Jonathan Northover (from left), Roberto Guajardo and Jill Baker star in Beowulf Alley Theatre Company's production of "Proof."

As someone who stopped taking math classes after the first year of high school algebra, it is impossible to imagine what an “elegant proof” looks like. Is it the opposite of a sloppy proof, full of contradictions, numbers squirting outside the lines?

Making the invisible visible is a seductive fascination with David Auburn’s Pulitzer Prize winning play “Proof.” Successful on the screen as well as onstage, this piece of thought-provoking theater receives a fine local production directed by Sheldon Metz at Beowulf Alley Theatre.

All the characters talk about math as if it is some unexplored land in an unseen world. Apparently, there is a considerable amount of math terrain still to be discovered.

Self-proclaimed math geeks are working day and night pouring over old formulas like ancient maps of forgotten lands. Meticulously, they go about rearranging baskets of numbers into new configurations hoping to find newer answers.

Making brilliant discoveries in math is the obsessive pursuit of every math graduate, convinced there’s nothing more pitiful than an old genius (like, say, 35 years old) who hasn’t staked a claim somewhere on this intellectual terra incognita.

It is the consuming pressure to discover something, anything – as long as mathematics is connected to it – that drives “Proof.” That, and the invisibility of the proof itself.

Auburn sees layers of possibility in this maze of mirrored ethics, where the reflection of something is the opposite of the original – yet both can look equally valid until someone starts slinging the arcane knowledge around until something breaks. Human nature, being equally invisible but infinitely more unpredictable, becomes the X-factor that defies every proof.

Metz keeps the play’s lines of communication as sleek and neat as one of those elegant formulas they talk about incessantly. All four actors move smoothly, making their stage personalities distinct, their thoughts clear. The tables of numbers they love may be multiplying themselves into infinity, but the actors keep their feet firmly planted onstage.

Jill Baker plays Catherine, a woman in her latter 20s who loves her genius father but also feels intimidated by his genius. She would like to be a brilliant mathematician, too, but she lacks the courage. All indications are she could be a genius if she would only apply her natural talent. But depression grips Catherine’s spirit.

She dropped out of college, spent six years caring for her mentally ill father. Now he has passed away. Her excuse to avoid life is gone.

Baker creates this person with a fine use of understatement. Her body language is drawn in, her voice subdued. Yet, we always know exactly what she’s feeling.

In the smaller but pivotal role of Robert is Roberto Guajardo. He plays the ailing genius who is Catherine’s beloved father. At the age of 23, Robert made a magnificent discovery of some important math landscape. But Robert hasn’t discovered anything since, though he has continued teaching at the University of Chicago.

Now time and stress have disintegrated his thought processes. But still he dreams of making one more age-defying breakthrough. Catherine has been helping him, and he has been encouraging her.

Into this relationship steps Hal, played by Jonathan Northover, a Tucson actor of British nationality who comes up with a remarkably natural American accent. Hal is the idealistic graduate assistant at Chicago U. who believes in Robert’s mental prowess. While going through Robert’s piles of notebook compilations, Hal searches for that masterful insight Robert always wanted.

Chris Farishon completes the cast as Claire. She is Catherine’s good sister – the one who studied hard, always did what she was told and now has a successful career as a financial analyst in New York.

Of course, Catherine hates her. Robert applauds Claire’s achievements but the one he loves more is Catherine, which Claire deeply resents.

So when it seems Catherine might have pulled out of her depression long enough to plant the flag of discovery on her own piece of the math world, Claire demands some definite proof.

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IF YOU GO

What: Beowulf Alley Theatre Company presents “Proof” by David Auburn

When: 7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 1:30 p.m. Sundays through April 26

Where: Beowulf Alley Theatre, 11 S. Sixth Ave.

Price: $20 all tickets, discounts online

Info: 882-0555, www.beowulfalley.org

Grade: A

In "Page by Page," actor Ken Page will reflect on his past performances, from high school theater to the role of Old Deuteronomy in "Cats."

The Chinese like to say it is bad luck to be born in interesting times.

But even though St. Louis native Ken Page, born in 1954, spent his life and his show business career surviving turbulent racial change, the assassination of several American leaders and the AIDS crisis, he turned the experience into a one-man performance of Broadway hits that has been called “lusty, life-affirming, yet also haunting.”

The Broadway star has titled his singing autobiography “Page By Page,” which he brings to the Berger Performing Arts Center for two performances this weekend, presented by Invisible Theatre.

“Page By Page”celebrates a barrier- busting life that began when he was an African-American teen playing the Jewish tradition-loving Tevye in a Catholic high school production of “Fiddler on the Roof.”

When young Page played Horace Vandergelder in his high school production of “Hello, Dolly!” the casting made classroom history as the first interracial couple ever to appear on the school’s stage.

In the early 1970s those were big steps, Page recalled, and he’s always been very proud of taking them.

Coming of age when national political figures were being murdered for their beliefs, he bemoans the losses of “Martin, Malcolm, Medgar and both Kennedys.” Social issues have continued to be important to this performer. In 1973 Page saw his first touring Broadway show, “Seasaw.”

“I was mesmerized,” he told one reporter. “Not only with the show but with the people in it. They were short, tall, Asian, black, white.”

Just three years later Page was on Broadway himself, playing another white guy, Nicely-Nicely Johnson in an all-African American production of “Guys and Dolls.” It is Nicely-Nicely, we remember, who sings the show-stopping “Sit Down, You’re Rocking the Boat.”

In 1977 Page had the transitional role of the Lion in the African-American adaptation of “The Wizard of Oz,” known as “The Wiz.” But the next year, Page truly blossomed, winning the Drama Desk Award for his portrayal of Fats Waller in “Ain’t Misbehavin’.”

There’s lots more to “Page By Page,” including his casting as Old Deuteronomy in the original production of “Cats” in 1982. Borrowing from that experience Page’s show also includes “Memory,” the signature song from “Cats,” which he performs as a poignant remembrance of his peers lost in the AIDS plague.

“I haven’t looked at the world in the same way since,” he has said.

On the life-affirming side, Page also tells stories of our shared humanity and works through a 25-song list that includes “Summertime Love,” “Bloody Mary,” “Broadway Baby,” “Ease on Down the Road,” “Ferry Cross the Mersey” and “Honeysuckle Rose.”

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IF YOU GO

What: Invisible Theatre presents Ken Page’s “Page By Page” musical autobiography

When: 8 p.m. Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday

Where: Berger Performing Arts Center, 1200 W. Speedway Blvd.

Price: $42 general admission; group discounts available

Info: 882-9721, www.invisibletheatre.com

ABBA songs and fun, colorful dance numbers carry the plot along in "Mamma Mia!"

Check out the dancing in “Mamma Mia!” when this national touring show opens at the Tucson Music Hall on Tuesday.

See if it looks crisp enough for you. Sara Braslow will be doing that, too. She’s the company’s dance captain and a University of Arizona graduate, class of ’97, with her BFA in musical theater.

“I’ve been with this show for 3 1/2 years and I’m not tired of it yet,” she says cheerfully on the phone from Los Angeles where “Mamma Mia!” is in the midst of a two-week run at the historic Pantages Theater on Hollywood Boulevard.

“As dance captain, I’m in charge of keeping it looking right, so both the choreographer and the director are happy,” Braslow says. That includes being responsible for working new people into the act and keeping the cast veterans on their toes with brush-up rehearsals. A typical schedule would include two dance rehearsals “pretty much every week.”

To do that, the dance captain (much like the quarterback on a football team) must know everyone’s moves.

“Yes,” she says with a laugh. “I do know all 30 dance tracks. So I know everybody’s part. I’ve always loved math. To me it is like working out an equation. I have to fit the right people into the right spots. I have two very thick books, where we have mapped out each dance track, section by section, in letters and numbers and colors.”

Braslow is also a swing dancer in the show, covering the roles of seven women. The story, we remember, takes place on an enchanted Greek isle where an inquisitive daughter, on the eve of her wedding, tries to discover which of her mother’s three main men from an earlier time could actually be the daughter’s father.

All the songs, of course, come from the equally thick book of favorites sung by the Swedish quartet ABBA. Included in the show are “Dancing Queen,” “S.O.S.,” “Super Trouper,” “Take A Chance On Me” and “The Winner Takes It All.”

For anyone who hasn’t seen either the musical or the movie (is there anyone like that?) “Mamma Mia!” is a true ensemble cast without a standout role for some famous person to step in and do the tour. Those songs are the star, actually, with the singers and dancers there simply to make the music more exciting.

“The show has a very loyal audience,” says Braslow with marvelous understatement. “Some of the fans dress up. All of them are very vocal.”

Back in February, the show had a thorough refurbishing to get freshened up for playing these two weeks in Los Angeles. Immediately after that, everything will be loaded up and hauled here for a week of performances in the Baked Apple. Tucsonans get the benefit of all this fluffing that includes four new faces (three of them in principal roles), new sets, new costumes and new lights.

“To the audience it will look the same as always, but the performances will feel very fresh and be lots of fun.

“And the cast will be enthusiastic because I’m always talking up Tucson to everybody,” she adds, the sunshine in her voice.

Looking to her show business future, Braslow thinks being dance captain and a swing dancer has its payoff artistically. She sees lots more than just being a teacher and disciplinarian.

“I do love the teaching end of it, which surprised me, actually. But what I really like is being able to jump in anywhere.

“And instead of being the choreographer, what I enjoy more is maintaining someone else’s choreography, and adding my own touches to it.

“Now that I’ve discovered this niche, being dance captain and a swing, I’m thinking I would like to make this my career.”

It is an interesting choice. Becoming a star or being one of those character actors full of colorful quirks is the usual show business motivator. Braslow has had those roles, at the UA and in regional theaters all over the country.

With this more or less backstage role, she has disappeared into “Mamma Mia!” But if you appreciate snappy turns with style you will be seeing Sara Braslow’s hand up there onstage.

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IF YOU GO

What: Broadway in Tucson presents “Mamma Mia!”

When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 23; 8 p.m. April 24; 2 and 8 p.m. April 25; 1 and 6:30 p.m. April 26

Where: Tucson Music Hall

Price: $25-$69

Info: 903-2929, www.broadwayintucson.com

Hershey Felder stars in "Beethoven: As I Knew Him."

Members of the MTV generation will be calling Arizona Theatre Company’s new production “Beethoven Unplugged,” even though the official title is “Beethoven, As I Knew Him.”

Written and performed as a one-man show by actor/concert pianist Hershey Felder, the musical selections emphasize the composer’s genius for power ballads. Not to mix too many music metaphors here, but Beethoven is best known for composing magnificent symphonies.

Felder has pared away all the tuxedoed pomp of a proper European concert hall, the imposing sight of 80 musicians playing all sizes of bowed instruments, and replaced them with . . . himself and a grand piano in a simple setting with a few pieces of studio furniture. Behind him is a backdrop resembling a story book. From time to time, illustrations that look like etchings are projected on the larger-than-lifesize pages.

Everything is black, with minimal stage lighting, which adds a certain formality to the atmosphere. The playwright does enhance the scene with some recorded orchestral excerpts in a sound design by Erik Carstensen. Unfortunately the theater’s sound system wasn’t equal to the challenge. There was no rich resonance to this recording. It came out thin, with distortion around the edges.

The ideal setting would be Felder with a full symphony orchestra. As an instrument for humanizing the great artist, “Beethoven, As I Knew Him” works its magic. Just like you can hear the tunes better in those “Unplugged” TV programs, Felder brings out the angelic moments in Beethoven’s music.

Instead of soaring through the heavens on the wings of 30 violins, Felder draws us past the Pearly Gates and into God’s own darkened living room where Beethoven has been playing every evening for a couple of hundred years.

Do they serve after-dinner drinks in Heaven? If they do, this would be the perfect place.

For narration, Felder has drawn on the writing of Dr. Gerhard von Breuning, whose father was one of Beethoven’s most loyal friends. Gerhard was 12 years old when he first met the composer. For the next couple of years he would spend time with Beethoven nearly every day.

His stories become Felder’s stories, told with a pronounced German accent. Always understanding what he’s saying isn’t easy. This does detract from the performance, though it doesn’t get in the way of the music. Still, a simpler accent would be appreciated.

We do get that Beethoven lived a difficult, unhappy life and was a terrible housekeeper. As a boy he was abused by his father. The composer’s cruel deafness in later life could have been caused by those childhood times when the father beat his son about the head.

“Beethoven, As I Knew Him” is presented without an intermission, running nearly two hours. Felder adds a coda, as he calls it, stepping away from the piano to answer questions from the audience.

So, dream up a good question during the performance and be one of the first to get called on afterward, just to get the audience participation started. On opening night it took Felder awhile before the questions were flowing.

My favorite question from the audience: “If Mozart had lived longer, how would his presence have affected Beethoven’s composing?”

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IF YOU GO

What: Arizona Theatre Company presents “Beethoven, As I Knew Him,” written and performed by Hershey Felder

When: various times Tuesdays through Sundays through April 27

Where: Temple of Music and Art, 330 S. Scott Ave.

Price: $31-$54

Info: 622-2823, aztheatreco.org

Hershey Felder will appear as himself in a special six-performance concert series April 30-May 3 in the Temple of Music and Art, presenting “The American Songbook Sing-Along.” For details, aztheatreco.org.

Grade: B

George Howard (third from left) and his band perform original material and old school R&B.

The Rhythm ‘n’ Blues Soul Review of George Howard is moving into the über fantasy nightspot Pearl for a weekly gig.

Howard and his five-man band will be pumping live music into this glittery boite best known until now for its DJ parties massaging the turntables with sensual recorded beats.

“We want to start bringing more bands on stage in Tucson,” says Howard, a drummer by trade but now the show’s singer and out-front personality. “The city needs to be hearing more local musicians. So many good players live here.”

Howard’s Soul Review has been a long-running Saturday night attraction at Loews Ventana Canyon Resort. The bandleader is banking on fans who need a midweek hit of his high-energy sound.

The plan is for his R&B Soul Review to do full-blown shows at Pearl while also playing a hit list of old school Motown and R&B for dancing. The showcase will feature some of the band’s original material, as well.

Howard’s R&B Soul Review is the culmination of a career that began more than 35 years ago when the young drummer played in Tucson’s Subterranean Blues Band.

It was during the 1980s that Howard made his mark driving the Statesboro Blues Band, the busiest band in the Baked Apple. They worked concerts as special guest artists with such neon marque names as Charlie Musselwhite, Albert Collins, John Lee Hooker, Bo Diddley and Kenny Neal.

In 1991 the ambitious drummer/bandleader decided to step out front as a showman. He put together George Howard and the Roadhouse Hounds. The new band played a rocking version of the blues, expressing Howard’s lifetime love for the gutty modern blues sound of the Rolling Stones.

With the Hounds, Howard began working exclusively as a singer and entertainer. In recent months his show business career started coming full cycle by playing some blue-collar lounge dates that featured the raw power of special guest sax man Bobby Keys, who toured with the Stones during their big hit years in the 1970s.

To keep the Soul Review’s energy pushing the red line, Howard has included arrangements on some of Keys’ fat sax workouts in the band’s regular songbook. Rumors are strong that Keys will be stopping by Pearl whenever he’s in town, joining his buddy Howard onstage in that R&B Soul Review.

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IF YOU GO

What: George Howard and his R&B Soul Review

When: 8:30-11:30 p.m. Thursdays

Where: Pearl, 445 W. Wetmore Road (at North Oracle Road)

Price: $5 cover, $1 off for employees of Raytheon, Intuit and University of Arizona students with ID

Info: 820-2566, www.pearltucson.com

18th annual showcase not your normal affair

A misfit mutt becomes a fire dog in "Hot Dog," one of the animated shorts that will play Tuesday night at The Screening Room.

Nothing says ornery independence louder than Tucson and nothing says ornery independent film louder than the Arizona International Film Festival.

This is the 18th annual showcase for those filmmakers who follow a different drummer, with spots for 74 cinema entries (31 from the U.S.). Leading the American contingent is Tucson’s own Kathryn Ferguson, who poured several years of her life into the feature-length documentary “Rita of the Sky.” This is the incredible story of a Tarahumara woman who left her native home in Mexico’s untamed Copper Canyon and started walking north.

In Kansas, some 1,500 miles later, she was detained in a mental hospital because no one in Kansas could speak Tarahumara and she spoke no English. Health officials thought she was babbling gibberish and was mentally disturbed. For 10 years she was confined there, until a visiting social worker from Mexico who spoke Tarahumara recognized what she was saying. Her story was also adapted to the stage by Mexican playwright Victor Hugo Rascon Banda. It has been produced here at Borderlands Theater, in other American cities and a number of countries.

The festival program also includes a two-part showcase of 10 animated short films that offer, according to the program, a “plethora of animation styles.”

Giulio Scalinger, the festival’s founding director, calls this year’s animation collection his best ever.

“And it also includes one from Bill Plympton,” Scalinger adds. The infamous Plympton has been an AIFF friend for many years.

Other countries represented in the festival are Australia, Bolivia, Canada, Cuba, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Japan, Jamaica, Mexico, the Netherlands, Nicaragua, Singapore, Spain, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden, Taiwan and the United Kingdom. Selections include 12 films that played earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival, 10 at the accompanying Slamdance festival and three from the Berlin International Film Festival.

For the complete lineup of 17 feature-length films and 57 shorts, visit www.filmfestivalarizona.com or call 882-0204.

OPENING NIGHTS

It will take three special ceremonies to get the Arizona International Film Festival officially up and running. The first is Thursday’s 5:30 p.m. Kick-Off Celebration at the downtown Hotel Congress, 311 E. Congress St. Enjoy a reception in the hotel lobby, rub shoulders with visiting filmmakers and do a little networking, enjoy the obligatory introductory remarks and then stroll over to La Placita Village, 110 S. Church Ave., for a free outdoor screening of “Veer” at 7:30 p.m.

This documentary narrated by Matthew Modine details all the spontaneous craziness of the bicycle culture in Portland, Ore. Whether you want nude bike races, the reckless Zoobombers ignoring all traffic laws or the thrill of bicycle jousting matches, they’ve got it. These free spirits also hold afternoon bike safety programs and free cycling clinics. The short film “BICAS Works” also screens, proving bicycle rims, spokes and wheels can become recycled art.

Friday brings two opening night feature films. Dealing with border culture is “Emilio” at 8 p.m. at the Crossroads Festival theater, 4811 E. Grant Road. For the art film crowd comes “Distanz” from Germany, playing at 9 p.m. in the Screening Room, 127 E. Congress St.

“Emilio” is the story of a 19-year-old lad from Chiapas determined to track down and save his 14-year-old sister, believed to be held captive by a despicable restaurateur in Los Angeles. “Distanz” dramatizes the unknown life of a quiet young man who works in a botanical garden by day, then turns violent after dark. These conflicting lifestyles complicate his relationship with Jana, his sweetly innocent coworker. Regular admission for both films.

SPECIAL PROGRAMS

• The Reel Frontier Film and Video Competition is a juried program that celebrates and rewards excellence and innovation in narrative features, dramatic and comedy shorts, animation, documentaries and experimental pieces.

• Cine Español showcases new works by established and Spanish filmmakers.

• Festival-in-the-Schools introduces the film world to young students.

• Indie Youth features the first works of young filmmakers from around the world.

• The Music Café is a revolving series of late night concerts in local venues by indie musicians who are kindred spirits.

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IF YOU GO

What: 18th annual Arizona International Film Festival

When: April 16-26

Where: various venues; most events at the Screening Room, 127 E. Congress St., or the Crossroads Festival theater, 4811 E. Grant Road

Price: $5 late night screenings; $6 matinees; $8 prime time screenings – single tickets go on sale an hour before each screening; $25 Saver Pass for five festival screenings; $50 student producer pass (with current school ID); $100 producer pass.

Info: 882-0204, www.filmfestivalarizona.com

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FILM FEST SCHEDULE

Complete lineup of movies, programs

Live Theatre Workshop’s “I Wrote This Play To Make You Love Me”

Amanda Gremel and Christopher Johnson star in "I Wrote This Play to Make You Love Me."

They are the people we never see. The single travelers with their elaborate black leather brief cases. The people who sit by themselves on airplanes, keeping an eye on their wristwatches and always looking bored.

Or else we see them riding in buses with musical instruments tucked under their seats, munching on old food, being terminally hip.

Or maybe just schlepping from town to town with big make-up cases and a couple of changes in theater clothes. They are the actors, riding on their imagination, truly believing they are just one dramatic role away from becoming shiny celebrities.

They are the travelers, the disconnected who judge each town by the quality of its restaurant waiters and hotel staffs. They are the unencumbered souls who fill Anne Thibault’s “I Wrote This Play To Make You Love Me.”

That is, all the characters but one. She is the marginally successful actress Lysette, played with an incredible innocence by soft-voiced Amanda Gremel in the late night production by Etcetera at Live Theatre Workshop. Lysette can be describing the most incredibly horrific sexual misadventure while maintaining an open-minded sweetness that feels absolutely genuine. Which makes the horrible parts even more so.

She not only depends on the kindness of strangers, she depends on the kindness of sick perverts with voracious appetites. Sharks of immorality who must keep committing more immoral acts just to stay alive.

In the course of this 90-minute one-act Lysette meets them all. She doesn’t want to meet them. She doesn’t seek them out. She would prefer to stay in her hotel room, learning her lines to be in Ibsen’s equally bleak “A Doll’s House.” But she meets them anyway.

The construction of Thibault’s play doesn’t invite the audience in, however. This is basically Gremel providing a recitation of Lysette’s unfortunate social life as she keeps traveling in pursuit of work, hanging out with equally transient punk rockers along the way and hating those sandal-wearing hippie vegetarians in Vermont who keep protesting the construction of more cell phone microwave towers.

Which is why she can never get a decent cell phone connection.

There is a stream of consciousness feeling to this dutiful remembrance of her lost loves, disgusting loves and the numbing sorrow of always having to settle, not for Mr. Right, but for Mr. Right Now.

Occasionally her resigned ruminations are augmented by off-stage comments from Christopher Johnson. His disembodied voice floats unseen, sort of like the voice of conscience that couldn’t care less about anyone’s true feelings.

Occasionally, Johnson jumps onstage to play a variety of unsavory characters who pop in and out of Lysette’s directionless life. There is never any arc to her journey, no moment when she must risk everything to save her own soul from this limbo of pop culture vultures feeding on the spiritually dead.

Johnson is also the director, carefully guiding Gremel’s revelations of personality. Without calling on any vein-bulging theatrics, eschewing the usual mannerisms of damsels in mental distress, Gremel does create a convincing portrait of a young person who wants to believe wearing the right clothes and loving the right music will make her more valuable in the eyes of others.

Such poignancy is irresistible. While the structure of the play keeps Gremel from any blossoming insight, anyone who has traveled these same midnight roads through such tortured landscapes will love her stories.

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IF YOU GO

What: Etcetera presents “I Wrote This Play To Make You Love Me” by Anne Thibault

When: 10:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays through April 18

Where: Live Theatre Workshop, 5317 E. Speedway Blvd.

Price: $10

Info: 481-1449, www.livetheatreworkshop.org

Grade: B+

Hershey Felder stars in the title role of "Beethoven, As I Knew Him."

Beethoven won’t be rolling over, but he will be portrayed in sort of a buddy-movie setting with Arizona Theatre Company’s production of “Beethoven, As I Knew Him,” written and performed as a one-man/one-piano show by Hershey Felder.

This completes Felder’s triumvirate of stage works based on pivotal composers. He began with George Gershwin, then continued with Frédéric Chopin. Both works have been presented by ATC, as well.

The familiar Beethoven biography of greatness followed by deafness receives an oblique treatment as Felder tells the story through the eyes of Gerhard von Breuning 43 years after the German composer’s passing. Von Breuning is remembering how he was the lad at Beethoven’s side for much of the last two years of the man’s life. It was von Breuning’s father who was Beethoven’s friend. The boy grew up to be a physician. Now he looks back on his youth spent with his father in the company of such a musical genius.

“As musicians we know these stories about the famous figures in music history. Von Breuning would have been 12 to 14 years old when he knew Beethoven, a young man who is completely enamored of the great man,” Felder says, on the phone and freshly arrived in the United States from Paris.

“Being so young, he could say things about Beethoven that no one who is older would say. That’s what I liked about this relationship. It gave me more freedom as a writer and also made it more like a buddy movie.”

There being few accomplished actors who are also accomplished concert pianists, Felder doesn’t expect there will be many productions of these works except his own. To date he has performed “Beethoven, As I Knew Him” with extended runs in Los Angeles and San Diego. ATC will add Tucson and Phoenix to the itinerary.

As the playwright for this unique series, Felder says by now the work has become faster to create, but not easier.

“I’ve learned a lot of things that I know will never work (in this particular type of show). That means I don’t have to try those anymore. But each play is different so I’m always looking for things that will work. That is always hard,” Felder says.

One thing that does work is to write the script first, then let the script dictate which music to select. Felder emphasizes that what is most important is being able to strike the right balance between the person and the music.

“You do have to include some of the greatest hits; that’s a given,” Felder says. “But some familiar pieces just won’t fit into this setting, while others may be too complicated to be effective.”

“Beethoven, As I Knew Him” is a stage play, not a concert. Felder plays Beethoven, and the boy. He also portrays the boy after he’s grown, telling additional stories about the composer. So the music comes in shorter bursts, so to speak, serving more as mileposts of artistic achievement.

Included on the song list is the “Moonlight Sonata,” “The Pathetique Sonata,” selections from Beethoven’s fifth and ninth symphonies, and a movement of the “Emperor Concerto.”

“We start with the first thing he wrote, then go to the familiar works, then include some less familiar,” Felder says.

He says that after each performance people will ask why he didn’t include this piece or that one, selections that are more obscure.

“On the obscure pieces,” he begins, a smile in his voice, “it is important to remember, after 200 years of history, there are probably good reasons why those obscure pieces are still obscure.”

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IF YOU GO

What: Arizona Theatre Company presents “Beethoven, As I Knew Him” by Hershey Felder

When: 7:30 p.m. preview Thursday, opening 7:30 p.m. Friday, continuing at various times (including several matinee performances) Tuesdays through Sundays through April 27

Where: Temple of Music and Art, 330 S. Scott Ave.

Price: $31-$54

Info: 622-2823, aztheatreco.org

Clifton Collins Jr. (left) plays the kind-hearted owner of a cleaning supplies store in "Sunshine Cleaning."

“Who is that guy?” I kept asking over and over at a screening of “Sunshine Cleaning,” the quirky Amy Adams comedy that flaunts its independent spirit.

He has such a commanding presence, despite high cheekbones, a scraggly beard and a thin face that shouts “I just love country music.”

His mystical appeal begins with a warmly resonant voice that gives him kind of a Buddhist peacefulness. This is definitely not a mismatch you see every day.

He’s playing Winston, the one-armed, kindly owner of an ordinary cleaning supplies store. There may be shelves full of toxic chemicals out front, but in back this gentle soul builds model airplanes. The warbirds of World War II are a favorite source of inspiration.

Winston is also one of those single guys who never quite grew up. He knows, and we know, during business hours he’s only pretending to be an adult. After work the ageless youngster comes out.

And there is the question of that missing arm. Maybe he lost it in Vietnam. Or since he looks about 35 (way too young for a Vietnam vet) maybe he was a wild teen of the late 1980s who got in big trouble somewhere and that calmed him down a lot.

“For this role I had to work out a lot of back story,” chuckles Clifton Collins Jr on the phone. It turns out he has both arms. Not only that but he’s also a Los Angeles native whose grandfather was the famous Mexican comedian Pedro Gonzalez-Gonzalez. Most folks on this side of the border remember Double-G as John Wayne’s sidekick in cowboy movies from the 1960s.

“I’ve been to Tucson,” says Clifton cheerfully. “I went with my grandfather when he made ‘Rio Bravo’.” Other family members went along, too. It sounded like a family outing, for sure.

Collins has also spent a lot of his adult life being sure his grandfather gets appropriate credit and respect for being one of Hollywood’s first Hispanic actors.

A quick check of online reviews for “Sunshine Cleaning” finds both Roger Ebert and A.O. Scott of the New York Times singling out Collins for special mention. Emily Blunt, Steve Zahn and Adams may get all the big lines, but Collins has the screen presence to make an impact.

It’s when the character actor says, “We thought Winston probably was a motorcycle or race car driver. He lost that arm in an accident and looked down at the road where the arm was lying, all bloody and twisted with its fingers twitching.”

Yipes! Is this the same kind-hearted cleaning supplies guy? An even bigger surprise is learning Collins played the sinisterly creepy cold-blooded killer Perry Smith who was manipulated by Truman Capote (Philip Seymour Hoffman) in “Capote” in 2005.

That was also Collins the deadly drug menace in “Traffic.” It will also be Collins the violent gangland killer in “Crank 2″ starring Jason Statham. And then the even more high-profile intergalactic evil henchman complementing Eric Bana’s Nero in the new “Star Trek” movie coming out this summer.

“For an actor, playing bad guys really is the best,” Collins beams. Even on the phone you can hear the little kid in his voice.

“Playing good guys is deeper and more creative,” he admits. It is more artistically satisfying. “But playing bad guys, that’s really fun!”

Not only has April been designated Jazz Appreciation Month by the Smithsonian Institution, but the Tucson Jazz Society has designated this month to begin its five-concert showcase of local jazz heroes.

Add to that, a rare appearance by alto sax legend Bud Shank with nationally ranked tenor man Doug Webb.

A seventh concert featuring Baked Apple favorites from Phoenix – Judy Roberts and Greg Fishman – will cap the series and send us into summer.

Unofficially, this swinging spring project for TJS is a return to the organization’s grass roots as a bunch of people who simply love jazz and want to share the love. It hasn’t always been easy.

The last few years saw the society stage a number of high-profile events that, basically, suffered from too much optimism and not enough financial support. As TJS sank under a tsunami of red ink, the national economy was also collapsing.

Last January, the group’s board decided to release their salaried staff and go it alone as an all-volunteer organization. Just like it was in 1977 when a couple of dozen like-minded folks met one weekend afternoon at the Jazz Showcase nightclub on Grant Road.

That building was torn down a long time ago. Some of the original members are still in town, though, and still active in TJS. They and many newer members are determined to prove jazz will maintain a presence in our city’s reputation as an arts oasis of the Southwest.

At one point in its history, the Tucson Jazz Society boasted the second-largest membership of all the nation’s community jazz organizations, approaching an estimated 3,000 card-carrying supporters. Several unfortunate changes in leadership took their toll, however, and now the unofficial count is about half that.

Led by a very determined Jeffrey Lewis as board president, TJS wants to get back to those times when the music was the most important part. There is just something mystical – religious, almost – about being in a big group of people all tapping their feet in the same rhythm to the same music at the same time.

It is also special to have a chance to hear musicians perform in an open-air setting, without the noise of clattering glasses and other people’s conversations like in a restaurant or bar.

These musicians, after all, have spent a major portion of their lives learning to navigate the spaces between all those notes in all those scales for all those keys. Plus the drummers, who have developed multitasking into a fine art. Literally. In light of all this, respectful listening doesn’t seem too much to ask.

One of the first achievements of the fledgling TJS back in 1980 was to establish an annual tribute to women in jazz. The Primavera Festival is now the nation’s longest-running celebration of groovy female musicians.

So it is entirely appropriate that this turning point concert series for TJS opens with Sunday’s show featuring a trio of songbird jazzers – Crystal Stark, Julie Anne and Kathryn Byrnes. Each of these ladies enjoys a successful solo career, but they will surely be singing some three-part harmony, as well, flipping through the classic jazz songbook.

All of the concerts will run on successive Sundays through May 17 at St. Philip’s Plaza.

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The lowdown

• Sunday – Crystal Stark, Julie Anne and Kathryn Byrnes

• April 12 – tenor saxophonist Greg Armstrong and Friends

• April 19 – reedmen Bud Shank and Doug Webb

• April 26 – vocalist Joe Bourne and the Cool Ditties of Jazz

• May 3 – Nossa Bossa Nova, the duo of Theresa and Mike Levy

• May 10 – Orquesta La Unica play salsa, led by Amilcar Guevara

• May 17 – Judy Roberts, singer/pianist, costars with Greg Fishman, tenor sax

When: 7 to 9 p.m.

Where: St. Philip’s Plaza, 4280 N. Campbell Ave. (at East River Road)

Price: Tickets for each show are $20 general admission, $15 for TJS members, $10 for students.

Info: tucsonjazz.org

Shakespeare's female characters get to further pursue their dreams in "Immortal Longings."

Revisionist literature? Well, sure, why not? Joseph McGrath the founding artistic director of The Rogue Theatre decided to start moving around some of Shakespeare’s most famous ladies, exploring their possible needs as people living outside the pages of their famous stories.

Titling the work “Immortal Longings,” he begins imagining how Juliet (Dallas Thomas) would have enjoyed getting to know Romeo a little better. From here, he creates an entire society of literary ladies fulfilling their dreams.

It’s a little bit like journalists wondering what it would be like to live in an enlightened culture where the role of journalism was revered; where those who served as watchdogs to guard the public’s interests were considered valued members of society.

McGrath so immersed himself in the possibilities, he even caught the longer rhythms and elaborate sentence structure of Shakespeare’s time. It must have been a bit like speaking in tongues, letting the spirit take him over as angry Kate (Alida Holguin Gunn), cold-blooded Lady Macbeth (Cynthia Meier), gender-bending Viola (Holly-Marie Carlson), airy Ophelia (Laine Peterson), stately Portia (Lesley Abrams), quick-tongued Beatrice (Avis Judd), witty Rosalind (Chelsea Bowdren), queenly Cleopatra (Susan Arnold) and the most unfortunate Desdemona (Maxine Gillespie) joined Juliet to air their differences with the Bard.

Viola and Rosalind, given their Shakespearian conception as women pretending to be men, continue this dual purposing of gender to help facilitate the play’s structure. There isn’t a plot, exactly, but a trial. In the opening scene, Juliet interrupts her own death scene to complain she is tired of dying. After centuries of frustration, she wants to live!

Portia steps forward to be the judge, appointing Viola and Rosalind – both attired in manly garb – to be the judge’s attendants. The other prominent women who sprung from Shakespeare’s pen would step forward to testify both for and against Juliet’s request. In a most judicial voice Portia calls to order a court she describes as “a gathering of queens, cross-dressers, murderers and shrews.”

To keep audience members brushed up on their Shakespeare, each woman gets to enact one famous scene from her own story. Viola and Rosalind, dressed for their “trouser roles,” play whatever men are needed for the appropriate accompaniment.

Then the ladies each make a speech defending her position on Juliet’s plea to live a little longer. Thomas, as the star-crossed teen holding a bottle of poison, is impressive stepping out of Juliet’s traditional personality but staying in character to ask for a better deal than fate has handed her.

Juliet’s main opposition comes from an imposing Meier, dominant in her red gown and gold crown as Lady Macbeth. Snuffing out any hopes Juliet had to make her case, Lady M’s smothering accusations give Juliet fits.

“Have you no mercy,” the girl finally cries out in frustration.

“Have you read my play?” snaps Lady Macbeth, getting a big laugh.

But it is Ophelia, providing the comedy relief, who makes the strongest impression. Peterson steals her every scene, playing Ophelia in a long, white, ghostly dress with trailing strands of seaweed and water plants wrapped around her neck.

Completely mad, yet glowing with a guileless innocence, she charms everyone with her simple-minded manner. At times, her stage image is also strangely reminiscent of Stevie Nicks during her rock ‘n’ roll days with Fleetwood Mac. A rather fascinating interpretation, when you think about it.

As for the resolution, well that is the whole point of this play, isn’t it. McGrath is clever enough to sidestep any strident ending. Wisdom will make its own points.

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IF YOU GO

What: The Rogue Theatre presents the world première of “Immortal Longings” by Joseph McGrath

When: 7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays, to April 5; preshow Elizabethan music 15 minutes before each curtain

Where: Zuzi’s Dance Theatre, 738 N. Fifth Ave.

Price: $20 general admission; pay-what-you-will Thursday and April 2

Info: 551-2053, www.theroguetheatre.org

grade: B

Laine Peterson and Nic Adams star in "This Property is Condemned."

The economy wasn’t the only casualty in the Great Depression. Society’s collapsing middle class pushed whole families into moral ruin. We are reminded of this collateral damage forgotten by historians in Tennessee Williams’ famous one-act “This Property Is Condemned.”

The play, running less than 25 minutes with only two characters, is a production of The Now Theatre, presented in the Rogue After Curfew series.

Tom, a 16-year-old boy, is played by Nic Adams (who is also the director). Opposite him is Laine Peterson as Willie, a 13-year-old girl who lives by herself in an empty boarding house.

Their conversation is the play.

Sydney Pollack directed the 1966 film adaptation starring Natalie Wood and Robert Redford. The play is nothing like the movie, expanded by 12 screenwriters to be the story of Willie’s wayward, undisciplined older sister who, at 16, actively entertained the many railroad men who stayed at a boarding house run by her mother.

In this vastly expanded (some would say distorted) film adaptation there is scarcely any place for Willie and Tom. Needless to say, Williams hated the screen version. He hated nearly every picture made from any of his plays.

What Williams loved about the one-act play “This Property Is Condemned” is his creation of Willie, a girl who “laughs frequently and wildly and with a sort of precocious, tragic abandon.” On its surface, the play is simple – just two kids sittin’ around talkin’.

For fans of Williams’ work, though, this production is a must-see. Because the two characters are so young, and because the girl has no interest in moral behavior, performances of the piece are rare. Both actors are in their 20s, but do manage to capture a sense of what touched Williams most – a 13-year-old’s bravery facing a world of rough men making cruel demands on her innocence.

These days, we think of those news stories describing sex safaris to third world countries where wealthy Americans enjoy the favors of children barely old enough to be sexually active. We act indignant, insisting such horrible things could never happen here.

Yet Williams lays it out plainly enough. As money slips away from families with no marketable skills in hard financial times, sex becomes a valuable commodity. Although the play is set near an isolated tank town along the railroad tracks in rural Mississippi, it could happen anywhere.

In writing Willie’s casual chatter the playwright slowly reveals Willie’s poignant plight, as if the girl has no idea what the implications are in what she is saying. Peterson lets her body language add the adjectives indicating fear covered by bravado.

Tom, in his own frightened curiosity about sex, learned earlier of Willie’s life and her older sister’s reputation with the railroad men. Tom heard that Willie danced naked once for one of the men.

Willie dances around that subject, too, then nervously admits it. Tom eagerly asks if she would dance for him, but Willie cuts Tom short. She only wants to talk to experienced men with good jobs. Peterson delivers that line with such directness that only later does the shocking impact of its implication begin to sink in.

This is a girl who has grown up watching her older sister dine regularly on forbidden fruit. Then her sister died of pneumonia. We can feel in Peterson’s acting the uncertainty of Willie’s pride, how the girl instinctively knows this forbidden fruit will be the only nutrition she can get.

Photo by Duane Dugas, courtesy of Nic Adams

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IF YOU GO

What: The Now Theatre presents “This Property Is Condemned” by Tennessee Williams

When: 10 p.m. Thursdays-Sundays, except the March 29 performance immediately after The Rogue Theatre’s 2 p.m. presentation of “Immortal Longings”

Where: Zuzi’s Theatre, 738 N. Fifth Ave.

Price: $10 general admission, $5 with a ticket to see “Immortal Longings”

Info: 949-547-6067, www.theroguetheatre.org

Grade: A

Eric Anson and Jodi Henderson are among the 12 cast members in Live Theatre Workshop's production of "Inspecting Carol."

Comedy can be a fickle mistress. Sometimes the laughter pours out, other times the silence after a punch line or pratfall is deadly.

For the performers it’s even worse. Timing is everything, of course. But when several actors are onstage together, one person can send the whole scene careening into chaos. That person’s erratic line bumps into the next person, whose moment gets rushed, lurching into the next person after that – and pretty soon the whole stage is a train wreck of good intentions.

Arms and legs stick out in awkward positions, strange noises escape at odd times. Bodies pile up. And in the back of the audience a bunch of people are laughing like crazy.

But is it funny? Is it comedy? Or is it just people laughing?

Live Theatre Workshop has cooked up its production of a backstage comedy, “Inspecting Carol,” directed by Leslie J. Miller, that feels like a four-lane pile-up. Actors are flying in all directions, punch lines get flattened out and zippy language turns into noise.

Yet, at the performance I attended people were laughing as they left the theater convinced it was a really funny show.

Humor, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

“Inspecting Carol” is credited to Daniel Sullivan and the Seattle Repertory Theatre. That awkward title refers to Charles Dickens’ holiday evergreen “A Christmas Carol.”

Combining elements of the insider stage comedy “Noises Off” and the movie satirizing community theater, “Waiting For Guffman,” this comedy is less than either one.

Instead of cleverness we get slapstick. Instead of insight we get more slapstick. Miller is fully committed to the silliness. If the play calls for someone to fall, she’ll have the person fall, roll around and knock over some furniture. All the acting is performed in caricature, giving everything a cartoonish over-the-top quality that gets its laughs at the expense of showing any humanity. These are not warmhearted eccentrics trying their best to overcome a difficult situation. They are talented actors trying to imitate life inside a blender full of fruitcake.

A cast of 12 complicates the confusion with its size. There isn’t a main personality or two traveling an emotional arc to some satisfactory resolution. The show itself doesn’t have much of an arc.

There is the usual motley collection of misfits hoping to find some relief from their own disappointing lives by taking part in an annual production of “A Christmas Carol.” Missie Scheffman plays the statuesque beauty Zorah Bloch, determined to run her own little theater company since she didn’t get to become a Hollywood movie star. You just know she’ll be having a personality meltdown before everyone turns out the stage lights and goes home for the night.

Jodie Rankin gets her laughs as the bored and cynical stage manager M.J. McMann. She performs the role of ringmaster in this circus of fools, ready to duck for cover whenever those highly combustible egos start bouncing off each other.

There’s not much of Scrooge’s familiar journey in “Inspecting Carol,” either. Along with a part of the old gentleman’s happy conversion, we get glimpses of Jacob Morley, Tiny Tim, the Christmas ghosts in frightful costumes and Bob Cratchit hoping he won’t get fired. But mostly we get to watch people spin out of control, crash and burn.

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IF YOU GO

What: Live Theatre Workshop presents “Inspecting Carol” by Daniel Sullivan and the Seattle Repertory Theatre

When: 7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays through April 19

Where: Live Theatre Workshop, 5317 E. Speedway Blvd.

Price: $14-$17

Info: 327-4242, www.livetheatreworkshop.org

Grade: C

Talk about a mind trip! The next time you need to escape the usual video offerings of gory horror, action-packed digital effects and downright rude comedies, try this brain-stretcher.

“Stephen Hawking and the Theory of Everything” is out in a remastered DVD version, originally broadcast on cable as “Master of the Universe.”

The visual heart of the DVD is galactic graphics explaining some of Hawking’s concepts about black holes, supernovas, dark matter and the equally mysterious subatomic world of quarks and stuff. Brilliantly projected in crisp images, these remarkable illustrations can suck you right out of that reclining sofa and straight into outer space.

Then the filmmakers brilliantly jump to shots of Hawking the physics genius, crumpled up in his wheelchair facing the camera to chart for us his efforts to unite the theories of relativity and quantum mechanics. Who can resist the contrast of this man trapped in a failing body because of ALS while his mind is free to soar far beyond the eagles, reaching to the very edges of our ever-expanding universe.

With a running time of some 90 minutes, the content feels like it is two-thirds cosmic theory and one-third Hawking’s biography.

We see old photos and film clips of Hawking, the British student at Cambridge, walking around campus and having fun, looking oh so collegiate in his school blazer. Then watch sadly, as subsequent clips details his body’s failing.

But Hawking, hating sympathy, rides his sense of humor like a surfboard. Remembering how the pope threw Galileo into prison? Hawking hopes he won’t meet the same fate for wanting to “know the mind of God.”

There is a short sequence of a student associate describing how Hawking’s first voice box simulator from the 1980s has become an obsolete piece of junk.

But the scientist insists on continuing to use it because that is the artificial voice known world-wide as belonging to Stephen Hawking. Presumably, he could be talking in dulcet, soothing, cultured British tones provided by modern technology but he stubbornly insists on keeping the same sputtering sound everyone remembers.

As for the science, it is a populist’s dream. Just about anybody can feel a little smarter by following along the logic of these theories as they are pushed beyond logic into the land of multiple universes and concepts such as our entire galaxy collapsed into a space the size of a billiard ball.

We remember how Hawking’s book “A Brief History of Time” landed on millions of coffee tables in the 1980s. His explanations of theoretical physics caught the public’s fancy, even if few people actually read the book and fewer still understood it.

But the popularity of that book gave a nudge to hippie physicists who saw in the submicroscopic world of quantum physics the possibility of a scientific explanation for spiritual values that became the popular films “What the (bleep) Do We Know” and “The Secret.”

There is a tantalizing touch of that controversial connection. Hawking’s theories would allow for atoms to communicate with each other under certain conditions, but he doesn’t dwell on it. The real science of his life’s work is to come up with the elusive theory of Everything that applies equally to the black holes in outer space and the subatomic particles spinning like crazy inside the tip of your finger.

It’s not as easy as it sounds.

The explanation comes in two parts. The logic of the first part sets up the second part, venturing into the possibility of dimensions beyond the three we can see, along with other arcane descriptions of scientific forces we can’t see.

But the film can be enjoyed without understanding all the science. You can always back up and replay the most difficult parts. More important is to appreciate how wonderfully complex the world is beneath its surfaces.

Anyway, people who still feel confused can always fall back on the seductive claim that just about everything we know to be true today will turn out to be false tomorrow.

Recorded live at Cecil’s, a jazz club in West Orange, N.J., this gracious collection of elegant performances also has a sly swinging style that’s the perfect accompaniment when what you’re seeking is an extra-dry martini in an extra large glass to accommodate three jumbo olives on a single toothpick. We’re talking corporate 1950s gray flannel suit relief from compressed conformity and all the material expectations that go along with a nice house in the suburbs.

At least, that’s how it sounds to me. Perhaps it’s because so much importance is given to civilized restraint.

Scott Reeves loves the lower brass sound of modified flugelhorns and trombones. He calls his first instrument an alto flugelhorn (played with a modified trombone mouthpiece) and the other an alto valve trombone (which he describes as “a standard valve trombone with one-third of the tubing cut off.” In a Web site photo Reeves is shown with a regular trombone and his alto valve trombone, which does look quite a bit shorter.

But this is no showcase for geeky gimmick instruments. The CD of all-original material written by Reeves is absolutely gimmick-free. The compositions are true to their button-down nature, but fluff up the 1950s image with more modern chords and complex rhythms.

Joining Reeves out front is tenor saxophonist Rich Perry. Be assured there are no piercing, screaming moments here. Only the well-groomed muscularity of straight-ahead jazz.

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Scott Reeves Quintet

“Shape Shifter” (Miles High Records)

Genre: jazz

Grade: A