REVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
The pandemic stifled the Valley’s live theater scene but now with safeguards in place, established companies are reopening. It is especially noteworthy that Stray Cat Theatre is back with its usual interesting shows. The lesser-known plays the company presents provide Valley theatergoers with well-produced alternatives to shows avoided by our established professional theaters – Arizona Theatre Company, The Phoenix Theatre Company, and ASU Gammage’s Broadway Across America seasons. Stray Cat’s consistently exemplary productions place the tiny company with the bigger and better financed troupes.
At the beginning of Stray Cat’s opening production, Drew Droege’s “Bright Colors and Bold Patterns,” in bounds the sole character, Gerry, exploding all over the stage as he carries on imaginary dialogues with other guests at a Palm Springs gay wedding.
The character’s hyperexuberance never flags making character development and shadings impossible. This problem falls to playwright Droege and not to the dynamo playing the part, Michael Thompson. Thompson is phenomenal as he prances and paces around the stage in huge shoes, an outlandish casual outfit, dropping limp wrists with consistent abandon as he explores Gerry’s insecurities, doubts, fears, and other numerous foibles.
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Even if Stray Cat Theatre’s “Bright Colors and Bold Patterns” disappoints, this spunky company, under the expert leadership of artistic director Ron May, consistently provides local theatergoers with masterful alternative theater worthy of the most discriminating theatergoers...It continues to October 2. For tickets, contact the Tempe Center for the Arts box office at 480-350-2822...