Arizona Theatre Company opens its 1995-96 season with an intriguing, eclectic version of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In an attempt to bring Shakespeare to a short-attention-span audience, director David Ira Goldstein has used scores of nontraditional approaches to Shakespeare’s work. The result is a must-see for Valley theatregoers. A…
Sporting some of the most lackluster acting this Valley has seen in a long time, the current play by Phoenix Theatre has proven that a wonderful story and a well-crafted script cannot save poor execution onstage. PT’s second production of this season, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, turns into…
Woody Allen and Mel Brooks both started out in movies by making wacky, hip slapstick farces. Allen later grew to be such a snob about comedy that, for an unfortunate period (happily over), he seemed to regard being funny as a form of Jewish self-hatred. Brooks, conversely, has kept dumbing…
Unlike Southeast Asia last week, Agnieszka Holland’s new film Total Eclipse has nary an eclipse, total or partial, in its length. A pity–astronomical phenomena would have provided a bit of diversion. The film concerns the tempestuous relationship between the prodigal French poet Arthur Rimbaud (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his older, sort-of…
thursday november 2 Arizona State Fair: The annual corn-dog carnival continues daily, through Sunday, at the fairgrounds, bounded by McDowell Road and Encanto Boulevard between 17th and 19th avenues. Along with the usual attractions–midway rides and games, livestock and agricultural exhibits, etc.–this year’s fair features Thunder Lagoon, a manmade “rain…
at the fair Arizona Super Bowl XXX Kids’ “In” Zone: Interactive tests of skill and games are planned during regular hours Friday and Saturday at Arizona State Fair. Highlights of the event, sponsored by the NFL and the Arizona Cardinals, include the Jerry Rice Super Bowl Touchdown Game, Gamemaster inflatable…
Even in this fast-paced world of ours, are we ever able to embrace change? Imagine going back to 1948 to a small Kentucky town in the Cumberland River Gorge, to find people who know little of change. These are the characters currently being examined by Arizona State University’s theatre department…
To celebrate its 45th theatre season, Grand Canyon University continues to emphasize the works of Shakespeare with the pastoral comedy As You Like It. This whimsical tale of love is filled with all the unbelievable characters and situations we have now come to expect on TV sitcoms, but they are…
After rumors that Louis Mall’s Vanya on 42nd Street would open in the Valley proved baseless, there seemed little to do but wait for it to arrive on video. But if you’d rather not see the film in your living room, you can at last catch its Valley premire at…
Kevin Smith’s debut feature, Clerks, was about two young slackers hanging out at their boring counter help jobs, mooning about women, wrangling with skewed customers and ruminating upon bizarre philosophical notions. Smith’s sophomore effort, Mallrats, is about two young slackers hanging around a shopping mall, mooning about women, wrangling with…
orange crush “Boo! At the Zoo”: This sixth annual event is scheduled from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at Phoenix Zoo, 455 North Galvin Parkway, in Papago Park. Highlights include the “Trick-or-Treat Trail,” costume parades, a hay maze, a “best dressed” contest, live entertainment, crafts and face…
thursday october 26 Arizona State Fair: The annual corn-dog carnival continues daily, through November 5, at the fairgrounds, bounded by McDowell Road and Encanto Boulevard between 17th and 19th avenues. Along with the usual attractions–midway rides and games, livestock and agricultural exhibits, etc.–this year’s fair features Thunder Lagoon, a manmade…
If I can only have a dress made from Junichi Arai’s fluid stainless steel fabric in time for Halloween, I can go to the big party as Queen of the Martians. The arresting fabric, which moves like mercury in the hand and could have come straight out of some secret…
Theater Works has scored solidly with a winning production of John Guare’s darkly deranged comedy The House of Blue Leaves. Guare is the author of two pieces I have admired very much, the film Atlantic City and the play and film Six Degrees of Separation. But despite two acclaimed New…
The theme of The Scarlet Letter is hypocrisy, and the new film version of this classic never embodies its theme more strikingly than in one of its opening titles: “Freely adapted from the novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne.” Yeah, right. Douglas Day Stewart’s script has wildly altered Hawthorne’s plot, to be…
The 1926 masterpiece Bronenosets Potemkin (The Battleship Potemkin), the second feature of a wise-ass 27-year-old Soviet director named Sergei Eisenstein, is one of those works whose effect on modern culture almost can’t be overstated. Although Eisenstein already had experimented with the technique he called “montage” in his 1924 debut feature,…
at the fair Thunder Lagoon Kids ActiviTIKI HUT: KPNX-TV, Channel 12, hosts this exhibit from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday at Arizona State Fair. A variety of activities is planned, including coloring projects and animal shows, all with an eye toward educating kids about saving the rain forest and…
Info:Category:Calendar Edition:Print 10/19/1995 Pic Hits for the week By Clay McNear thursday october 19 Arizona State Fair: The annual corn-dog carnival opens Thursday and continues through November 5 at the fairgrounds, bounded by McDowell Road and Encanto Boulevard between 17th and 19th avenues. Along with the usual attractions–midway rides and…
Actors Theatre of Phoenix’s production of Ruthless! The Musical continues through Sunday, October 22, in Center Stage at Herberger Theater Center, 222 East Monroe. Eureka! Theatre Company’s production of The Woolgatherer continues through Saturday, October 21, at 7th Street Theater, 3302 North Seventh Street. For more details, see Theatre listing…
Remember camp? It was that over-the-top ironic sensibility that gained favor in the Sixties, and one assumed that, like Dada, in time it would find its way to the dung heap of history. But here we are 30 years later, and some people still have not lost their taste for…
“Maria! I just met a girl named Maria/And suddenly that name will never be the same to me.” Her real name is Katherine Stewart, and she is the main reason to see the revival of West Side Story, currently stirring up the sleepy suburbs at Mesa Amphitheatre. West Side Story…
The Eureka! Theatre Company has shown itself to be a bastion of controlled-risk theatre. Founder and artistic director Evann Wilcosky has consistently produced top-quality productions of plays most theatres in the Valley won’t touch. Last season’s roster included Christopher Durang’s Baby With the Bathwater and one of the year’s best…
