Previews and reviews by Robrt L. Pela Frozen: Bryony Laverys dark, thoughtful drama about a pedophile serial killer won Londons prestigious Barclay Award for Best New Play of 1998, then went on to pile up accolades in New York the following year. Lavery is so skilled a scriptwriter, she manages…
To get an idea of why I was so deeply frustrated by Black Theatre Troupe’s excellent production of Fabulation or the Re-Education of Undine, try this: Put a DVD of your favorite movie on, turn the volume way up, then go out onto your front porch and watch the film…
Fortunately for the folks in the audience at Phoenix Theatre, Black Theatre Troupe executive director David Hemphill is appearing in PT’s current production of Guys and Dolls. That’s bad luck for the rest of us, because it means Hemphill wasn’t there to give his usual charming curtain speech on opening…
My Fair Lady: The rain in Spain will, these next several weeks, be falling mainly on the theatrical plain of Broadway Palm Dinner Theatre, which brings us this famed Lerner-Loewe musical through mid-April. Based on George Bernard Shaws Pygmalion, My Fair Lady contains more classic tunes in its first act…
Betty Comden: As one half of the legendary musical duo of Comden and Green, Betty Comden produced six decades’ worth of Hollywood and Broadway hits. The duo penned screenplays and songs for some of the most beloved movie musicals, including Singin’ in the Rain, The Band Wagon, and On the…
About halfway through the second act of Christopher Durang’s wildly funny Betty’s Summer Vacation, a couple of electric saws appear out of nowhere and hack a giant hole into the back wall of the stage set. From that jagged fissure shoots a huge slide, down which come tumbling a trio…
My Fair Lady: The rain in Spain will, these next several weeks, be falling mainly on the theatrical plain of Broadway Palm Dinner Theatre, which brings us this famed Lerner-Loewe musical through mid-April. Based on George Bernard Shaws Pygmalion, My Fair Lady contains more classic tunes in its first act…
David and Amy Sedaris’ The Book of Liz is a smart, funny, shrewdly crafted piece of writing, full of sly social commentary and jam-packed with goofy double entendres. None of this is apparent in Space 55 Theatre Ensemble’s leaden production of the play, now on display in a dark corner…
Munched: This workshop reading of local actor/author Kim Porter’s new play features Ken Love in a story about Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, a psychiatric disorder in which mothers poison their kids in order to get attention for themselves. Here, we meet Marybeth, who’s spent 25 years in prison after killing…
It isn’t difficult to believe that Tina Fabrique is the real Ella Fitzgerald while watching her perform in Ella, the musical biography of Fitzgerald that Arizona Theater Company has just remounted at Mesa Arts Center. I didn’t need to squint or try to forget what Ella should sound like; Fabrique…
The Death Bite: Hal Corley’s unfortunately named drama is not about vampirism, but rather about 18 hours in the life of Robyn Fair, an oddball who longs to launch her life from the New Jersey suburb where she lives. First, she has to untangle herself from her deceitful foster daughter,…
1934 In her first stage performance, Ella Fitzgerald wins an Amateur Night competition at the Apollo Theater. 1936 Ella’s first recording, “Love and Kisses,” is released on Decca Records. 1938 Ella’s first Number One single is “A-Tisket, A-Tasket,” a novelty number recorded for an Abbott and Costello movie in which…
Imagine being trapped in a tiny room full of people who cannot sing but insist on doing so anyway (at the top of their lungs!), and you’ll understand my discomfort while confronting Desert Stages’ Suds last month. This is one of those musical revues — and they are legion —…
Forced to give a name to the past year in theater, I would have to call it The Year of Ron May, because while many of his compatriots struggled to act, direct, run a credible theater or even just handle publicity for one, this quadruple-threat actor/director/artistic director/publicist excelled at each…
42nd Street: On the avenue they’re taking you to . . . the one where the girl goes out a dancer “but comes back a star!” This popular musical has been revived countless times, but it’s still best known in its original context: as the classic Warner Bros. tuner in…
It’s finally happened. Joseph Kremer has at last appeared in a role that he’s not able to make his own. Kremer, who arrived seemingly out of nowhere a couple of seasons ago, has tackled — and excelled at! — roles as diverse as a sleazy French aristocrat in Les Liaisons…
I couldn’t tell if the holiday choir that kicked off the surprisingly dreary Sister’s Christmas Catechism: The Mystery of the Magi’s Gold was for real or not. Are they deliberately off-key, I wondered, and that’s the joke? My uncertainty grew as this overlong evening dragged on and on. How, I…
Wishes, Wassail, and Wonder: Don’t let its super-cheesy title fool you: iTheatre Collaborative’s fourth annual Christmas cabaret is in on its own joke, and may well be your best bet for kicky holiday entertainment with an edge. Shot through with caustic comic turns, this Yule-themed New York-style cabaret cobbles together…
Toward the end of Act One of Arizona Theatre Company’s Jitney, Chuck Patterson positions himself near the lip of center stage and recites a monologue about a dream that Fielding, the character he plays in this August Wilson play, has recently had. His recollection of climbing a golden ladder up…
Tuna Christmas: It’s back: that better-than-most holiday sequel to Greater Tuna, this one about Christmas in Tuna, the third smallest town in Texas. The good news is that the script for this Yuletide comedy is full of dark, cynical jabs at both the holidays and small-town life. It starts out…
If I lie very still and focus all my attention on the tiny water stain on the ceiling above my bed, I’m able to forget the dream for minutes at a time. The dream — a nightmare, really — has been with me since this afternoon, when I awakened from…
Mrs. Bob Cratchit’s Wild Christmas Binge: Originally commissioned by City Theatre in Pittsburgh and successfully presented during the 2002 holiday season, Christopher Durang’s profoundly irreverent play is a demented version of the perennial Dickens Christmas classic. This time, nasty old Ebenezer Scrooge finds that a visitation from three dead friends…
