The Music Man. Artistic director Michael J. Duran has pulled out all the stops -- no pun intended -- for this production. In a program note, he explains that he was performing in The Music Man on Broadway in September 2001, and all the theaters closed for two nights after 9/11. When the musical reopened that Thursday, it was to an audience of fifty -- but those people needed what the show had to offer, Duran says. The Music Man follows Harold Hill, a huckster who comes into a small Iowa town and sells the townspeople on the idea of a boys' marching band, complete with music, instruments and uniforms. Before he can pull his usual disappearing act, Hill has fallen in love with Marian, the librarian, and -- despite his inability to read a note of music -- won over the town. In the lead, Brian Norber brings huge jolts of energy to the show, and he's abetted by a large, lively cast, a gaggle of charming children and a cheery seven-piece orchestra. The music is sharp, funny and sometimes meltingly lyrical, and you can feel the performers' electric enjoyment in what they're doing. Presented by Boulder's Dinner Theatre through August 19, 5501 Arapahoe Avenue, Boulder, 303-449-6000, www.theatreinboulder.com. Reviewed May 11.
Party of 1. This is a good play to go to with a date, or to attend in hopes of finding one. The show is a sequence of cabaret songs dedicated to the joys and pains of singlehood, slightly reminiscent of I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change, though without the monologues; fizzier and more light-hearted than Sex and the City, but less weighted with ego and pretension. Four appealing people spin through songs with topics ranging from the insecurities raised by meet-and-mingle functions to the intense ambivalence you feel when someone with whom you're having a great relationship actually takes the next step and moves into your apartment. Party of 1 ran forever in the Bay Area, where writer-composer Morris Bobrow is famed for his clever lyrics and bright, listenable tunes. Good-natured and enjoyable, with just an edge of grown-up irony, the show deserves its popularity. Presented by the Playwright Theatre in an open-ended run, 2119 East 17th Avenue, 303-499-0383, www.playwrighttheatre.com. Reviewed November 17.
Phantom of the Music Hall. You really haven't lived until you've heard Johnette Toye singing Gilbert and Sullivan's "Poor Wandering One." She preens and staggers and makes her mouth into a dark, wide-open square from which emanates a cascade of extraordinary sound. This woman could sing the difficult coloratura parts beautifully if she wanted to -- and every now and then she does emit a tantalizingly perfect trill -- but for the most part, she's too busy barging around like a drunk, demented and utterly delighted-with-itself duck to worry about aesthetics. This isn't Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera, although it's based on the same Gaston Leroux story. T.J. Mullin has transposed the events to an early-twentieth-century English music hall, where a strange caped figure coaches a beautiful young ingenue into stardom, then abducts her. The plot is only the plain shortcake base on which the skillful cast piles layers of frothy improvisation, hilarious bits and all kinds of songs, some from the appropriate time period, and others that they just bloody well feel like singing. Presented by Heritage Square Music Hall through May 28, 18301 West Colfax Avenue D-103, Golden, 303-279-7800. www.hsmusichall.com. Reviewed April 6.
Sand Storm. A collection of monologues about the Iraq War based on the experiences of the men who fought there, Sand Storm is raw and upsetting, but it tells an old, old story: Combat destroys bodies, but it also twists and torments souls in very particular ways. Man after man steps forward to describe the events he witnessed: the man who was too claustrophobic to wear the mask intended as protection against chemical or biological weapons; the soldier for whom a severed foot served to bring the reality of the slaughter home more forcefully than all the dead bodies he had seen; the Marine, enraged by the death of his comrades, who came across a desperately injured Iraqi begging to be shot and calmly ate his lunch while watching the man writhe and die on the sand. In one of the most affecting moments, a navy medic tends to a dying Iraqi whose family has been killed by American artillery. The Iraqi thanks the soldier for ridding his country of Saddam Hussein: "You are a gift from Allah." Directed by C.J. Hosier, this production is refreshingly low-key. Only a couple of the performers are experienced actors; some have never stepped on a stage before. Yet there is something about their quiet naturalness, even the evident nervousness of a couple of them, that brings the subject home more forcefully than a slicker, more dramatic production could do. Behind the actors, slides from the war zone provide a powerful and urgent undercurrent. Presented by the Theatre Group and alternating with The Exonerated through June 9, Theatre on Broadway, 13 South Broadway, 303-777-3292, www.theatregroup.org. Reviewed May 18.
A Synopsis of Butchery. The plot of this piece concerns Washington Irving Bishop, a mentalist who was subject to fits of catalepsy during which his body became rigid and his breathing seemed to stop. After a strenuous New York performance, he collapsed, and two men -- a doctor and a shoemaker -- promptly performed an autopsy on him. Bishop's mother, Eleanor Fletcher Bishop, was convinced that her son had been cut up while still alive, murdered by the doctor's curiosity about his brain. In Buntport Theater's version of the story, which veers from funny to disturbing, Eleanor has hired three actors and taken her version of events on the road. The piece is an amalgam of her observations and outbursts, with tantalizing historical tidbits, scenes from the trial of the doctor as Eleanor thinks they should have occurred and re-enactments of the fatal autopsy itself. Erin Rollman gives a tour-de-force performance as Eleanor. Presented by Buntport Theater through May 27, 717 Lipan Street, 720-946-1388, www.buntport.com. Reviewed May 18.
