This year has been a tough one: politically divisive, lots of name-calling, scandals.
We here in Tucson, however, have had a great tool to help us cope: theater that illuminated, provoked, made us laugh, cry, think.
The first play of 2017 was Live Theatre Workshop’s funny and light “Buyer & Cellar,” about an out-of-work actor hired by Barbra Streisand to manage her basement-turned-mini-mall featuring a few of her favorite things. (Streisand actually has such a place in her home.) Ending out the year: Arizona Theatre Company’s breathtaking “Man of La Mancha,” the heartbreaking and hopeful musical inspired by Cervantes’ “Don Quixote.”
In between, there was Arizona Onstage’s knock-out production of “The Producers,” Arizona Repertory Theatre’s powerful “A Streetcar Named Desire,” Something Something Theatre Company’s very funny “Mrs. Mannerly” — the list goes on.