Heartbreak House. Heartbreak House offers a full helping of George Bernard Shaw's wit, humor and trenchant intelligence; as produced by Germinal, it's also charming, sexy and delightful. Heartbreak House itself is a metaphor for the English upper class pre-World War I, and the play was influenced by Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard. Like Chekhov, Shaw knew -- as his characters didn't -- that their smug, safe little world was about to vanish. The two most telling figures are Captain Shotover, the half-loony, half-wise retired seafarer who owns Heartbreak House, and Ellie Dunn, one of those marvelously smart and spunky Shavian heroines. Ellie believes her fiancé, Mangan, to be a good man who rescued her kindly father, Mazzini, from penury. But she loves Hector, who won her, as Othello won Desdemona, with stories of wonder and conquest. Having arrived at Heartbreak House at the invitation of Shotover's daughter Hesione, Ellie rapidly discovers that Hector is Hesione's husband and his stories are lies. And she finds that Mangan is no benefactor, but someone who deliberately cheated her father. The plot also involves Hesione's authoritarian and peremptory sister, Ariadne, who arrives unexpectedly from India after a two-decade absence. A great deal of philosophizing and flirting ensues. There's no real resolution, only a group of people facing the unknown. Presented by Germinal Stage Denver through October 9, 2450 West 44th Avenue, 303-455-7108, www.germinalstage.com.
Impulse Theater. Basements and comedy go together like beer and nuts or toddlers and sandboxes. The basement of the Wynkoop Brewing Co., where Impulse Theater performs, is crowded, loud and energetic. Impulse does no prepared skits, nothing but pure improv -- which means that what you see changes every night, and so does the team of actors. These actors set up and follow certain rules and frameworks; they rely on audience suggestions to get these scenes going or to vary the action. Your level of enjoyment depends a lot on whether or not you like the players. Charm is a factor, and so is the ability to take risks. Fortunately, the performers are clever and fast on their feet, willing to throw themselves into the action but never betraying tension or anxiety, perfectly content to shrug off a piece that isn't coming together. The show is funny when the actors hit a groove, but equally funny when they get stymied. So in a way, the improvisers -- and the audience -- can't lose. Presented by Impulse Theater in an open-ended run, Wynkoop Brewing Co., 1634 18th Street, 303-297-2111 or www.impulsetheater.com.
My Way: A Musical Tribute to Frank Sinatra. The Denver Center production of My Way features four attractive, energetic performers with strong and differing voices; 53 of the best twentieth-century songs; a set that's beautifully designed both to please the contemporary eye and to evoke the period, with softened Formica colors flowing into each other and elegant forms; witty, attractive costumes; and three excellent musicians. So if you're entertaining a business client or out on a date, this is the show for you. But it's essentially a commercial enterprise rather than an evening of theater. The performers don't just sing the songs, they sell them. They're full of energy. They bounce. They emote. They never allow a moment of reflection or understatement. Sinatra was the guy sitting alone on a barstool in a pool of light, shadows pressing in on him, the rakish angle of his hat belying the world-weariness of his soul. This seems an odd way to pay him homage. Presented by Denver Center Attractions in an open-ended run, Galleria Theatre, Denver Performing Arts Complex, 303-893-4100, www.denvercenter.org. Reviewed June 9.
Voice of the Prairie. As this play opens, an Irish hobo wanders turn-of-the-century Kansas with his young son, Davey, reminiscing and spinning tales. After his death, a grieving Davey encounters Frankie, a blind girl, and the two flee her abusive father and commence a life of begging and riding the rails. The plot flashes forward to 1923 to show Leon Schwab, a New York huckster, selling radios in little prairie towns. To tempt the locals and place his radios in hardware stores, he needs content. He finds it in the wistful stories David Quinn, the now-grown-up Davey, tells about his life with Frankie. There are a lot of strengths to this production, which reopens the Denver Victorian Playhouse and is directed in a gently elegiac key by Terry Dodd. The problem is that the first part of Olive's play, with its magical children, their story framed by the wonder and eccentricity of radio's early years, is literally a hard act to follow. The second act has nowhere near the charm of the first, and the happy ending is unconvincing. All of the performances are fine, however, and the quietly committed acting of Alex Hill as Davey and Katie Paxton as Frankie give this production its soul. Presented by the Denver Victorian Playhouse through October 16, 4201 Hooker Street, 303-433-4343, www.denvercivic.com. Reviewed September 29.
