ENTERTAINMENT

Which play to see this weekend: 7 theater reviews in a nutshell

Kerry Lengel
The Republic | azcentral.com
The original cast of Childsplay's "Rock the Presidents" (from left): Colin Ross, Eric Boudreau and Yolanda London.

This week’s short reviews include a musical for kids and one for their parents — or maybe grandparents?

Great ★★★★★ Good ★★★★

Fair ★★★ Bad ★★ Bomb ★

NEW REVIEWS:

‘Rock the Presidents,’ a political musical for kids, is fun and balanced

★★★★

Childsplay’s original musical “Rock the Presidents,” which premiered in 2012, is sort of an update on “Schoolhouse Rocks!,” using a grab bag of pop styles to deliver a civics lesson with equal parts sincere patriotism and goofy humor. A cast of three (Alan Khoutakoun, Jacqueline Castillo and Devon Nickel), dressed up as Secret Service agents, sing about presidents famed, infamous and obscure (“Who in the World Is Millard Fillmore?”). There’s a countrified salute to “Ronald Reagan” and a guitar-crunching lament for first-termers called “More Than Four Years,” and in “Shake America,” Andrew Jackson becomes a first-shaking character in a video game. With music by Sarah Roberts and lyrics by Dwayne Hartford, many of the songs are cutesy, but some are genuinely moving, including a folk-rock ballad about the New Deal titled “The Only Thing We Have to Fear.” But some of the material is about to become out of date, such as the Joni Mitchell-esque “First Ladies,” which looks forward to the time that America finally has a “first gentleman.” Then there’s the lilting calypso number “John and Tom,” which points out that even the Founding Fathers fought tooth and nail over the issues of the day, but in the end the country always pulls together. As the most vitriolic election in recent memory grinds to a close, “Rock the Presidents” has a patriotic message that maybe adults needs to hear even more than kids.

Bottom line: Addressing serious issues with both class and sass, it delivers both the “edu” and the “tainment.”

Details: Reviewed Sunday, Oct. 23. Continues through Sunday, Nov. 13. Tempe Center for the Arts, 700 W. Rio Salado Parkway. $12-$26. 480-350-2822, childsplayaz.org.

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‘Funny Girl,’ sans Babs, has glam but not a lot of drama

★★★½

Liz Fallon stars as Fanny Brice in Arizona Broadway Theatre's "Funny Girl."

Barbra Streisand’s starmaking turn in “Funny Girl” — preserved for posterity in the 1968 film adaptation — inevitably looms over any actress to take on the role of Fanny Brice, the early-20th-century star of Broadway and the “Ziegfeld Follies.” Liz Fallon, who headlines a new production at Arizona Broadway Theatre, wisely steers clear of impersonation and delivers an appealing, if safe, performance. She sounds wonderful torch-crooning “People” and belting “Don’t Rain on My Parade,” and her off-and-on Brooklyn accent — she uses it as a self-deprecating defense mechanism — is a nice touch. Given Brice’s reputation (and the show’s title), it’s a shame that she isn’t much of a comedienne, but her fierce love for inveterate gambler Nick Arnstein shines through, thanks in part to actor Jamie Parnell’s perfect mix of put-on charm and hidden fragility. However, whatever kernels of real-life drama this show contains are buried in old-school musical-theater glitz. That includes the cartoonish supporting cast and the show-within-a-show numbers, such as “Rat-a-Tat,” that do little to develop the story or the characters.

Bottom line: A solid production that does little to kick the dust off a 50-year-old musical.

Details: Reviewed Wednesday, Oct. 19. Continues through Sunday, Nov. 13. Arizona Broadway Theatre, 7701 W. Paradise Lane, Peoria. Call for prices. 623-776-8400, azbroadway.org.

CONTINUING SHOWS:

‘Veronica’s Room’: A creepy mystery with a satisfying twist

★★★★

Entering "Veronica's Room" in iTheatre Collaborative's production are (from left) Brad Bond, Kyle Hartwick, Makala Close and Alaina Beauloye.

If you’re looking for a good (adult) scare for Halloween, iTheatre Collaborative’s “Veronica’s Room” is a psychological thriller with the best kind of twist ending — the kind that makes everything that came before make sense. The 1973 play is by Ira Levin, best known for the novels “Rosemary’s Baby” and “The Stepford Wives,” which should give you a good idea of what you’re in for. The already-creepy setup: Hippie-era free spirit Susan (Makala Close) is fielding an unusual request from a kindly old Irish couple to impersonate a long-dead young woman, Veronica, to help soothe the nerves of her dying sister, who has descended into dementia. You don’t really need to see the hostess (Alaina Beauloye) palming a key to the bedroom to guess what’s coming next — but as for what’s after that, well, it’s deliciously unexpected. The real thrill, though, is watching Beauloye as “The Woman,” a role that’s really two characters, and the second gives her the chance to flex her diva muscles as an angry harridan that recalls some of the great villainesses of Hollywood’s golden age.

Bottom line: This claustrophobic horror tale isn’t quite plausible enough to be truly terrifying, which is a good thing for anyone who wants to sleep afterward.

Details: Reviewed Sunday, Oct. 16. Continues through Saturday, Oct. 29. Herberger Theater Center, 222 E. Monroe St., Phoenix. $20. 602-252-8497, itheatreaz.org.

‘Alien: A Puppet Show’ is lowbrow and proud of it

★★★½

The most famous scene from "Alien" is re-created in All Puppet Players' "Alien: A Puppet Story."

All Puppet Players’ chief provocateur, performer and playwright Shaun Michael McNamara, has his shtick down pat, turning iconic films into irreverent, often R-rated farces such as “The Exorcist Has No Legs” and “Jurassic Puppets” using Muppet-style characters. His latest, “Alien: A Puppet Show,” is packed with pop-culture references ranging from “Star Trek” and “Stranger Things” to “Con Air.” (“Put the bunny back in the box.”) Indeed, your enjoyment of the show might depend on just how many of these in-jokes you actually get. But it doesn’t take an encyclopedic knowledge of movies to enjoy a loud-mouthed cat popping off dirty jokes or the delightfully low-budget “special effects” that are All Puppet Players’ trademark.

Bottom line: A horror classic becomes a shamelessly lowbrow comedy and a great choice for Halloween. Best advice: Avail yourself of the bar before the show starts.

Details: Reviewed Saturday, Oct. 8. Continues through Saturday, Oct. 29. Playhouse on the Park, 1850 N. Central Ave., Phoenix. 602-254-2151, allpuppetplayers.com.

‘Demdike’s Devils’ re-creates English witch trials

★★★

Speaking of Halloween: Witches! Space 55 Ensemble’s “Demdike’s Devils,” written and directed by Wendy Warwick White, is based on the 1612 trials of the so-called Pendle witches in England, but it’s not exactly “The Crucible” redux. For starters, the accused almost certainly were witches, as defined in that brutally repressive era of Christianity. The play, somewhat disappointingly, is a familiar courtroom setup, with a pair of self-righteous officials making their final interrogations (the torture phase of the prosecution is already finished). The chief defendant, Elizabeth “Demdike” Southerns (Ann Harper) is old and addled and freely admits doing business with a devil that sometimes takes the form of a man and sometimes that of a dog, but she insists any actual murders by magical means were performed by her rival Chattox (Carolyn McBurney). The grotesque proceedings — which have the judge lasciviously pawing at Demdike’s young granddaughter — are punctuated by witchy and religious poetry, some of it lifted from Shakespeare, that sort of functions like the songs in a musical and adds some intellectual interest. But ultimately it is difficult to discern what point the playwright intends to make, other than to remind us that while the 17th century might be an interesting place to visit onstage, you certainly wouldn’t want to live there.

Bottom line: A disturbing visit to the era of witch trials has intriguing details that don’t quite add up to a coherent artistic statement. Which maybe is as intended.

Details: Reviewed Sunday, Oct. 16. Continues through Friday, Oct. 28. Space 55, 636 E. Pierce St., Phoenix. $15. space55.org.

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Arthur Miller’s ‘The Price’ starts strong, ends loooooong

★★½

Alan Austin plays cranky Jewish appraiser Gregory Solomon in Theatre Artists Studio's production of "The Price" by Arthur Miller.

And speaking of “The Crucible”: Arthur Miller. Best known for “Death of a Salesman” and for marrying Marilyn Monroe, he is one of the Big Three of 20th-century American playwrights (along with Tennessee Williams and Eugene O’Neill). But his 1968 drama “The Price,” currently onstage at Theatre Artists Studio, falls short of masterpiece status, though it starts out with some promising American Gothic intrigue. Victor Franz (Walt Pedano), a good-guy cop who keeps his head down, is looking to sell a houseful of furniture inherited from his father. The family once had wealth but lost it in the Great Depression, which provides plenty of fodder for Miller’s trademark ruminations on the limits of the American Dream. What really keeps this production humming, though — in the first half, anyway — is Alan Austin’s charmingly infuriating turn as an old Jewish appraiser who prefers friendly philosophizing to getting down to business (which may or may not be a shrewd negotiating tactic). Unfortunately, the speed-bump rhythm of the narrative is much less enjoyable after the arrival of Victor’s brother (Steven Mastroieni), a successful surgeon who chose career over family loyalty. From there the play devolves into an interminable series of wrenching revelations as tedious as the endless climax of the action flick “Face/Off,” but without the benefit of gunplay and explosions. The biggest problem, other than Mastroieni’s pedestrian portrayal, is that Miller ignores the cardinal rule of writing, “Show, don’t say.” His characters, far more self-aware than any actual human being, talk as if they’re recounting the fruits of decades of psychoanalysis, and that does not a compelling drama make.

Bottom line: Thoughtful and literary, it’s a play where all the real action takes place in the past. Stop looking at your watch.

Details: Reviewed Saturday, Oct. 15. Continues through Sunday, Oct. 30. Theatre Artists Studio, 4848 E. Cactus Road, Suite 406, Phoenix. $15-$25. 602-765-0120, thestudiophx.org.

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‘Merchant of Venice’ defies attempt to reinterpret (or rehabilitate)

★★

Southwest Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice" features (from left) Alison Campbell, Clay Sanderson and Kyle Sorrell.

Shylock, the vengeful Jewish moneylender who demands “a pound of flesh” from a Christian businessman who fails to pay his debts, is one of the most fascinating characters in all of Shakespeare. Undeniably the villain of “The Merchant of Venice,” he is also fully human in his complexity. But there’s no getting around the fundamentally anti-Semitic nature of the narrative, as Southwest Shakespeare’s latest production proves. Setting the action in 1929 New York — for no real good interpretive reason — director Kent Burnham tries to have his cake and eat it too by underlining the bigotry of the supposed heroes while playing up the comic aspects of the script. This includes a cartoonish version of Arabic royalty that, in today’s Islamophobic atmosphere, only exacerbates to the play’s fundamental problem. There are some good performances, including Keath David Hall as the earthy sidekick Gratiano, and some bad ones, most notably Mike Traylor’s Shylock. He makes a sincere attempt at humanizing the character, but his faux Eastern European accent unfortunately comes off as yet another caricature.

Bottom line: Like “Taming of the Shrew,” “Merchant” is so mired in the prejudices of its times that it’s almost impossible to update successfully.

READ: Full review of “The Merchant of Venice.”

Details: Reviewed Friday, Oct. 14. Continues through Saturday, Oct. 29. Mesa Arts Center, 1 E. Main St. $15-$44. 480-644-6500, mesaartscenter.comswshakespeare.org.

Reach the reviewer at kerry.lengel@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4896. Follow him at facebook.com/LengelOnTheater and twitter.com/KerryLengel.