To hear Jeff Nolan tell it, murdering Scott Sullivan was an unfortunate accident. According to Pastor Tim, it was an indiscretion. And to David, the teenager who planned Scott’s death, it was a delight. The story of Scott’s grisly murder leaks out of Lummox, Texas, playwright/actor John Haubner’s fictional Southern…
You know the joke about the actor who misses his entrance cue, leaving his fellow players to improvise like mad until he shows up? I have finally — after a decade of writing about theater — witnessed this horror firsthand. At the opening-night performance of Black Theatre Troupe’s Joe Turner’s…
The idea that we are each separated by no more than six acquaintances has become more commonplace than the play, Six Degrees of Separation, which popularized the notion. John Guare’s oft-produced one-act (which is, amazingly, making its local debut with this Phoenix Theatre production) is a masterwork of dark comedy…
Having twice reviewed Parallel Lives: The Kathy and Mo Show in the past half-dozen years, I’m looking for a new angle. The folks at Actors Theatre of Phoenix, which last week opened its third production of this popular show, are quick to arrange a lunch meeting with its stars, former…
Someone sent me a Ladmo Bag. It arrived just as I was sitting down to my monthly poker game with a pair of bitter characters I’ve known since high school. Our game usually dissolves quickly into mean-spirited hollering and insults, but on this day, prompted by the arrival of this…
We tumbled out into the chilly courtyard of ASU’s Galvin Playhouse, my friends, colleagues and I, where we were quickly joined by the audience for the school’s current horror, a bald misrepresentation of the all-time worst Shakespeare comedy in the Bard’s canon. It was intermission, and my companions’ faces were…
I had high hopes for Guillermo Reyes’ Men on the Verge of a His-panic Breakdown. The show has the reputation of being very hip, and PlayWright’s Theatre, where Men on the Verge is playing, has — in its first full season — proven itself a reliable source of arty entertainment…
As a result of having recently witnessed Phoenix Theatre’s production of Tintypes, I am much too ill to write a theater review this week. Instead, I am submitting the notes I made while watching this program, a musical revue about turn-of-the-19th-century America, which should (despite several lively performances by some…
Warren Leight’s Side Man is both a perfect example of the American memory play and proof that a Broadway season filled with revivals and imports can produce a Tony win. Side Man won that award last year, despite its rather old-fashioned narrative structure and at least partly because it wasn’t…
Hedda Gabler’s come to town, and she ain’t, as the saying goes, what she used to be. That’s mostly because, in Actors Theatre of Phoenix’s production of Henrik Ibsen’s masterpiece, director Matthew Wiener has taken some unusual liberties with Rolf Fjelde’s popular translation. This classic story of a mean-spirited, batty…
Time was when you went to the theater to be entertained, not to be entertaining, and nuns were scary creatures whose sexual repression made them want to beat little kids senseless. Those days are mostly gone. Today, theater comedy often relies on audiences to augment the shtick of the actors…
Angie Tidwell is a total loser. She’s 37 and lives with her mom. Her favorite singer is Helen Reddy. She collects vintage dollhouse furniture, works as a guest greeter at Wal-Mart, and is still a virgin. But what makes Angie a total washout is that she’s only seen The Phantom…
John Henry Redwood’s people have unusual names like Lou Bessie and Bucket and Husband, and they hail from places with even stranger names, like Frogmore. In Redwood’s beautifully written The Old Settler, these people all end up in Harlem, where they change their names and attempt to alter their identities…
Bob Sorenson, left, and R. Hamilton Wright in The Mystery of Irma Vep.Those who have encountered playwright Charles Ludlam’s work know that it is juvenile and silly and displays a fond appreciation for theatrical classicism. Those who haven’t are in for a delightful baptism in farce at Arizona Theatre Company’s…
During my pre-matinee nap last Sunday afternoon, my Jewish playwright friend left me a voice mail message: “Hey, I’m in town, let’s get together for lunch. But don’t try to drag me to the theater, I saw The California Kid yesterday and I’m still recovering. What a bag of crap…
Among my more annoying flaws, friends tell me, is an unnatural affection for Christmas. I’m one of those fellows who spends the day after Thanksgiving searching for the perfect spruce pine. My holiday shopping is completed long before Halloween, and I begin playing my huge collection of Christmas records sometime…
In a performance space as intimate as PlayWright’s Theatre, you can name the moment when a play has grabbed its audience. That moment came during opening night of Theatre Maxim’s Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, when actor April Umbrianna blurted out her character’s horrible secret. The smallish audience froze…
I took more pleasure in telling people I was going to a play called Shopping and Fucking than I did from the play itself. But Planet Earth Theatre’s production of this persuasively creepy little drama — which was a huge hit in London’s West End several years ago — isn’t…
A pair of famous dead singers was resuscitated here last week. Mahalia Jackson and Maria Callas are each pacing local stages — Jackson in Black Theatre Troupe’s Mahalia; Callas in Arizona Theatre Company’s Master Class — talking directly to capacity audiences about their very different lives. The productions that present…
Question: What do you get when you combine a lot of talented actors with a couple of lousy scripts? Answer: Shows like those currently on display at Phoenix Theatre and Arizona Jewish Theatre Company. These programs — PT’s Twigs and AJTC’s The Gift Horse — sag under the weight of…
Would that some of our more established theater companies could harness the energy bursting from the makeshift stage at Planet Earth Theatre these days. In the best “Hey, kids, let’s put on a show!” tradition, a group of young amateurs has pooled its talents and its affection for campy old…
What a relief finally to see a perfect production of The Baltimore Waltz. I’ve witnessed four near-miss interpretations of this difficult play by other companies, but the Actors Theatre of Phoenix production currently at the Herberger is so well-realized that I discovered elements I didn’t realize I was missing when…
