Best Actor in a Comedy 2005 | Randy MooreA Christmas Carol | Best of Denver® | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Denver | Westword
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Best Actor in a Comedy

Randy Moore
A Christmas Carol

Randy Moore's Scrooge was pinch-mouthed and mean, but he was also an aging child, with a child's unconcern for decency and politeness, as well as a vulnerability. Although Moore has played the role for several years, this was his most joyous and deeply felt performance. When the reformed Scrooge humbly asked the charitable couple he had turned away in the first scene, "Will you come and see me?," all the loneliness of his empty, money-grubbing days yawned beneath the words. When he took a deep breath and said, "To be alive...," the next words could just as well have described his performance: "It's glorious."

Best Actress in a Comedy

Annette Helde
Boston Marriage

Anna is one-half of a prickly lesbian couple that forms the heart of Boston Marriage, David Mamet's first play to feature female protagonists. She likes falling dramatically onto the chaise lounge, having the vapors, exploring flights of self-pitying fantasy, and tossing off acerbic witticisms. In a tour-de-force performance, Annette Helde did all this with feeling, wit and precision.

Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy

Rhonda Lee Brown
The Fourth Wall

The Fourth Wall featured a housewife so distressed by contemporary politics that she arranged the furniture to create an invisible fourth wall in her living room. Rhonda Lee Brown played Julia, a brittle interior decorator from New York, brought in by the protagonist's husband to help unravel her motives. Affected by the stagy living-room setup, Julia began acting as if she were indeed on stage, trying on various characterizations and making up the plot as she went along. Maintaining the difference between acting and Acting is a difficult task for a performer, but Rhonda Lee Brown did it to bitchy, preening perfection.

Best Performance by a Child

Brittany Heileman
Tongue of a Bird

Tongue of a Bird is a pretentious, forgettable play about a woman pilot searching the mountains for a lost child. But it had a bright spot in teenage actor Brittany Heileman. She appeared to the protagonist in visions, her face bloodied, in a performance that was sharp, quick, cheerful and without a trace of sentimentality. Heileman is that rarest of beings: a young actor you really want to watch.

Best Actress in an Experimental Production

Erin Rollman
Kafka on Ice

In one of the funniest, sweetest scenes in Kafka on Ice, Erin Rollman skated on a floor of artificial ice, skidding, gliding and falling cutely about as a Chaplinesque Kafka (played by Gary Culig) sped to her rescue again and again. Rollman is one of Denver's most inspired comic actresses; in Kafka on Ice, she was able not only to reveal her gift for caricature, but also to venture more deeply into character -- which, paradoxically, made her performance even more hilarious.

Best Speaking Voice

Trina O'Neil
Metamorphoses

Playwright Mary Zimmerman incorporated large segments of poetry into Metamorphoses, including passages from Ovid and Rilke's extraordinary "Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes." The poems lend the script much of its power, but they can also be a mouthful. Elocution isn't taught much these days, and many actors scorn verbal precision and fluidity. Trina O'Neil has these qualities in spades. Her beautiful lucidity made Rilke's words resonate long after the play was over.

Best Guide From Death to Life

Todd Coulter
Angels in America

The dying Prior in Angels in America is often whiny, snappish or unreasonable, but he has intellect and dignity, too. In the Bas Bleu/OpenStage Theatre and Company production, Todd Coulter gave all these characteristics their due. Late in the play, Prior receives a reprieve, thanks to new AIDS drugs, and from then on, he becomes a kind of guide into the future. It was wonderful to watch this revivification, and Coulter's final blessing was touching.

Best Tribute to a Performer

Frank Gorshin as George Burns
Say Goodnight Gracie

Good impressionists don't just mimic their subjects, they become them -- and Frank Gorshin simply was George Burns in this production. He had the man's walk and mannerisms, and also seemed to possess his spirit.

Best Representation of a Great American

Russell Costen
Paul Robeson

In Paul Robeson, a one-man show detailing the life of the scholar/athlete/performer of its title, Russell Costen held the stage for over two hours on his own. Robeson was a tall, powerful man with a rumbling bass voice, while Costen is shorter and more muted. Still, Costen communicated Robeson's gravitas and found his measured vocal cadences. Though this was a highly skilled performance, it was about far more than skill: It was a generous and openhearted act of tribute.

Best Work Against Type

Alicia Dunfee
Cabaret

Alicia Dunfee wasn't the obvious choice to play Sally Bowles, Cabaret's immature heroine; Dunfee is a grown-up woman who takes the stage with authority. Nonetheless, the interpretation worked. As always, Dunfee gave herself fully to each musical number and held the audience mesmerized. But she also created a convincing portrait of a naive sophisticate, managing not only an English accent, but 1930s intonations, as well.

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