If you aren’t wowed by Black Theatre Troupe’s production of Willie and Esther, don’t blame the actors. The pair of talented performers who traverse Thom Gilseth’s vivid set give us their all, but ultimately they can’t overcome flabby writing and misguided direction. Willie and Esther is a comedy with a…
Even without the impressive singing and dancing that make Play On! a gratifying evening of theater, its princely pedigree is enough to sell some tickets. A musical tribute to jazz legend Duke Ellington with a book based in Shakespeare, Play On! is Arizona Theatre Company’s most ambitious, most enjoyable production…
Occasionally, while watching a particularly tedious play, I’ll find myself wishing that the characters — who up to that point have probably been standing around mouthing inanities — would break into a line dance or maybe begin shouting obscenities or braying like animals. This sort of nonsense happens often, much…
All signs pointed to a potentially disastrous evening of theater: a stifling playhouse; jarringly loud pre-show music; a pretentious Author’s Note in the program, warning us that “this play is about my own journey to learn how to feel deeply, truly and immediately . . .”; a curtain that was…
End-of-the-century themes are big this year, and Phoenix Theatre has begun its 79th season with an unfortunately mawkish one. “The Way We Were” allows the company a new excuse to haul out the war-horses and to stage — for the third time in eight years — a ’50s musical revue…
For the past decade or so, our local theater season has kicked off with a musical comedy rerun, courtesy of Phoenix Theatre Company. This year, upstart Ensemble Theatre has upstaged PT’s tradition by launching its first full season with a swell production of a crafty Craig Lucas comedy. Reckless, which…
You’ve No Business Near Show Business continues through Sunday, September 5, at On the Spot Theater, 4700 North Central.
Ever since he was a boy, Richard Warren has been haunted by Buffalo Bill. In an attempt to exorcise his Wild West demon, Warren ditched a career in public relations and, in late middle age, wrote a play about the late, great cowboy. That play, How I Came to Be…
I know the scarcity of local summer stock has gotten to me when I find myself driving to Peoria to watch one of our most amateurish amateur companies take a stab at a sophisticated British farce. Not having seen any theater at all in several weeks, I risked Theater Works’…
Footloose is coming to town, and–for the duration, at least–I am leaving. Certainly no one who has made his living turning lousy musical films into equally terrible stage productions will miss me. This frightening trend–which I’ve carped about in these pages before–has seen the recent translation to the stage (if…
It was inevitable that the trend in tribute albums honoring contemporary singer/songwriters–which kicked into high gear more than a decade ago with Famous Blue Raincoat, Jennifer Warnes’ remarkable Leonard Cohen homage–would begin to spill over into the musical theater arena. A new generation of stage directors seems to want to…
I am plagued by amateur playwrights. This season, there were twice as many apprentice authors produced on local stages as the season before. Every year, another theater troupe adds a “new works” festival to its schedule, featuring works by anyone who can clutch a pen or deliver a French scene…
There’s an unfortunate trend in musical theater, a genre of live performance that can hardly afford another deadfall these days. Book musicals, once based on literature (A Connecticut Yankee) or original stories (Showboat), are today more likely to be adapted from cheesy Hollywood musical films. Recent Broadway audiences have had…
There’s a reason why A Thousand Clowns is a perennial favorite with theater companies across the country. Herb Gardner’s dark comedy is a wonderful piece of writing, with lively characters and a perfect blend of good-time yuks and hard-knock commentary. Arizona Jewish Theatre Company is closing its season–which honored Jewish…
Given the choice of watching a really terrible play in a freezing-cold theater or having all my molars yanked without the aid of Novocaine, I would–after recently enduring the former–have to opt for the latter. The play, Lisa Loomer’s tedious The Waiting Room, left me weary with boredom. And the…
In Adolph Frietag’s house, Jewish customs have long been buried. Although he and his family–sister, sister-in-law, and two nieces–are themselves Jewish, they decorate a Christmas tree every December and don’t associate with Russian Jews, whom they refer to as “the other kind.” Enter Joe Farkas, a handsome young Eastern Parkway…
There’s something unsettling about the overwrought lunatics created by playwright Richard Dresser. It isn’t their crabby personalities or their limitless capacity for self-pity. It’s not even their incessant whining about their tormented lives. And, in the current Actors Theatre of Phoenix production of Dresser’s Gun-Shy, it certainly isn’t the way…
Who says Phoenix isn’t a theater town? For the past five years, a real live Broadway legend has walked among us–not that most people here probably care. In Phoenix, you’re more likely to be handed celebrity status for shooting a cop than for copping a Tony nomination or winning an…
There are few theatrical experiences more gratifying than watching a talented young artist fulfill his promise. Theatergoers who saw David Drake performing his off-Broadway smash The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me in 1991 were witness to that rare occurrence. In a little more than an hour, audiences saw Drake rant…
The woman in line ahead of me for Phoenix Theatre’s production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? turned to me just before buying her tickets. “I don’t even know what this play is about,” she confided. When I told her it’s about two married couples who get drunk and scream…
Legend has it that, in 1947, Brooklyn Dodgers owner Branch Rickey gathered together the most influential black men in America in one cramped hotel room. The story goes that these men–Joe Louis, Paul Robeson and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson–met to discuss Rickey’s pending announcement that Jackie Robinson would be joining the…
At the end of the 20th century, no life is allowed to go unexamined, and none of us is permitted to claim a clean bill of mental health. Talk show hosts, self-help authors and amateur radio docs tell us we’re not well-balanced, we’re delusional, we didn’t have happy childhoods, we’re…
