Playbill: Colorado Stages Host a Stellar Rerun, New Directors Showcase and Opera Classic

“Summer theater” doesn’t always translate to theater-light: This weekend, you can indulge in the restaging of an award-winning production, a well-rounded learning experience from a novice director and a blockbuster opera for the ages. 

The Brother/Sister Plays: The Brothers Size
Curious Theatre Company
Thursday, July 9 through August 1
8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays
2 p.m. Sundays
8 p.m. Wednesday, July 29
Tickets: $39 to $46
303-623-0524
Curious Theatre Company first staged an acclaimed production of The Brothers Size in 2013, and it’s returning with the same cast and director Dee Covington, now fitting into its rightful place as the middle piece of playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney’s Brother/Sister Plays trilogy, which juxtaposes Yoruban mythology with the transcendent drama of everyday lives in the Louisiana bayou. This past spring Curious staged In the Red and Brown Water; in November it will offer Marcus; or The Secret of Sweet.

Westword theater critic Juliet Wittman had this to say in her 2013 review of The Brothers Size: “Director Dee Covington's production is evocative and very visual. Shannon McKinney created the elegant, magical set and lighting. Laurence Curry plays Oshoosi with a light touch — he's a charmer with a winning smile, and you can see why his family forgave all his transgressions. As befits a shape-changer, Damion Hoover's Elegba seems just a little different with every entrance. Playing Ogun, Cajardo Lindsey towers over the evening, terrifying in his anger, heartbreaking in his grief, and sometimes — like the play itself — wonderfully and unexpectedly funny.”

Emerging Voices Series: Polaroid Stories
Avenue Theater 
8 p.m. Friday, July 10 and Saturday, July 11
Tickets: $16.50

For the Emerging Voices series this month, Avenue Theater is turning over its stage to a flock of first-time directors, who're gaining useful and resume-building experience through a hands-on approach. This weekend, newbie Jackie Honold directs Naomi lizuka’s Polaroid Stories, an epic of storytelling set among the denizens of the urban fringe that's partially inspired by Ovid’s Metamorphosis, as well as by interviews conducted with prostitutes and street kids. "All these stories and lies add up to something like the truth,” one character notes. The series continues next weekend with a three-day run of Sarah Ruhl’s The Clean House, directed by John Carter, and Katherine Foote’s interpretation of Alan Ball’s Five Women Wearing the Same Dress wraps it up July 28-30. If you are duly impressed, financial contributions toward the success of the series can be made online.

Central City Opera: La Traviata
Central City Opera House
Selected dates, July 11 through August 8
8 p.m. evening performances
2:30 p.m. matinee performances
Tickets: 303-292-6700

Central City Opera brings back a classic operatic workhorse, Verdi’s La Traviata, to set the 2015 CCO season in motion. Starring Ellie Dehn as the consumptive courtesan Violetta Valery, this La Traviata will appeal to veteran opera-lovers and first-timers alike with a full-on dose of the genre’s inherent drama and pinnacle-reaching arias. Performed in Italian with English supertitles at the historic Central City Opera House.

Find a stage near you: Check out Westword's online listings for more theater events for this week.  

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