Now Playing

The War Anthology. There are some evocative moments in The War Anthology, a show comprised of songs, photographs, music and short plays, but it doesn't stand up as either an evening of theater or a trenchant commentary. There's an odd lifelessness to it; there's no throughline, no rhythm or momentum, no center, no integrating concept. And the individual plays feel innocent, detached, as if the authors had taken the ideas for them from history books, movie and television plots or someone else's reminiscences. The best segment is Tony Kushner's "Only We Who Guard the Mystery Shall Be Unhappy," and Paula Vogel's "The Closest I've Been to War" is also touching. But there are many things in this odd assemblage that simply don't work. In "Rain of Ruin," for example, a love affair between a Mexican-American woman and a Japanese man frames questions about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the love story seems to trivialize the horror of the bombs -- perhaps because the film and photographs so essential to this piece are fuzzy and hard to decipher. Presented by Curious Theater Company through April 29, 1080 Acoma Street, 303-623-0524, www.curious theatre.org. Reviewed March 16.