TWINS AND SINGLES

posted by James Reel

    It’s a busy theater week in Tucson, with three plays having opened last week and more soon to come. In today’s Tucson Weekly I have moderately positive things to say about the musical Sideshow at the University of Arizona:

The bearded lady's face isn't the only thing that's a little too warm and fuzzy about Sideshow, the 1997 musical about conjoined twins who graduated from freak-show status to become vaudeville sensations in the 1930s. For a production peopled with physically abnormal characters, a menacing carnival boss and "rescuers" of ambiguous sincerity, Sideshow is awfully soft-hearted.

    The rest of the review lurks here. Meanwhile, Arizona Theatre Company is presenting a one-woman show that by no means delves into the problems of Western civilization, but for many reasons it’s impossible to resist:

    If I were single, I'd be on the phone right now asking Haley Walker to go out with me. Haley has a vibrant spirit; she's smarter than she thinks she is, and she can regale you all night with funny stories. And, yes, I must admit, she does look fetching in her underwear. I don't know how easy she'd be to live with, but I'm certain Haley would be a great date.
    The problem is, what if I were a bad date? Hundreds of people would know it the minute Haley got home. She'd trudge into her bedroom, which is situated on the stage of the Temple of Music and Art, and regale an entire Arizona Theatre Company audience with every sorry detail of the evening. And she'd do it with such spirit and humor and lack of malice that those hundreds of people couldn't help taking her side, even as they were thinking that she ought to know better than to date somebody like me.

    Read the rest here, but note that somebody at the Weekly changed my proper use of the subjunctive in the second paragraph's first sentence to the doltish indicative, the scoundrels. Also in this issue is a preview of a benefit for Arizona Onstage Productions that involves a screening of Jerry Springer: The Opera. In the interest of not raising the blood pressure of readers who are easily offended, I’ll resist posting an excerpt and merely send the curious to the article itself.