courtesy of Space 55

From left, Patti Hannon and Brinley Nasisse play the title roles in Woman and Girl.

The setup: Local writer Charlie Steak's short play Woman and Girl follows its two characters through a stressful period of accepting change and learning to live together. (It's quite different from Steak's popular short, I'm Voting Republican.) The première production is at Phoenix's Space 55.

See also:
- "Where's the play about Arizona that everyone has been waiting for?" Not at ASU Tempe (Not This Month, Anyway)
- Late Night Catechism's Patti Hannon Stars in Space 55's The Bakers of Lakewood
- Best Reason to Relive the Pain of Catechism

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Heather Butcher

Epiphany de l'escalier: From left, Taylor DiTola as Serena, Chelsea Soto as Margot, Brittany Howk as Elle Woods, and Brittanee Perkins as Pilar in Legally Blonde

The setup: If it isn't enough for you to know that the roman à clef that inspired the film Legally Blonde was written by ASU grad Amanda Brown (based on her Stanford experiences) or that the film, in case you're unfamiliar with it, is an oddly fluffy odyssey of female empowerment, you should know that it was turned into an unusually functional musical -- as in the songs fall in places that make dramatic sense, it's organically dance-y, and the suspenseful if preposterous plot unfolds rather nicely.

I saw Valley Youth Theatre's production last summer and realized what a tight show it is, and now that I've enjoyed the current mounting by Scottsdale Desert Stages Theatre, I will probably turn into one of those people who travels all over seeing Legally Blonde dozens of times whenever I have an opportunity.

See also:
- La Cage aux Folles from Phoenix Theatre Tastes as Good as It Looks
- Three and a Half Kick-Ass Christmas Plays in the Valley
- Curtains: Desert Stages' Zanna, Don't! Is a Dream Date

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Joya Scott

From left, William Crook, Tucker Bingham (backstage in blue shirt), Sarah Harvey, Chelsea Pace, and Katrina Donaldson in You You Shouldn't Come Back

The setup: Orange Theatre Group, not unlike the ASU Herberger College grad cohort that more or less begat it, Interrobang, and its other offshoot, festina lente, is committed to pushing the envelope of new drama, developing performance that connects with varying degrees of tenacity to the existing texts it's often inspired by or based on. Besides healthy doses of pop culture, humor, shock, and nihilism, Orange adds a strong and purposeful multimedia component to the deconstruction/reconstruction.

OTG's current production, You You Shouldn't Come Back, is really quite a bit like the beginning and middle of Tennessee Williams' Sweet Bird of Youth. It doesn't ask nearly the appreciation or even tolerance for totally fucked-up weirdness that a typical evening with Orange might require of its audience members.

See also:
- Best A/V Club - 2012: Orange Theatre Group
- Chris Danowski's Desiring Flight from Orange Theatre Group -- Two More Performances!
- The Revenger's Tragedy's a Compelling Work in Progress from festina lente

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Stray Cat Theatre

Stray Cat Theatre's production of Trista Baldwin's Chicks with Dicks commences with a go-go dancing competition and a lap dance, and heads south from there. This unyielding camp comedy is so relentlessly awful, it should be offered up not as entertainment but as punishment for the worst possible crimes.

See also:
- Five Must-See Arts and Culture Events This Week in Metro Phoenix
- Our 10 Favorite Moments from RuPaul's Drag Race: Season 5

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Stacey Walston

Jesse James Kamps and Janae Thomas in She Stoops to Conquer

The setup: Like pretty much every other theater with "Shakespeare" in its name, Mesa's Southwest Shakespeare Company peppers each season with plays written by other people. They're usually referred to as "classical." Some companies also present newer shows that are Shakespeare-related or -inspired, and SSC has been doing quite a bit of Noel Coward and Oscar Wilde lately, as well, with mixed results.

One of the criteria that appear to mean "classical" is "centuries old, with an English script available." Many of us were required to read plays of this nature in college.

Some old classics are much better live, off the page, even today. Others, despite their historical and literary importance, can be quite a slog. Oliver Goldsmith's 1773 hit She Stoops to Conquer, Southwest Shakespeare's current production, is a huge milestone in the development of English comedy that now teeters on the brink of irredeemable fustiness.

See also:
- A Christmas Carol from Southwest Shakespeare Is Virtually Sold Out in Mesa and Worth the Trouble
- Shakespeare at the Biltmore: The Importance of Being Earnest and A Midsummer Night's Dream
- Curtains: Southwest Shakespeare's Blithe Spirit Is Blithe and Spirited, Thank God

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Tim Fuller

Peter Van Norden assesses Caitlin Stegmoller in The Sunshine Boys.

The setup: Neil Simon is still a massively popular American playwright -- able to sell tickets on name alone when some shows can scarcely sell tickets at all -- and his success gets in his way, critically speaking. You have to look at a theater company's choice to do one of Simon's plays the way I look at chicken fingers: They're the only thing a little kid will order in a restaurant, and most of them are dried-out travesties, but the basic idea is a good one and if you go to someplace good like The Machine Shed, your faith will be restored. (Same for the cottage cheese, which is really more in sync with Simon's audience demographics.)

See also:
- We Have a Few Reservations with The Dinner Party
- Curtains: Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs at Starlight Community Theater in Anthem
- Simon Says "Stay Home"

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courtesy of Space 55

From left, Robert Altizer, Leslie Barton, Shawna Franks, Amy Ouzoonian, Richard Briggs, Hal Bliss, and Benjamin Garrett are some of the most miserable and annoying people in the whole wide world, just like the rest of us, in Uncle Vanya.

The setup: Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya takes guts to produce and mad brains and talent to produce tolerably. Don't go to that link and read it; besides its morose nature, it's full of those Russians with multiple nicknames and pretty hard to follow on the page (frustration bonus!).

It's two hours of bitching and moaning from people who are so non-self-actualizing, you just want to slap them. I can't think of a local company any better equipped to meet the challenge than Space 55, so we've gotten lucky, but for only two more nights.

See also:
- Australia at Space 55: Finally, Someone's Thinking of the Children
- Ten Chimneys' Tale of Broadway Royalty Charms and Challenges
- Curtains: Last Chance Tonight to See And What She Found There from ASU Tempe Grad Cohort Interrobang

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The cheesy lights are going out for a while at 1022 Grand Avenue.

The end of 2007, just before the closure of the Paper Heart gallery, performance space, and beer and wine bar, was the approximate heyday of the Grand Avenue alt-arts scene, at least so far. Not that it isn't still fun and diverting and full of promise for the future, but we'll get to that.

Years of struggling to keep more than one bar of any kind, let alone more than one decent bar, open anywhere in the Seventh-to-15th-Avenue stretch, or to keep some sort of artsy endeavor open in the storefront between Trunk Space and Bikini Lounge (a.k.a. the one decent bar, and only if that's your groove), not to mention keeping food available in anything other than the dodgy spot around the corner by the boxing gym (hurray, Bragg's Factory Diner, but still no dinner) have been rough for people who simply want to hang out and have fun. But the situation's been even harder on the remaining retailers and venue operators, who depend on synergy to keep crowds at the break-even level.

See also:
- Three and a Half Kick-Ass Christmas Plays in the Valley
- Th [sic] Sense: Sic of the F#@*ing Heat! Is, Nonetheless, Fully Clothed -- but Fun
- Head: The Musical Is Pure, Horrifying Joy at Soul Invictus

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Phoenix Theatre

From left, Johnny Vorsteg, Robert Kolby Harper, and John Wagner are what they are in La Cage aux Folles.

The setup: For many of us late Boomers of the Valley, La Cage aux Folles was the first foreign film we got to go see all by ourselves as young adults, setting a standard for both comedy and the mainstreaming of gay cinema that's been hard to match since.

See also:
- Soul Invictus Brings More Bad Therapy and Big Laughs with The Golden Gays
- Hairspray Dolls Up Phoenix Theatre
- Curtains: Phoenix Theatre's Curtains

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Mark Gluckman

Bunch of baloney: From left, Brad Bond and Dale Nakagawa tie on the feedbag in Maple and Vine.

The setup: A few years back, playwright Jordan Harrison was approached by Anne Kaufmann of The Civilians, NYC's "investigative theater" troupe, who'd become fascinated with intentional communities such as Hasidic Jews, nuns, and the Amish, bearing transcripts of interviews and a request to let the concept marinate and come up with a script.

The result, Maple and Vine, premièred at Louisville's Humana Festival of New American Plays in 2011 and then ran at Playwrights Horizons in Manhattan. Attending the current production by Theatre Artists Studio, I got to sit near some people who had no idea ahead of time what the play was about. Now that I've experienced their reactions, that's what I recommend. Even the theaters that present this show let slip too much. If it's not too late, don't even read New Times' Night & Day item about it.

See also:
- Curtains: Accomplice at Theatre Artists Studio in PV
- Collected Stories: a conversation-based play that works

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