It’s become a little embarrassing, frankly. I find myself answering the same handful of disgruntled questions, time and again, about how and why I dare to work as a theater critic. My favorite entreaties include “Why are you so mean?” (Because I can be) and “Don’t you care that theater…
Anyone who dares to wring some fun out of Alan Jay Lerner’s “How Could You Believe Me When I Said I Loved You When You Know I’ve Been a Liar All My Life?” is taking a real risk, but if anyone can do it, it’s likely that Theatre Artists Studio…
Every time I pass them, I’m reminded of Italy. Their Tuscan-inspired curves and Venetian-centric palette bring to mind my favorite Italian village, Burano, known as “The Island Where the Rainbow Fell” because of its brightly colored, jammed-together old villas. But these villas aren’t in Italy, and the only rainbow they…
J. Edgar Hoover was a “weirdo transvestite,” but when Eddie Izzard puts on a dress, he’s an “executive transvestite.” “I’m a male tomboy,” says the British comedian, who cross-dresses both on- and offstage. “It’s not a sexual thing. I just like wearing makeup and clothing, which is traditionally perceived in…
He’s a Shakespeare fan, a one-time Bill Thompson impersonator (he played Wallace in a series of Ladmo-centric plays), and an actor/director who’s worked with practically every theater company in town. In his spare time, Wes Martin is the founder of brand-new Off Center Productions, for which he’s currently directing Marat/Sade…
Pump Boys and Dinettes: It sounds like the name of an orgiastic furniture store, but Pump Boys and Dinettes is a musical tribute to life by the roadside — along Highway 57, to be exact — somewhere between fictional Frog Level and the town of Smyrna. Original rock- and country-flavored…
Has it really been three years since I last saw a production of The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade? It seems like only yesterday I was trying to stay awake during…
Beehive: What would summer in Phoenix be without an endless parade of jukebox musicals? Beehive is that genres queen and, like the monsoon, it arrives every year — usually in August and usually at a wee theater that cant afford a book musical this time of year. Broadway Palm tends…
If it’s true that all the world’s a stage, then it’s entirely possible that that world resides in a galaxy made up of phony awards programs, at least in the minds of pretend theater critics who have a deadline to meet and a column to write. Therefore, without further ado,…
They’re the most underappreciated talents in theater, falling somewhere between the ticket taker and the lighting designer in the recognition department. Playwrights seldom get their due, a fact that local author Richard Warren has been trying to rectify for the past decade with Phoenix Theatre’s New Works Festival. Warren selects…
Mike Nielsen is talking about his dream again. It’s about a Phoenix neighborhood so perfect he’s not sure there’s a single adjective that can do it justice. In this fantasy neighborhood, there’s a nice mix of upscale, custom homes and affordable housing; a spiced-up combination of hilltop mansions, swanky gated…
Footloose: Kick off your Sunday shoes. No, seriously. Because the stage musical adaptation of Herbert Ross 1984 teen scene flick is back, this time for more than a month at Hale Center Theatre (not to be confused with the Desert Stages production, reviewed on page 46), where teenage rebellion and…
There appears to be a conspiracy afoot, one designed to prevent people of a certain age from forgetting one of the worst movie musicals of all time. And believe me, we’d like to forget Xanadu. But someone — a secret government agency? a group of especially nasty theater queens? —…
My friend Michelle met me at Desert Stages the other night to watch its production of Footloose. I think Michelle looks exactly like Jodie Foster during her short-brown-hair period, and when we’re out together and I get bored, I like to pretend Michelle is Jodie Foster and that I’m friends…
Footloose: Kick off your Sunday shoes. No, seriously. Because the stage musical adaptation of Herbert Ross 1984 teen scene flick is back, this time for more than a month at Hale Center Theatre, where teenage rebellion and dance floor angst never die. This drama(!) set to music fell flat on…
I discovered Valium the other day. I know, I know — where have I been, right? But prescription meds and I don’t get along well, so my recreational drug use has mostly been limited to Scotch and the occasional garden-grown cigarette. Prescribed by my charming new dentist to get me…
Here’s the page where I habitually whine about done-to-death musicals; where I make pissy comments about the dreary state of summer stock; where I bemoan the very existence of dinner theater. This is where I normally complain about having to drive 45 minutes to watch a retread of a super-popular…
Bat Boy: The Musical: Although Nearly Naked Theatres production benefits from Damon Derings darkly comic, crafty direction and from a pair of performances that help elevate it from high camp to something closer to art, Bat Boy is ultimately a musical in need of a first act. Keythe Farley and…
I guess I’ve been asleep on the job. I knew that Theater Works had, at last, moved into its new, permanent digs at the Peoria Center for the Performing Arts (which — I know! — sounds like the punch line to some kind of joke but is really sort of…
Mail artists are fond of telling their fans that the mail-art movement began with Cleopatra, who had herself delivered in a rolled-up carpet to Julius Caesar thousands of years ago. Whatever its beginnings, the medium (which some say is among the longest-lasting art movements in history) has lately been enjoying…
Growing up in South Dakota, Brian Boner remembers being surrounded by hummingbirds. “They were everywhere,” he says, “and if you stood very still, they’d come right up to you and buzz around your face like you were a giant sunflower.” It’s a memory that the 32-year-old painter has memorialized in…
The King and I: In Thailand, its illegal to own any memorabilia related to either this Rodgers and Hammerstein musical or its source material, Margaret Landons book Anna and the King of Siam. Thats because the Thai government says that both the book and the musical contain such egregious historical…
