ENTERTAINMENT

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

Kerry Lengel
The Republic | azcentral.com
Entering "Veronica's Room" in iTheatre Collaborative's production are (from left) Brad Bond, Kyle Hartwick, Makala Close and Alaina Beauloye.

A lesser-known horror tale from the author of “Rosemary’s Baby” tops this week’s short reviews of theater around the Valley. Here’s what’s hot and what’s not on the stage.

Great ★★★★★ Good ★★★★

Fair ★★★ Bad ★★ Bomb ★

NEW REVIEWS:

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

★★★★

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.

‘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.

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

★★½

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.

‘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.com, swshakespeare.org.

CONTINUING SHOWS:

‘King Charles III’ is a feast for Shakespeare buffs and royal watchers

★★★★

Peter Van Norden in the title role of Arizona Theatre Company's "King Charles III."

Playwright Mike Bartlett’s 2014 hit, which opens Arizona Theatre Company’s 50th season, is a Shakespeare history, except that it takes place in the near future. The queen is dead, and Charles, the current Prince of Wales, soliloquizes on his equivocating nature, then immediately proceeds to spark a constitutional crisis when he refuses to sign a bill limiting press freedoms in Britain. Peter Van Norden delivers a subtly drawn character study in the title role, mixing a sympathetic fragility with a stubborn attachment to his transcendent role as monarch. The play is a feast for Shakespeare buffs, updating blank-verse poetry with colloquial speech and playing with familiar tropes ranging from the comic relief of a lower-class messenger boy to spectral visitations that recall both “Hamlet” and the Weird Sisters from "Macbeth." And it is about the same themes that obsessed the Bard: the getting and keeping of power and the role of kings in England’s history and its character.

Bottom line: A smart riff on Shakespeare, it may not be a play for the ages, but it makes the present moment vividly memorable.

READ: Full review of “King Charles III."

Details: Reviewed Sunday, Oct. 9. Continues through Sunday, Oct. 23. Herberger Theater Center, 222 E. Monroe St., Phoenix. $25-$100. 602-256-6995, arizonatheatre.org.

‘Rasheeda Speaking’ actors create provocative characters

★★★½

Katie McFadzen (left) and Lillie Richardson star in Black Theatre Troupe's "Rasheeda Speaking."

Black Theatre Troupe’s season opener is an intriguing, and sometimes frustrating, look at race relations in the office. In this case, a doctor’s office, where the disingenuous, supercilious Dr. Williams (Joseph Kremer) enlists the always-trying-to-be-nice Ileen (Katie McFadzen) to help him get rid of her co-worker, Jaclyn (Lillie Richardson) — but not because she is black. No, of course not! Playwright Joel Drake Johnson complicates matters by making Jaclyn as defensive and manipulative as the doctor. Indeed, the characters are designed to make the audience uncomfortable, rather than emerging as fully fleshed-out human beings, yet the result is to make the playwright’s ultimate message less clear rather than more. But the performances are good enough to take the audience along for the ride, and the transformations that Richardson essays as Jaclyn are deliciously provocative.

Bottom line: A problematic script is saved by a fantastic, and eminently watchable, cast.

Details: Reviewed Sunday, Oct. 9. Continues through Sunday, Oct. 23. Helen K. Mason Performing Arts Center, 1333 E. Washington St., Phoenix. $36. 602-258-8129, blacktheatretroupe.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. 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.

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