Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance is a literate, witty and enormously challenging piece of theater, as proved by several dreary film and stage versions (most notably Albee’s own 1973 movie starring Katharine Hepburn). Albee’s 1967 Pulitzer Prize-winning play flopped on Broadway, then gathered dust on a shelf until an acclaimed…
With this review, I join the cacophony of critics and flacks heralding the latest tribute to George and Ira Gershwin. The Gershwins’ Fascinating Rhythm, a new musical revue that’s parked briefly at the Herberger Theater Center on its way to Broadway, is the most impressive, most opulent staging of Gershwin…
On the day after Christmas, I found myself at Circus Flora, a spectacle I opted for over yet another Neil Simon comedy at the Herberger. Circus Flora, performed in a big, plastic tent in Scottsdale, began with an unscheduled performance by me: Singled out by the clown for not having…
If there were any real justice in the world, Larry Shue would be considered the greatest comedy writer of the American theater, and Neil Simon would be a ribbon clerk. Instead, professional stages the world over continue to groan under the weight of Simon’s comedies, while Shue is–well, he’s dead…
There’s no synopsizing Gus Edwards’ new play. Four Walls’ brief, unformed trio of scenes whizzes by like the trailer for a bad movie–one with no budget or much of a story. And the fact that this wan one-act is playing in repertory with Michael Grady’s passionate The Raising of the…
Someone asked me the other day what I want for Christmas, and I didn’t have to think very long before replying that I want no one in Arizona–no one in the world–to make the mistake of attending the horrible play I sat through the other night in Mesa. I had…
If they’d been written today, the Tyrone clan of Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night would be just another dysfunctional family whose shrieking harangues would be best appreciated by a Jerry Springer audience. The more refined crowd that came to see this infamous family at the Herberger Theater Center…
These days, the best way to get a laugh in the theater is to hum the theme song from Laverne and Shirley. But references to my favorite sitcoms were still not enough to mask my discomfort while I watched talented people wrestle bad material to the ground. In Mixed Company’s…
Anyone who’s seen choreographer David Rousseve’s dances broadcast on PBS or live in Arizona in the past several years knows he likes to populate the stage like it’s a small town. As he did in Urban Scenes/Creole Dreams at Gammage in 1994 and, more recently, in Dry Each Other’s Tears…
A pair of plays that hovers tantalizingly between success and failure caught my attention this past weekend. Both of them are commentaries on racial discrimination, and each is well-written and–unfortunately, in their Phoenix debuts–inexpertly directed. Black Theatre Troupe’s Avenue X, now playing at the Helen K. Mason Center for the…
I figured I wouldn’t like Barry Williams. I expected that if I didn’t find him personally repellent, I’d at least hate his performance in The Music Man, which I saw last weekend in Tucson, and which opened in Phoenix on October 20. I don’t have anything against Williams, who’s best…
There are worse things to do than sit through a boring history lesson–like attending a dismal comedy trying to pass itself off as a history lesson. A pair of plays that plunder the past opened on neighboring stages at Herberger Theater Center last week. Actors Theatre of Phoenix’s The Complete…
The first weekend of the theater season looked like show business as usual. Phoenix Theatre was kicking off its 78th year with another tried-and-true musical; Theater Works was tackling a show beyond its limited means; and Planet Earth was providing its usual quirky, black-box alternative to both of the above…
I once interviewed a film actress who was attempting a comeback with her own television show. “I always tell people that I do this for the art, for the love of the craft, all that hogwash,” she told me. “The truth is, I started practicing my acceptance speech when I…
Pageant is not a drag show. Although its leads are all women played by men in wigs and dresses, this kitschy comedy isn’t aimed at gay audiences or fans of cross-dressing. Pageant plays it straight, its premise closer to the real-life beauty contests it spoofs than the drag fest it’s…
I was one of those guys holding his head and groaning when, in the early Eighties, Ted Turner and his pals began colorizing classic films. I hated that notion of making old movies more accessible to young audiences from the get-go, but it took me a little longer to get…
Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame formula does not apply to undiscovered playwrights. They get only seven minutes, if they’re lucky, rarely get their work read or produced, and are seldom heard from beyond tiny theater circles. Phoenix, ever a cultural backwater, has founded few programs aimed at nurturing up-and-coming…
Say what you will about the state of theater in Phoenix; at least our mask and wig clubs know their limitations. I’ve seen smallish Los Angeles companies cram colossal shows onto postage-stamp-size stages (most memorably a production of Showboat, shoehorned into a 100-seat house), but community theaters here typically work…
In Hollywood, sequels are compulsory. Live theater, unlike Tinseltown, tends to be more selective about revisiting its characters and stories. Most of the time, anyway. A . . . My Name Is Still Alice, currently onstage at Phoenix Theatre, is the sequel to A . . . My Name Is…
If it isn’t surprising that this theater season began and ended with Neil Simon plays, it’s at least comforting that both of them–if not the half-dozen other Simon comedies foisted on us in between–were adequately executed. Arizona Jewish Theatre Company’s Broadway Bound wraps up a season that began last September…
Would that every local theater company could afford nine-month rehearsal periods for each of its shows. Then maybe every production would be as noteworthy as In Mixed Company’s Out Cry, now playing at downtown’s Third Street Theatre. Director David Barker, who’s known for making difficult theater accessible to non-theater audiences,…
Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire is a nearly faultless play, a beautifully written, deeply disturbing pageant of human frailty that builds to a startling climax. None of this is apparent in Phoenix Theatre’s current production. Our oldest local playhouse has fumbled Williams’ prize-winning sex drama so badly that it…
