Email Author Jim Lillie

2001 Stories by Jim Lillie

• Unnatural Acts

  published August 2, 2001

  The plot of Shakespeare's As You Like It resembles that of a summer romance movie. Unfortunately, the Disneyfied version being... More >>

• A Commanding Performance

  published August 2, 2001

  When the Central City Opera revived Douglas Moore's The Ballad of Baby Doe a few seasons back, thunderous applause and full-voiced cheers... More >>

• Ladies First

  published July 26, 2001

  Shakespearean companies have tried various approaches to producing the three parts of Henry VI, plays that are believed to have been... More >>

• King for a Day

  published July 19, 2001

  What a difference no-nonsense direction makes. Elizabeth Huddle heeds the clues in Shakespeare's text instead of making her own mystery of... More >>

• A Good Time

  published July 19, 2001

  Looking for a Broadway musical that lets the brainwaves relax and the funnybone roam? Have a thing for exuberant dance numbers, exquisite costumes... More >>

• Sister Act

  published July 12, 2001

  Operatic versions of famous novels and plays are much like their cinematic cousins: Some lend new insight and dimension to the original, others... More >>

• Not So Gentle

  published July 12, 2001

  Forsooth, here we go again. The Colorado Shakespeare Festival opened last weekend with The Two Gentlemen of Verona, one of the... More >>

• Loud and Long

  published July 5, 2001

  As the after-dinner crowd files back in to Heritage Square Music Hall, a three-piece band plays several bouncy tunes. Strains of "All of Me" segue... More >>

• Animal Sounds

  published July 5, 2001

  There's not much reason for the two characters in The Zoo Story to talk to each other for nearly an hour when one of them behaves... More >>

• The Joy of Music

  published June 28, 2001

  Opera lovers who trek up Clear Creek Canyon every summer share something other than a yen for great music and a tolerance for winding mountain... More >>

• A Wish Come True

  published June 28, 2001

  Elementary school children might appreciate Aladdin and the Glass Slipper for the lessons that each character learns and the... More >>

• Kids These Days

  published June 21, 2001

  This Is Our Youth is filled with so much graphic language, mindless violence, casual sex and even more casual drug use that... More >>

• Chewing the Crud

  published June 21, 2001

  Apart from a series of comic reversals that crown Act Two and the vintage lounge decor they're played against, there isn't much to recommend... More >>

• Souls on Ice

  published June 14, 2001

  Weakened by self-doubt and the elements -- as well as being driven to near despair by a fellow traveler's demise -- British explorer Robert Falcon... More >>

• A Bad Shot

  published June 14, 2001

  The lavish production numbers in Annie Get Your Gun are hard for any theater company to pull off. So is the script's archaic... More >>

• All That Jazz

  published June 7, 2001

  Now and then, fantasy and reality humorously collide in Pork Pie, a self-styled "mythic jazz fable" set in a period described only... More >>

• Life Is Work

  published May 31, 2001

  Each of Anton Chekhov's four dramatic masterpieces walks a tragicomic tightrope. Actors and director are sometimes thrown off balance by... More >>

• Men and Boys

  published May 17, 2001

  With three plum roles, a tension-packed story line and streaks of black humor, Orphans has been a perennial favorite since it... More >>

• Princess Charming

  published May 17, 2001

  Fancy abounds, issues take flight and genders do more than bend in Cinderella: The Real True Story, a modern retelling being... More >>

• Alice in Cyberland

  published May 10, 2001

  Trying to make sense of everything that happens in the LIDA Project's Alice is like trying to decipher every line of routing code... More >>

• In the Name of Science

  published May 10, 2001

  In the first scene of An Experiment With an Air Pump, a scholar asserts that scientists are beatified by their search for truth. A... More >>

• Swing Away

  published May 3, 2001

  August Wilson came to prominence when the first of his cycle of plays about black life, each set in a different twentieth-century decade, graced... More >>

• Indecent Exposure

  published May 3, 2001

  Theater companies that produce plays about the evils of censorship are sometimes guilty of committing the very sins they seek to decry -- a... More >>

• From the Heart

  published April 19, 2001

  Bertolt Brecht was the last century's most influential theater director and theorist. Since World War II, his beliefs about political theater have... More >>

• Love Hurts

  published April 19, 2001

  Family members and their friends rip each other's hearts out, pour alcohol on the resulting wounds and then go at it all over again in A... More >>