Our culture columnist – a longtime Valley theater critic – reflects on the 2024-2025 theater season.
While fans of bus-and-truck musicals will be lining up for the umpteenth visit of Wicked (March 4-30) and Mamma Mia (May 27-June 1) at ASU Gammage this theater season, the rest of us may find solace in less-beaten-to-death fare like Arizona Theatre Company’s Bob & Jean: A Love Story (April 19-May 4), a World War II romance and the newest from Pulitzer Prize-winner Robert Schenkkan.
And pretty much everything at Theatre Artists Studio merits a gander during its 20th anniversary season, especially Melissa James Gibson’s This (October 18-November 3), an unromantic comedy about middle age, and definitely Art by Yasmina Reza (March 28-April 13), that innovative meditation on friendship translated from the French by Christopher Hampton.
The only good news about Desert Stages Theatre’s upcoming season is that Mark 4man has been engaged to direct the music for its hyper-trendy teen production of The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical (January 10-26); otherwise, it’s all reruns and retreads from these guys. If someone there is wise, they’ll import the magnificent James Zannelli to make magic with Tevye in their Fiddler on the Roof (April 25-May 11).
Grandmas, take note: This winter, your grandkids want to be taken to see Katie McFadzen play a busdriver in Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus: The Musical (February 4-March 9) based on the book by Mo Willems, who also wrote the script. This one’s at Childsplay, which this month is treading the Herberger Theater Center boards with The Diary of Anne Frank (September 11-28).
Speaking of plays we’ve seen before, the people who usually load up The Phoenix Theatre Company with warhorses must have been out shopping for hats the day they put together their new season, because their frankly exciting roster includes Churchill (February 5-April 13), a one-man show about the late prime minister; a production of Sara Bareilles and Jessie Nelson’s Waitress (September 25-November 24), directed by the estimable Chanel Bragg; and We Ain’t Ever Gonna Break Up: The Hymon and Parfunkel Musical (September 4-November 3), which is about neither Paul nor Art.
Even weirder than Phoenix Theatre becoming more interesting is the notion of Stray Cat Theatre wrapping its 2025 season with Little Shop of Horrors (May 2-17), at least until you learn that the endlessly talented Ron May will be directing, at which point anyone with any sense will begin counting the minutes until May.
