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…
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,…
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…
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…
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? —…
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…
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…
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…
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 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…
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 ran from the theater during curtain calls for Nearly Naked’s production of Bat Boy: The Musical the other night, but not because I was either unhappy with or overcome by what I’d seen. I was fleeing because, during the show’s final number, I’d received a call from a young…
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…
The play Bad Seed opened recently at the Herberger. (See capsule). Fans of Bad Seed know there’s no “The” in the title of the play but that there is one in the title of the movie. They know that Monica’s lovebirds and that pesky lightning storm occur only in John…
The Life: Cy Coleman and Ira Gasman wrote the music and lyrics for this seldom-seen Tony Award winner, with a book by Coleman, Gasman, and playwright David Newman, and we have Black Theater Troupes David Hemphill to thank for bringing it to town. This Drama Desk favorite tells the story…
Last weekend will remain in my memory as one of those rare weekends when each of the plays I attended was what people here rather regrettably refer to as “Broadway caliber.” On Friday, I saw an Actors Theatre production of The Pillowman so magnificently acted and so deeply disturbing that…
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum: Phew. It looked for a second there as if theater audiences were actually going to make it through an entire season without one troupe or another dusting off this mammoth musical warhorse. But, thanks to the efforts of Arizona Broadway…
The folks over at North Valley Playhouse had better hope that the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation doesn’t get wind of the offensive gay stereotypes they’re promoting in their new, original, so-mean-you-won’t believe-it show, Diet! The Musical! For that matter, they’d better hope that anyone with half a brain…
The Pillowman: Child abuse and child murder are all the rage in theater these days. There’s John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt, about a group of boys still scarred from their abuse by a pedophilic priest. And Frozen, the British import about a serial killer that was so nicely done here by…
I greeted the announcement of Stray Cat Theatre’s Fatal Attraction: A Greek Tragedy with great glee, thinking, “At last! Someone has noticed the similarities between gory Hollywood revenge films and the texts of ancient Greek tragedies!” And I headed for opening night of this particular production with a similarly giddy…
Well: Lisa Krons autobiographical play, set in the Lansing, Michigan, neighborhood where she grew up, delves into her familys medical history and addresses issues of health and sickness via her chronically ill mother and the community that this woman once saved from decline after its racial integration. Krons main conceit…
On paper, Richard Dresser’s Augusta sounds a whole lot more dreary than it turns out to be. Thanks to some fine acting and smooth direction, this comedy about the travails of the lower-income working class not only entertains, but reveals subtleties about the diminished power of blue-collar workers in Dresser’s…
