Eurydice. Playwright Sarah Ruhl has created her own magical, eccentric, gutsy and entirely original interpretation of the Orpheus-Eurydice myth, one in which the Lord of the Underworld is a comic-fearful shape-changer, ruling over a place populated by people of stone; Eurydice's father, already dead, longs for her from the Underworld and attempts again and again to write to her; and Eurydice, newly arrived, demands service from the father she doesn't recognize as if she were a guest at a hotel and he the porter. Full of luminous and surprising words and images, the piece becomes a meditation on love and loss, the dissolution of personality, words and wordlessness, reason versus poetry, and the many ways we find of trying to frame the ineffable. Curious Theatre does full justice to this lovely piece, staging its own marriage between art and elements more practical and mundane. Consider the technical skill it takes to create an elevator filled with rain; an on-stage river; the silhouette of a dead father dancing invisibly at his daughter's wedding. Now consider the astonishing artistry of the playwright who requires such effects. And the artistry of director Chip Walton, his technical crew and his cast. Presented by Curious Theatre Company through April 18, 1080 Acoma Street, 303-623-0524, www.curioustheatre.org. Reviewed March 12.
Girls Only. The trouble with Girls Only, a two-woman evening of conversation, skits, singing, improvisation and audience participation, is that it's so relentlessly nice. Creator-performers Barbara Gehring and Linda Klein have worked together for many years; at some point, they read their early diaries to each other and were transfixed by the similarities and differences they found in them, as well as the insights they gained into their own psyches and the travails of puberty. This theater piece was developed from that material — but not all of that material. "I purposely don't read every diary entry in the show, because it turns out I was kind of mean, and I don't want to be mean," Klein told an interviewer. But mean is funny, and when you cut it out entirely, what do you have to joke about? Girly pink bedrooms, purses, bras, skinny models in glossy magazines. Every time they tell a story with the tiniest bite to it, Gehring and Klein — both talented and appealing stage performers — move instantly to reassure us that they don't mean it. At one point Klein relates an interesting tale about how she came to possess the badly taxidermied body of an electrocuted squirrel as a child; the minute she's completed this funny, freaky moment in an otherwise highly predictable evening, she gives a pouty, don't-get-me-wrong grin and sweetly caresses the squirrel's head. There's enough good material here for a tight, funny, one-hour-long show, but this one stretches on and on, as if Klein and Gehring had been determined to throw every single joke and piece of shtick that occurred to them in the script. Presented by Denver Center Attractions through June, Garner Galleria Theatre in the Denver Performing Arts Complex, 303-893-4100, www.denvercenter.org. Reviewed September 18.
Seal. Stamp. Send. Bang. Susan, a mailwoman played by Erin Rollman, finds little meaning in her profession but a lot of significance in the splat of birdshit on her windshield. She declares the thing "a bird poop angel," and bursts into a rapturous song of celebration. Pete loves Susan and is given to popping unaddressed postcards into the mailbox because he knows they'll pass through her hands. Following postal regulations, though, Susan just deposits the cards unread at the dead-letter office — where lonely, eccentric Jason believes they represent a set of cryptic messages from her to him. The plot eventually darkens, and madness, torture and bombing come into play. This is Buntport's first musical, and local composer Adam Stone has come up with a feast of amazingly clever songs. The Buntporters have their own inimitable way of putting them over, and their brilliance doesn't stop when the singing does. They're terrific with the dialogue, too — sending non sequiturs, oddball observations, ingenious connections and misconnections fizzing and fountaining through the air like jugglers' balls. Presented by Buntport Theater Company through April 4, 717 Lipan Street, 720-946-1388, www.buntport.com. Reviewed March 12.
