world-renowned dancer Vaslav Nijinsky, Romola is mostly remembered as the reason Nijinsky was institutionalized at the height of his career. Gaspers…
The hottest thing about In Heat is the theater in which it’s playing. Sweatbox conditions prevail at Planet Earth, a fusty warehouse with no central cooling. I left the theater lightheaded, but not with glee over the program I’d just seen.A musical revue about love and sex, In Heat means…
John Sankovich hasn’t once raised his voice, yet it booms above the clank and roar of the crowded restaurant where he’s dining. He’s discussing the 30-plus years he’s spent pacing local stages and — after a long hiatus — his return as the lead for In Mixed Company’s controversial Quills.Above…
There’s an old story, perhaps apocryphal, about the original 1914 production of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. Apparently, Mrs. Patrick Campbell, the celebrated actress who originated the role of Eliza Doolittle, stopped the show one night. Stepping to the footlights halfway through her performance, she called out, “If Mr. Shaw does…
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…
