Charles Sohn

The bounteous cast of Th [sic] Sense's current revue, plus a few public figures who dropped in to say "Hi"

The setup: Doing anything artistic in the Valley for five straight (as it were) years is a huge accomplishment. A sketch comedy troupe that's been performing several times a year in a dump on Grand Avenue, beginning in 2008 when the economy tanked? Hella impressive.

Guess what else? They're smart, sufficiently funny, energetic, talented, and generally know their lines. Th [sic] Sense is about as probable as snow in Phoenix, an exploding meteor in Russia, or the Pope resigning.

See also:
- Th [sic] Sense: Sic of the F#@*ing Heat! Is, Nonetheless, Fully Clothed -- but Fun
- Th [sic] Sense's 3 Ways from Sunday Is the Fancy Snacks of Sketch Comedy
- Th [sic] Sense in 3D Fosters a Warm, Disgusting Sense of Community

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Bo Allen

The cast of Burning in the Night: Mike Lawler (foreground) and, from left in background, Francisco Briseño, Giselle Lee, and Jonathan Young of Jam Pak Blues 'n' Grass Neighborhood Band

The setup: Dale Wasserman, who lived and worked in Paradise Valley from 1992 until his death in 2008, was one of the old school of stage and screen scribes who ran off as a youth from a boring small town and made his bones in the golden age of TV drama -- a guy who could legitimately call Jack Kerouac a "wanna-be," as the character based on Wasserman, the Hobo, does in the dramatization of his memoir, Burning in the Night: a memory play with music. Wasserman was most famed for Man of La Mancha and the stage version of Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Local playwright Richard Warren, a friend of Wasserman's, adapted the monologue-like story of the writer's youthful itinerant rail-riding into a play that was workshopped at Phoenix Theatre's Hormel New Works Festival and is now in full production at Theater Works.

See also:
- Dale Wasserman Will Be Remembered for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Not Premiere
- La Mancha for All Seasons
- Not Quite Cloud Nine

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courtesy of Silver Star Playhouse

Not the Mesa cast of Les Miserables

The setup: There's a lot of backstory here. Broadway Palm Dinner Theatre went out of business last year, and a venerable, family-friendly Salt Lake City (well, Murray) company, Desert Star Playhouse, took over the cavernous space at Brown and Higley roads to launch a metro Phoenix branch of their silly, fast-casual-dining-optional live stage and screen parodies: Legally Brunette, My Big Fat Utah Wedding (the longest-running play in the state's history), Kicking the Hobbit: Bored of the Rings -- you get the idea. Silver Star Playhouse's inaugural production, A Christmas Carol Part 2: A Dickens of a Christmas, opened in November 2012.

Les Miserables, described as "a revolutionary comedy," is the local troupe's second show, and it runs another week and a half it's been extended through Saturday, March 2. Butch Cassidy & the SunBurnt Kid takes the stage Thursday, March 14.

See also:
- Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray Becomes a Play from Desert Rose Theatre
- Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps Is Gut-Busting Farce from Arizona Theatre Company
- Head: The Musical is Pure, Horrifying Joy at Soul Invictus

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John Groseclose

Gene Ganssle is Dickie -- that is, he plays Dickie -- in The Fox on the Fairway.

The setup: Ken Ludwig, great American farceur, has penned such solidly wild comedies as I Hate Hamlet, Lend Me a Tenor, Moon over Buffalo, and the mystifyingly underproduced Leading Ladies.

Since all those plays are about show-business people (mostly actors), I was curious to see what Ludwig did with the world of country-club golf in one of his newer scripts, The Fox on the Fairway, currently being presented by Actors Theatre under the direction of Matthew Wiener (Phoenix Theatre's Noises Off).

See also:
- Could Noises Off at Phoenix Theatre Be Better Than It Seems?
- Curtains: Mesa Encore Theatre's Leading Ladies
- Curtains: Lend Me a Tenor at Hale Centre Theatre

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Sarah Rodgers

Melissa Rose Modifer as Diana and Evan Tyler Wilson as Gabe in Next to Normal

The setup: Next to Normal marks the first time since Rent that a musical won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. (Interestingly, composer Tom Kitt and lyricist Brian Yorkey had written even less for the stage than had Jonathan Larson at that point.) Arizona Theatre Company mounted a production last fall, and now Mesa Encore Theatre, a company that typically crushes it on musicals, especially small and edgy ones, brings a staging by popular director Phillip Fazio (Ragtime, Proof, Grey Gardens).

See also:
- Mesa Encore Theatre's Proof: Breathing Room in a Series of Extremes
- Grey Gardens: The Musical Exceeds Expectations -- If You Know the Source Material
- Phillip Fazio

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Patty Torrilhon

Terry Gadaire and Deborah Ostreicher ham it up in Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps.

The setup: Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps is a breakneck farce that doesn't exactly parody the classic film and spy novel that inspired it -- it's more of a concept that makes fun of them as they are, taking every element that's a little weird or over-obvious or supremely early-20th-century British and pushing those coals right to the Newcastle of silliness.

Last winter, Arizona Theatre Company imported a deliciously precise and frenetic professional production of the show from Minnesota's Guthrie Theater. I was fascinated to see this season's community-theater version by Fountain Hills Theater, a company that, while on the small and low-budget side, tends to have a deft hand with comedies and farces in particular.

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Tim Fuller

Dani Marcus and Anneliese van der Pol, from left, play Harriet Smith and Emma Woodhouse in Jane Austen's Emma.

The setup: Though I'm sure Jane Austen has plenty of male fans as well, let's just say that young women who originally thrilled to the 1995 films and miniseries Clueless, Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion, and Sense and Sensibility (and lingered on through Bridget Jones' Diary) now have teenage daughters who'll be delighted to bear another Austen-inspired craze through the culture like a puppy through a python. And no one's better at turning fusty, twee literature into charming, slightly less twee stage musicals than Paul Gordon (Daddy Long Legs, Jane Eyre).

So Arizona Theatre Company's giving the people what they want by brightening January with the Arizona première of another Gordon-scored tuner, the regional-theatre-beloved Jane Austen's Emma.

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courtesy of Brelby Theatre Company

Shelby Maticic as Spirit will not rest until you're caffeinated and mistletoed in Non-Fat Soy Peppermint Mocha Latte . . . with Sprinkles: A Tale of Christmas Spirit.

UPDATE: The Thursday, December 20, performance of this show has been canceled. Performances resume Friday, December 21, at 7 p.m. (post-apocalyptic hellscape permitting).

The setup: Bless their hearts, the founding directors of Brelby Theatre Company are still wrangling with getting their Historic Downtown Glendale studio all properly remodeled for public performances. HDG seems like one of the awesomest places in the whole world to run a business, though, because Brelby's neighbors have repeatedly opened their lobbies, patios, etc., to help the troupe put on shows as scheduled.

Currently, Brelby's presenting a revival of Brian Maticic's script that was presented at Playhouse on the Park in 2010: Non-Fat Soy Peppermint Mocha Latte . . . with Sprinkles: A Tale of Christmas Spirit, a title that would make elementary-school book report writers very happy as they struggle to find 500 words.

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courtesy of Southwest Shakespeare Company

Ghost of Christmas Past (Erica Connell) gives Ebenezer Scrooge (David Vining) a much-needed nudge into the land of happy memories, in A Christmas Carol.

The setup: Ironically, it was the almost-entirely-sold-outness of another popular holiday show (iTheatre's perennially popular Back Home for the Holidays cabaret) that led Curtains to check out this offering in Mesa, which is in its second year. Tonight is actually your best chance to see Southwest Shakespeare Company's A Christmas Carol. The remaining performances are officially sold out, though the box office may be able to advise you about your chances.

The execution: In advance, I was most curious about David Vining's portrayal of Scrooge. He's a cherished local actor and teacher who, at least back in the '80s, could play a right bastard when necessary, but of late he's been cast as such sincere, loving, and, well, grandfatherly types that I wondered what he and director Don Bluth would do with the character. It was a revelation.

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Phil Soto

Willa Eigo and Andrew Valenzuela raise a little Hell in Arizona Pastorela: Mission to Mars.

The setup: For several years, New Carpa has presented an annual holiday pastorela in the Valley. Following a centuries-old tradition, the play incorporates iconoclastic, topical political humor into the story of shepherds traveling to visit the Christ Child, culminating in a battle between Satan and the Archangel Gabriel (because most other nativity tales are short on violent action).

This year, in Arizona Pastorela: Mission to Mars, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio returns as a character, leading a posse to Mars in his continued search for evidence that President Obama is an alien. Meanwhile, Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne fails as hard at being genuinely, Hitler- and Gaddafi-level evil as he does at . . . well, a number of things, apparently.

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