LAUGH, LAUGH, LAUGH
posted by James Reel
Three surprisingly good comedy productions opened in Tucson last week. Oddly, each one gets laughs from potential violence: Neil Simon in boot camp, old ladies poisoning old men, Israelis and Palestinians doing what comes naturally:
Neil Simon is prolific and popular, but he's written only three first-rate plays, together forming a semi-autobiographical trilogy in which young Eugene Jerome comes of age and becomes a writer in the 1930s and '40s. The UA's Arizona Repertory Theatre is presenting each of them, one per year; the company has now put up the middle panel in this triptych, Biloxi Blues, the most loosely structured but most emotionally and intellectually complex work in the series.You can read the rest here, and yes, for people like Russell Stagg who need to be poked in the eye with a big upturned thumb, I liked it. Meanwhile, across town …
Now, here's a two-course theatrical meal that could keep you up all night: a nicely roasted old chestnut, followed by a highly spiced piece of gristle that rewards a thorough chewing-over.The full review lurks here.
Live Theatre Workshop opened two absolutely unrelated comedies last weekend. The mainstage presentation is Joseph Kesselring's classic, Arsenic and Old Lace, wherein two charming, gently murderous old ladies find their hobby endangered by one nephew who's basically good, and another who is very, very bad. The late show is John Patrick Shanley's extended political metaphor Dirty Story, wherein two not-so-charming, not-so-gently murderous characters--call them Israel and Palestine--undertake a sadomasochistic apartment-sharing scheme.
You'd think one play or the other would be unendurable, Arsenic and Old Lace old-fashioned and stale, Dirty Story annoyingly self-righteous. Not so. Each is quite fulfilling in its own distinct way, and Live Theatre Workshop trots them both out with hardly a misstep.
