It was inevitable that the trend in tribute albums honoring contemporary singer/songwriters–which kicked into high gear more than a decade ago with Famous Blue Raincoat, Jennifer Warnes’ remarkable Leonard Cohen homage–would begin to spill over into the musical theater arena. A new generation of stage directors seems to want to…
I am plagued by amateur playwrights. This season, there were twice as many apprentice authors produced on local stages as the season before. Every year, another theater troupe adds a “new works” festival to its schedule, featuring works by anyone who can clutch a pen or deliver a French scene…
There’s an unfortunate trend in musical theater, a genre of live performance that can hardly afford another deadfall these days. Book musicals, once based on literature (A Connecticut Yankee) or original stories (Showboat), are today more likely to be adapted from cheesy Hollywood musical films. Recent Broadway audiences have had…
There’s a reason why A Thousand Clowns is a perennial favorite with theater companies across the country. Herb Gardner’s dark comedy is a wonderful piece of writing, with lively characters and a perfect blend of good-time yuks and hard-knock commentary. Arizona Jewish Theatre Company is closing its season–which honored Jewish…
Given the choice of watching a really terrible play in a freezing-cold theater or having all my molars yanked without the aid of Novocaine, I would–after recently enduring the former–have to opt for the latter. The play, Lisa Loomer’s tedious The Waiting Room, left me weary with boredom. And the…
In Adolph Frietag’s house, Jewish customs have long been buried. Although he and his family–sister, sister-in-law, and two nieces–are themselves Jewish, they decorate a Christmas tree every December and don’t associate with Russian Jews, whom they refer to as “the other kind.” Enter Joe Farkas, a handsome young Eastern Parkway…
There’s something unsettling about the overwrought lunatics created by playwright Richard Dresser. It isn’t their crabby personalities or their limitless capacity for self-pity. It’s not even their incessant whining about their tormented lives. And, in the current Actors Theatre of Phoenix production of Dresser’s Gun-Shy, it certainly isn’t the way…
Who says Phoenix isn’t a theater town? For the past five years, a real live Broadway legend has walked among us–not that most people here probably care. In Phoenix, you’re more likely to be handed celebrity status for shooting a cop than for copping a Tony nomination or winning an…
There are few theatrical experiences more gratifying than watching a talented young artist fulfill his promise. Theatergoers who saw David Drake performing his off-Broadway smash The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me in 1991 were witness to that rare occurrence. In a little more than an hour, audiences saw Drake rant…
The woman in line ahead of me for Phoenix Theatre’s production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? turned to me just before buying her tickets. “I don’t even know what this play is about,” she confided. When I told her it’s about two married couples who get drunk and scream…
Legend has it that, in 1947, Brooklyn Dodgers owner Branch Rickey gathered together the most influential black men in America in one cramped hotel room. The story goes that these men–Joe Louis, Paul Robeson and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson–met to discuss Rickey’s pending announcement that Jackie Robinson would be joining the…
At the end of the 20th century, no life is allowed to go unexamined, and none of us is permitted to claim a clean bill of mental health. Talk show hosts, self-help authors and amateur radio docs tell us we’re not well-balanced, we’re delusional, we didn’t have happy childhoods, we’re…
Those who enjoy wasting time and money on one spectacularly horrible theater production per season shouldn’t miss Insurrection: Holding History. This perfectly execrable one-act is a co-production of Planet Earth Theatre and the Black Theatre Troupe, a fact that implicates twice as many theater hobbyists and proves that old adage…
A theater critic can’t afford to have a favorite play. Saddled with personal preference and fond memories of a first performance, he’s apt to overlook the show’s flaws once it’s revived. But my response to Lanford Wilson’s Lemon Sky hasn’t been equaled in the 14 years since I first saw…
There are few of us born before 1965 who wouldn’t have given our eyeteeth to be a fly on the wall of the Lincoln Room on August 7, 1974, when, on the fateful eve of Richard Nixon’s resignation, the about-to-be-former president summoned Secretary of State Henry Kissinger for a late-night…
About halfway through Sister Amnesia’s Country Western Nunsense Jamboree, one of the characters turns to the audience after a particularly unfunny line and bellows, “Hey, folks, it doesn’t get much better than this.” She isn’t kidding. Dan Goggin’s second sequel to Nunsense, his far-too-frequently produced 1985 off-Broadway hit, is either…
I may see another show this season that I like as well as Raised in Captivity, but I doubt it. With this production, the folks at Planet Earth Theatre have succeeded in untangling the extravagant imagination of playwright Nicky Silver, and have spun his words into a comedy that’s alternately…
There’s a character in Pearl Cleage’s Blues for an Alabama Sky who repeatedly shouts “Let the good times roll!” throughout the more-than-90-minute-long first act. That line became my mantra as well, at a matinee performance of Arizona Theatre Company’s production of this show last Sunday. By the time intermission rolled…
Audiences for Actors Theatre of Phoenix’s newest catastrophe may exit the theater feeling they’ve missed something more than a good time. Gunmetal Blues is so fast-paced that it’s tough to keep up with its cartload of clues and myriad references to old movies. Unfortunately, the show’s breakneck pacing doesn’t disguise…
I have a recurring nightmare: I’m seated in a crowded theater where, up on the stage, a little girl is singing about poverty while flash pots burst gaily all around her. A helicopter suddenly appears, and the child grabs the landing gear and is lifted off the stage just as…
An open letter to the man in seat E-103 on opening night of Phoenix Theatre’s production of Golf With Alan Shepard: Dear Sir, You seemed awfully unhappy the other night. I was sitting just behind you, and I could hear your disgruntled sighs; I could see you fidget and shake…
I’d like to see Kathleen Butler, one of our better local comic actors, perform in her own one-woman show. She’d be swell in Jane Wagner’s The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, or in one of those comedy revues where she could, as they used to say,…
