Two weeks along, the theater season is already shaping up to be the finest in years. Three of our smaller companies have weighed in with real contenders: The Last Wallace & Ladmo Show has filled Theater Works’ stage with more Equity actors than it hosted all last year. And Is…
Color me surprised. An upstart theater company has kicked off the new season with a real long shot: an out-of-the-box smash delivered by a stageful of amateurs and first-timers. Is What It Is Theater’s production of Studs Terkel’s Working shouldn’t work at all. This company had never produced a musical,…
All signs were pointing to a lousy evening of theater, even before the curtain came up on White Byson Theater Company’s production of Remember My Name. The show’s publicist phoned me at 7 a.m. the day before, to ask that I not review the show — never a good sign…
Get the hook! The theater season is winding up with a whimper, thanks to Is What It Is Theatre’s subpar production of The Curious Savage. On a set dressed with all the flair of a fourth-grade talent show, John Patrick’s humdrum comedy is being huffed out by yet another clutch…
When I first reviewed Joe Marshall’s Dirty Secrets three years ago, I was wowed by the smart story but lamented the second-rate acting of that particular production. Little has changed on either front with this show, which Alternative Theater Company has remounted at On the Spot playhouse, the scene of…
Pity Rico Burton: She’s working double-time to keep Black Theatre Troupe’s new show afloat. If Cookin’ at the Cookery were a one-woman tribute to Alberta Hunter, and not a musical biography of the legendary blues singer-songwriter, it might qualify as a success. But a ponderous script and deadly direction doom…
With some effort, I remained awake throughout Theater Works’ production of Triumph of Love the other night. The lucky ladies on my left, who snoozed all through Act One, were spared the two head-splitting hours of “entertainment” that have haunted me ever since. Triumph of Love is a translation of…
Idon’t know that I’ve seen a show all season that I’ve enjoyed as much as Sophisticated Ladies, which is currently whirling its way flawlessly across Phoenix Theatre’s main stage. I confess to being surprised. I’ve seen more musicals upended on this company’s stage than I care to remember — but…
Historical biographies are a tough sell. They must either entertain us with the fascinating story of a famous person, or tell us something new and interesting about someone we think we already know. Moreover, they must make us care about someone whose accomplishments may have exceeded his affability. The hero…
About half an hour into the Actors Theatre of Phoenix production of Dinner With Friends, my theater companion leaned over and whispered, “This is great. But what makes it a Pulitzer Prize winner?” I’d been wondering the same thing about Donald Margulies’ perfectly charming, often amusing dramedy about a pair…
I’m old enough to remember when performance art was considered a new form, back when truly hip people spent weekend nights in renovated warehouses watching would-be actors transform traditional theater arts. If I’ve reached an age at which hipness eludes me, I’m not so old that I can’t still appreciate…
Although I spent two and a half hours looking at it the other night, I’m not entirely sure what Ramona is meant to be. I can tell you what it isn’t: It’s not at all entertaining. Although Ramona is parenthetically a historical play, contains a love story and occasionally goes…
I suppose I’ll eventually recover from having seen Ensemble Theatre’s production of Durang/ Durang. In the meantime, I’ll continue to lie here with a cold compress on my head, trying like mad to shake the memory of this unfortunate attempt at live entertainment. When it isn’t being bludgeoned by amateurs,…
There are rich rewards in even the most routine presentation of Tennessee Williams’ 1944 classic The Glass Menagerie. Phoenix Theatre’s production of Williams’ autobiographical drama is proof that almost nothing can dim this story’s enduring appeal. Williams’ timeless people — the Southern belles and gentleman callers of the playwright’s own…
Fully Committed is a play about conversations: Truncated, maddening, sometimes amusing conversations — the kind we all have every day with total strangers we’d probably rather not be talking to in the first place. The difference here is that the conversations are all held by one person, an actor in…
It’s little wonder that Nearly Naked Theatre’s Damon Dering has wanted to produce The King of Infinite Space for more than a decade. Andrew Ordover’s obscure morality play is a satisfying, compelling piece of writing with more dramatic turns than a week’s worth of made-for-TV movies. In the director’s notes,…
It’s Tuesday, and I’m standing outside City Hall, lying to strangers. “I’m going to the Lunch Time Theater program at the Herberger,” I tell a dozen different people. “But I don’t know where the Herberger is.” I’m trying to determine whether people who work in downtown Phoenix know that they…
It was a Sinatra crowd that took their seats last Friday night at Phoenix Theatre for a second-week performance of My Way, a tribute to the Chairman of the Board that’s been doing boffo box office. The program crams 56 Frank Sinatra songs into a handsomely produced, gracefully entertaining two-hour…
From the moment one enters Stage West at the Herberger, Black Theatre Troupe’s production of The Gospel at Colonus grabs one’s coattails and hangs on ’til the final hosanna. Pulling off a flawless production of The Gospel at Colonus — which fuses Greek theater with Pentecostal oratory and West African,…
The barrio boys of Culture Clash’s The Mission wanna give it up for Latino culture. If only someone will let them. The ersatz Culture Clash now appearing at Scottsdale’s Metro Theatre is actually the cast of Teatro Bravo’s retread of the famous group’s breakout play, but it’s selling the same…
Where the Big Apple is concerned, Laurie Anderson’s work has often had an eerie prescience about it. In an Encyclopedia Britannica essay on New York City she authored last summer, Anderson speculated about how far the World Trade Center towers would fall if they collapsed. (The encyclopedia’s editors opted to…
Actors Theatre of Phoenix has taken another artistic risk that pays off in spite of itself. The company’s production of actor/author John Leguizamo’s Spic-O-Rama succeeds mostly as a showcase for the talents of local actor Richard Trujillo, whose superb performance as six different members of one familia loca busts past…
