Summer: The Donna Summer Musical first appeared at the La Jolla Playhouse in late 2017, then moved to Broadway in 2018. It closed in late 2018, after 27 previews and 288 performances. The show recounts Summer’s story, starting in her childhood. Three actresses of varying ages play her in life stages. Duckling Donna is her youth. Disco Donna her early career. And Diva Donna at the top of her game, the undeniable Queen of Disco…
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Million Dollar Quartet Rocks The Phoenix Theatre Company’s Hormel Theatre
Million Dollar Quartet is a jukebox musical based around an unplanned 1956 jam session between Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, and Jerry Lee Lewis. They converge at Sun Studios in Memphis for different reasons, and the result is rock and roll history. It is ultimately Sam Philip’s story. The record producer who discovered them serves as the imperative narrator who ties the unwoven pieces together…
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Welcome Back…
Welcome back to another year of new content from your friendly neighborhood bloggers. We keep the focus on music, arts, and culture both here in our own stretch of the Sonoran desert and the larger world beyond our dusty borders – it all depends on what strikes our fancy. Longtime readers might have noticed our recent website facelift. We’re trying to moving away from “Big Time Publication” and back to our blogging roots. Less burnout, more love. Less bullshit, more art. More personal experiences and perspectives…
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Critic’s Picks: Best of Local Theatre 2019
by Rebecca Rudnyk
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The decade ascends into history, and we enter 2020 anew. Another year of incredible local theatre comes to a close…
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Celebrate the Holidays with ‘Elf: The Musical’ at Arizona Broadway Theatre
Elf: The Musical is a stage adaptation of the family classic about Buddy the elf, who ventures out from the North Pole to The Big Apple to find his real father. It is a recreation of the iconic Will Farrell comedy known and beloved by so many. Inspired by, but not a duplication thereof. The same story told through the eyes and voices of different storytellers, using different methods, including really catchy songs. Thankfully maintaining most of the film’s best jokes, and all of the heart that makes the original so compelling…
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YabYum Seven: Conrad Miszuk
My name is Conrad Miszuk. I wear a lot of hats, but I mostly make audio fiction. I’ve been making a podcast called Kakos Industries in Phoenix (and briefly in Los Angeles) for around five and a half years. Kakos Industries is a darkly comedic science fiction story about a company that helps its clients to “Do Evil Better”. I’ve also started a new project called The Never Rad Miscellany, which is combining that far reaching audience I’ve gathered from Kakos Industries and a very local, live presence. I’ve put together a team of incredibly talented writers, actors, musicians, and sound designers, and we put on live shows where we perform these modernized science fiction radio plays. The live shows are then recorded and released online as a podcast…
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24th Annual ‘A Winnie-The-Pooh Christmas Tail’ Lights Up Valley Youth Theatre
The holiday season is officially upon us. The fresh air is cool and crisp, with the distinctive and rare scent produced by burning fireplaces. Indoors it smells of balsam, cinnamon pine cones, and pumpkin spice candles. Wreaths adorn front doors and sparkling lights glitter both inside and outside of our homes. Thanksgiving, the most glorious and gluttonous of holidays, is in the rearview. We are in the year’s home stretch. Christmas is nearly here. And, aside from many other things, that means Valley Youth Theatre’s annual production of A Winnie-The-Pooh Christmas Tail has officially arrived…
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YabYum Seven: Noel Franklin
I am Noel Franklin. Glad you asked! I am a cartoonist, illustrator, poet and grant writer. I primarily create short pieces of comic journalism and autobiographical stories. Nonfiction is mostly my thing, though I do enjoy an excursion into dark folk tales every now and then. I’m from Seattle, and I used to draw for the local entertainment newspapers there…
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Celebrate the Season with ‘The Sound of Music’ at The Phoenix Theatre Company
The Sound of Music is one of the most iconic shows of Broadway’s Golden Age. Known to nearly all, in some form or fashion, and sacred to many. However, popularity can be a double-edged sword. While it equates to a most-assured larger potential audience, there are also expectations that everyone has going into the performance. We all know what the songs should sound like, in the best case scenario. And those preconceived notions are inherently baked in, so the cast always has an uphill battle to fight from the outset…
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Blue Man Group Leaves Audience ‘Speechless’ at ASU Gammage
My introductory encounter with the Blue Men occurred on my first trip to New York City when I was in high school. The show was unlike anything I had ever encountered. Pervasive, insightful and rather mind-blowing. When I experienced it again, over a decade later, it felt like I was essentially seeing the same show. Everything my memory retained was showcased gloriously, and I delighted in the nostalgia of it. But it didn’t feel like it had evolved. That has changed with the Speechless tour…
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An Inside Look at La Gattarra Cat Lounge & Boutique
When looking for a drag show in the Phoenix metro-area, you won’t be hard-pressed to find at least one event taking place between Tuesday to Saturday in the later evening hours, with most taking place in Melrose District queer bars with distinct pinache. But what of the folks who can’t stay out late or prefer not to frequent bars? In a valley where even some of the “drag brunches” take place at drinking establishments, a peculiar event recurs monthly on the crossroads of Dorsey and University at La Gattarra Cat Lounge & Boutique, simply titled: Drag Bingo + Cats. La Gattarra translates into English from Italian and loosely means: “the crazy cat lady”…
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Stray Cat Theatre’s ‘American Psycho: The Musical’ Strikes at Tempe Center for the Arts
A blood-stained shirt draped over a chair in the center of a room. Commercials from the nineteen eighties blaring overhead, into your bloodstream, from an intentionally forgotten period of cultural subversion. The mood is set. The show begins. And after a brief moment of overwhelming static and piercing radio waves, Toby Yatso – a megastaple of local Phoenix theatre – is standing on a nearly-bare stage, nearly-bare himself as Patrick Bateman…
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