Whenever I find myself trapped in a theater with another lousy production of another dreary play or musical, I always turn to my friend the playbill. I’ve destroyed my eyesight peering into the dark at these marvels of bad syntax and questionable grammar, but it’s been worth it. Because playbills…
Molly Sweeney is blind. And she’s married to a windbag, a dorky bore who’s convinced her to undergo surgery to restore her eyesight. She’s lived a full, happy life in her native Ireland — at least until her meddlesome husband takes her on as his latest cause. The operation restores…
Imagine for a moment that you’re at a diner, and you’ve just ordered one of those “man-size” breakfast combos, the kind that come with four eggs and three kinds of meat and griddle cakes and a side of hash browns and a little plate of toast. In the space of…
The Last Five Years, which played briefly off-Broadway in 2002, chronicles a young couple’s romance using two different time lines. Her story starts at the end of their relationship, while his begins at the beginning, on the day they meet. The two stories collide briefly at the couple’s wedding, then…
Alas, the lowly AIDS play. Originally built in the face of a crisis, AIDS plays have lingered as a subgenre of theater, one that has withered as science and society have found ways to address the crisis. There are notable exceptions: Angels in America, of course; and Larry Kramer’s The…
If Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart isn’t often revived, it’s almost certainly because it’s an issue-related drama with a story — about the first few years of the AIDS epidemic in Manhattan — that sounds, in quick summary, quite dated. It doesn’t help that the play is equal parts lecture…
There was a time when Disney knew its place. That time has long since passed. Once content to deliver clever cartoons and the occasional film comedy starring Kurt Russell, Disney has begun reading its own press clippings and, puffed up about being “The Happiest Place on Earth!”, wants to rub…
We’ve lost another one. Last month, the folks at TheatreScape announced that they’re pulling the plug on the rest of their season and on the troupe itself. Small companies like TheatreScape come and go all the time, but the ones that put together shows as worthy as this company’s often…
Actors Theatre has struck pay dirt with Nickel and Dimed, playwright Joan Holden’s comic adaptation of Barbara Ehrenreich’s nonfiction best seller Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, in which noted author and activist Ehrenreich went undercover as a minimum-wage earner to write about how the working poor…
I welcomed in the new year with a shudder and a sigh, because 2005 is the year that Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park will return to Broadway. As if that weren’t enough, we have, right now in lovely Phoenix, two productions of this hoary old comedy playing concurrently, which…
Fans of lightweight post-dinner entertainment will appreciate Always . . . Patsy Cline, a slightly better than average amusement that’s playing at Theater 4301. The venue, one of Scottsdale Center for the Arts’ satellite theaters, isn’t particularly easy to find; parking is a small-scale nightmare; and a single, sluggish elevator…
I’ve been thinking about making some New Year’s resolutions. Normally I don’t bother; it’s too easy to give in to the bad habits I’ve honed to perfection, and let’s face it: Ice cream will always taste better than salad, and since I work at home and my spouse is gone…
Okay. Let’s say that Jesus Christ is real, and that he was born to a virgin mother and is the son of an all-powerful but invisible being who offered up his only offspring in payment for our sins. Does this guy — this savior, this product of an immaculate conception…
It’s been a very long time since I’ve reviewed Actors Theatre’s annual production of A Christmas Carol. I see it every year, but I haven’t troubled anyone outside of my home with an opinion about it for quite a while. I must have written something when, a half-dozen years or…
I saw Arizona Theatre Company’s production of Anna in the Tropics with a second-weekend audience, having missed its opening night. Second-weekenders are a tough crowd, harder to entertain; first-nighters are there as much for the schmoozing as for what’s up on stage. And so the warm reception given by these…
Has anyone but me noticed that Arizona Jewish Theatre Company never produces plays or musicals that depict Jews as whiny cheapskates? And that the Black Theatre Troupe never presents shows in which people of color are portrayed as lazy, shiftless field hands? Fortunately for fans of pitiless stereotyping, there’s the…
What are the chances that Nearly Naked Theatre will continue to rack up winners with its string of subversive, complex plays? I’ve watched as small companies have managed a handful of hits with cute musicals and Neil Simon revivals, and seen my share of avant-garde troupes wither and die after…
I got another piece of hate mail the other day — this one from some sniffy playwright whose musical I’d recently panned. Mr. How Dare You ended his pissy missive (which, as usual, was filled with reasons I should be murdered in my sleep) with, “I’d like to see you…
You know it’s November when Circle K starts carrying eggnog, and you know some theater troupe is in a pinch when it announces a last-minute production of A.R. Gurney’s Love Letters, that perennial stage substitute that audiences love and anyone with the slightest bit of sense runs screaming from. Love…
Stray Cat Theatre has made a name for itself by mounting dicey material and testing untried plays by unknown authors, nearly always triumphantly. And so I wasn’t at all surprised to leave [sic], Stray Cat’s latest offering, completely charmed and still chuckling as I drove away. [sic] (the title is…
Poor Dion Johnson. Surrounded by other “actors,” he’s nonetheless left all alone to make his way through two acts of The Elephant Man. That he turns in a spectacular performance and walks off with every minute of the show would be more impressive if he happened to share the stage…
Note to the next person to answer a cell phone call during a theater performance at which I am present: Enjoy your telephone conversation, because it will be your last. I will personally murder you with my bare hands at intermission. If you somehow evade me before Act Two commences,…
