Fela Kuti was a man of many hats: Afrobeat pioneer, revolutionary, and outspoken crusader for political justice. Music was his weapon, a driving, pulsating, often hypnotic sound mixing jazz, soul, funk, blues and rock with Nigeria’s indigenous rhythms, which moved people spiritually and to action as much as it moved…
Jonathan Winters was an American artist and comedian, dubbed the “Pioneer of Improvisational Comedy.” Winters acted on stage and in films and television, including Stanley Kramer’s It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and Twilight Zone. He was known as a comedic chameleon who slipped in and out of characters…
The cast and crew behind downtown’s Space 55 first held “A Bitch in Time” two years ago. It was cheap (and semi last minute); no sets or costumes were required and actors had little time for rehearsal. The show sold out, and proceeds benefited the theater’s future productions. A year…
The setup: Neil Simon is still a massively popular American playwright — able to sell tickets on name alone when some shows can scarcely sell tickets at all — and his success gets in his way, critically speaking. You have to look at a theater company’s choice to do one…
Charles L. Mee’s Soot and Spit is, in its ASU première, beautiful to behold. Cloaked in shadows, fractured with light, its 90 minutes chug along earnestly, sometimes passionately. If only Mee’s play (if, indeed, that’s what this is) were more entertaining. And more edifying. One leaves the theater having seen…
The setup: Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya takes guts to produce and mad brains and talent to produce tolerably. Don’t go to that link and read it; besides its morose nature, it’s full of those Russians with multiple nicknames and pretty hard to follow on the page (frustration bonus!). It’s two…
If you have any desire to hear more about why coffee is the new black, what’s in your wallet, or how to deal with chicken personality disorder, Ignite Phoenix No. 14 might be a good place to start. The event, on Friday, April 26, at the Scottsdale Center for the…
The end of 2007, just before the closure of the Paper Heart gallery, performance space, and beer and wine bar, was the approximate heyday of the Grand Avenue alt-arts scene, at least so far. Not that it isn’t still fun and diverting and full of promise for the future, but we’ll get to…
Musical of Musicals (The Musical) has a beard a mile long. This send-up of Broadway tuners should, at this point in the let’s-spoof-musical-theater game, play like a post-peak retread, an afterthought of irony, a late-to-the-party lesser-than Forbidden Broadway. But, in its Theater Works production, there is the joy of watching…
Fans of Lisa Starry and her choreography might remember Water Dreams, her original water-themed production that debuted more than 10 years ago. It won her rave reviews, and in the years since, she’s only ingratiated herself all the more with Valley dance aficionados through her consistently lovable works, including the…
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…
