If you haven’t stopped into The Torch Theatre on Central Avenue in Phoenix for an improv show, you’re missing out. The group, headed up by board members Bill Binder, Jose Gonzalez, Jacque Arend, Sam Haldiman, Nina Miller, Mack Duncan, Shane Shannon, and Tommy Schaeffer , is consistently reinventing itself in…
The setup: For many of us late Boomers of the Valley, La Cage aux Folles was the first foreign film we got to go see all by ourselves as young adults, setting a standard for both comedy and the mainstreaming of gay cinema that’s been hard to match since. See…
If we were looking for reasons to show some appreciation for all that Ballet Arizona brings to the Valley arts scene, then we found three more to add to the list: choreographers Alexei Ratmansky and Alejandro Cerrudo and Director’s Choice. The pair of leading choreographers will join Ballet Arizona artistic…
The setup: A few years back, playwright Jordan Harrison was approached by Anne Kaufmann of The Civilians, NYC’s “investigative theater” troupe, who’d become fascinated with intentional communities such as Hasidic Jews, nuns, and the Amish, bearing transcripts of interviews and a request to let the concept marinate and come up…
Comedian and actor Paul Reiser has starred in a wealth of roles over the course of his two decades in showbiz. Fans of NBC’s “Must See TV” era will, of course, remember him for the seven seasons he spent as the neurotic Paul Buchman with Helen Hunt on Mad About…
Wait. You got your Aziz Ansari tix already, right? Good. ‘Cause his Buried Alive Tour stops at Comerica Theatre on May 5. Ready for the pre-party? Here it goes: 10 GIFS of our favorite swagtastic comedian, Yeezy sidekick, and Parks and Recreation character. (Deal with it, Swansonians.) That one up…
Normally, this time of year, our theater pants would be full of PHX:fringe performances, but we’re having a much less edgy spring than we’d like. The festival’s official website, which went dark in January or February, had featured the same landing page for several months, advising fans to check back…
Landmark local comedy club Tempe Improv, which closed last summer after decades of hosting hundreds of superstar stand-ups, is making a return. The legendary laugh establishment, located near University Drive and Rural Road in Tempe, is scheduled to reopen its doors in mid-April. It’s just the latest development in the…
Thanks to people who give me Christmas presents, I got to indulge my huge irrational Chris Kattan crush last weekend, admiring his sweet smile, sexy bod, warm brown eyes, and dormant career from a mere 30 feet away. A true fan knows that Kattan’s strongest mainstream film performance (except for…
There aren’t many places where you can catch a ballet under the stars, let alone in one of the world’s only places created for the study and display of the beauty of the Sonoran Desert. But last year, Ballet Arizona and the Desert Botanical Garden teamed up for the world…
The setup: Billy Van Zandt and Jane Milmore are successful TV writers from New Jersey (if you ever wonder who’s married to Adrienne Barbeau, it’s Van Zandt) who also create mainstream farces (Love, Sex, and the I.R.S.). The team’s Wrong Window! takes the overall plot of Hitchcock’s Rear Window (28th…
The setup: Stray Cat Theatre produced two other scripts by Stephen Karam, directed by Ron May, a few seasons back, and the currently running Sons of the Prophet is the third such matchup. This is a classic example of a play that people tend not to have heard of (despite…
For centuries, countless productions of Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Il Trovatore have been staged around the world. After a 20-year absence from the Arizona stage, the classic love tale will re-invent itself March 1, 2, and 3 at Phoenix Symphony Hall using state-of-the-art, high-tech stage equipment. Dating back to the early…
The next time you’re bust up laughing after a bawdy female comedienne like Lisa Lampanelli, Whitney Cummings, or Chelsea Handler lays down some of her signature raunch, be sure to thank Andrew Dice Clay after your sides stop hurting. That’s because — believe it or not — the ultra-lewd and…
The setup: Doing anything artistic in the Valley for five straight (as it were) years is a huge accomplishment. A sketch comedy troupe that’s been performing several times a year in a dump on Grand Avenue, beginning in 2008 when the economy tanked? Hella impressive. Guess what else? They’re smart,…
The setup: Dale Wasserman, who lived and worked in Paradise Valley from 1992 until his death in 2008, was one of the old school of stage and screen scribes who ran off as a youth from a boring small town and made his bones in the golden age of TV…
The ways in which revolutions disrupt the lives of the winners has been well documented. In Matthew Lopez’s The Whipping Man, we consider the losers — in this case, of the Civil War — and reside, courtesy of a strong production at the Black Theatre Troupe, with three actors whose…
The setup: There’s a lot of backstory here. Broadway Palm Dinner Theatre went out of business last year, and a venerable, family-friendly Salt Lake City (well, Murray) company, Desert Star Playhouse, took over the cavernous space at Brown and Higley roads to launch a metro Phoenix branch of their silly,…
In the spirit of freedom of space travel for all of mankind, adult film star Coco Brown is scheduled to take one giant leap with the help of space tourism company Space Expedition Corporation (SXC). In March, 2014, the actress known (in circles) for her roles in Black Panty Chronicles…
For 20 years, stand-up comic Louis C.K. has shocked, offended, and connected with audiences around the globe. His vulgar material is nothing short of hilarious as the comic continues to stun fans with new knee-slapping routines. After postponing his originally scheduled Phoenix visit in December, Louis C.K. decided to move…
The setup: Ken Ludwig, great American farceur, has penned such solidly wild comedies as I Hate Hamlet, Lend Me a Tenor, Moon over Buffalo, and the mystifyingly underproduced Leading Ladies. Since all those plays are about show-business people (mostly actors), I was curious to see what Ludwig did with the…
The setup: Next to Normal marks the first time since Rent that a musical won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. (Interestingly, composer Tom Kitt and lyricist Brian Yorkey had written even less for the stage than had Jonathan Larson at that point.) Arizona Theatre Company mounted a production last fall,…
