SLABS OF COMEDY AND BEEF

posted by James Reel

Well, I’m sorry to get back into the blog with the sort of self-promoting post I hate to see from other bloggers, but at least this is really about things out in the community, not just me. I am referring to my contributions to the Tucson Weekly. This week, I review two new theater productions, beginning thus:

Summer is comedy season on Tucson stages, but comedy isn't necessarily frivolous. Well, sometimes it is, as in the entertaining Jewtopia, a send-up of all things Jewish, courtesy of Arizona Onstage Productions. (More information later.) But there are other kinds of comedy as well, including the fairy romance of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, reviewed in this space last week, and an unavoidably serious comedy called Rum and Coke, presented by the UA's Arizona Repertory Theatre. I say unavoidably serious, because Keith Reddin's Rum and Coke is about the U.S.-masterminded invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in 1961, the first in a series of American military failures over the past 50 years.

You can find the full review here. While you’re at the site, you might also check out a couple of earlier reviews of shows that are still playing: the Studio Connections production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Live Theatre Workshop’s mounting of The Mystery of Irma Vep.

Then, for something completely different, I review a steakhouse:

Outposts usually move farther and farther away from civilization, but The Steak Out Restaurant and Saloon has established a satellite location that's actually closer to Tucson than the original. A little. The Steak Out has been a fixture in Sonoita for about a half-century. Its second location is more convenient for Tucsonans, but it's not exactly embedded in the metropolis. It's out by Dove Mountain, smartly located for the denizens of Marana and Oro Valley, as well as Dove Mountain golfers. The décor is as rustic as you'd expect from a Western steakhouse, but the prices are certainly not primitive; the steaks aren't as expensive as what you find at, for example, McMahon's, but you're not going to get a decent cut for less than $20. So the question is: Is it worth it? According to a group of discerning friends who accompanied me to the Steak Out last week, it mostly is.

Full explanation follows here.