ON THE BOARDS

posted by James Reel

    Actors are ambling back onto Tucson stages after the usual summer dry spell (but not drought; there’s always something playing in town). At the University of Arizona, the Arizona Repertory Theatre is reviving its fine production of Brighton Beach Memoirs after a summer estivation, and new shows are opening this weekend at Live Theatre Workshop and Top Hat Theatre Club, with the city’s other main companies, and a couple of new ones, tossing more scripts into the mix in the next few weeks.
    Already open is the latest melodrama spoof at Gaslight Theatre, Sinbad. Says my review in the current Tucson Weekly:

It takes a while for this high-seas adventure to get wind in its sails. Last Saturday night, the first scene was utterly becalmed; the humor as well as the acting seemed half-hearted. Things picked up as the evening progressed, but many previous shows have registered much higher on the company's spoofometer. Even most of the pop-song thefts and parodies seemed only tenuously related to the story. As is so often the case at Gaslight, the show got much more interesting when things veered out of control.

[Teresa] Simone, who is part of the five-member ensemble acting in this year's five plays, and doubles as the festival's publicity guru, says that the only thing the pieces have in common is that each includes a lesbian character or relationship as a central plot element. Some of the plays are quite serious; others are, well ...
    "One of them is What If I Don't, by Rebekah Lopata," says Simone. "It's set in the 1960s, and it's about a girl on her wedding day who's in the bathroom contemplating suicide. It's actually a comedy."