DRIVERS WANTED

posted by James Reel

    My theater review in the latest Tucson Weekly is, unusually for me, nothing less than a rave:

    There are times when an avid theatergoer gets so discouraged that staying home to watch TV actually seems like a viable option. Why venture out and pay good money to see yet another opportunistic jukebox musical, soullessly jokey comedy, half-hearted revival, or rough and underfunded new play that really needs to be worked over by a good dramaturg before it's ready for public consumption?
    But then some company presents a play that's heartfelt and true, perceptively directed, acted with profound understanding of the characters, and designed with such intelligence that the story and characters are supported and amplified by every detail of costume, set, sound and light. And then we remember why we should turn off the TV and take a chance on the theater.
    Arizona Theatre Company has mounted just such a production, a moving, funny, finely wrought version of August Wilson's Jitney.

    Read the rest here. And while you’re poking around the TW Web site, take a look at this week’s feature. It’s an excerpt from The Reaper's Line: Life and Death on the Mexican Border by Lee Morgan II. It's a book I edited, the memoirs of a recently retired Customs agent based in Douglas. The most hilarious bits didn’t get into the Weekly, but a couple of the more harrowing, gut-wrenching episodes did.