You’d think that plays about dysfunctional families and “personal identity issues” would have run their course by now. Well, think again, Oprah fans. Just when it seemed as if America’s collective navel-picking and self-pity-partying were headed for the theatrical graveyard, along come a couple of local productions that resurrect our…

As the majestic strains of Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man” play in the background prior to the start of The Complete History of America (Abridged), you can hear some devilish laughter as the audience anticipates a sharply satirical take on our nation’s checkered past. But when three grinning…

Like any good tragedy, the Broadway musical Titanic begins by introducing us to characters who yearn, Icarus-like, to “fabricate great works” that will confer a larger sense of meaning on their day-to-day lives. Citing such manmade marvels as the Parthenon, the Great Wall of China and the Egyptian pyramids, Thomas…

When the time comes to pay final respects to a loved one, we’re usually compelled to talk about our loss–which means that in order for the cathartic experience to be complete, someone must listen to what we say. That’s the essential concept underlying Jeffrey Hatcher’s Three Viewings, a collection of…

If it’s true that the supreme test of any classic play lies in its adaptability to a modern director’s radical vision, then it’s also true that the playwright’s unique insight into the human condition is what made the play a classic in the first place. In fact, contemporary adaptations of…

You can sense the anticipation building in the audience about fifteen minutes before the Country Dinner Playhouse’s production of Clue the Musical begins. Armed with tally sheets that list the suspects, weapons and rooms familiar to anyone who has played the board game of the musical’s title, most theatergoers seem…

Infused with fantastical characters, references to Freemasonry and enchanting music, Mozart’s The Magic Flute lends itself to far-flung interpretation while embracing audiences of all tastes. You can set the two-act opera on the moon, against a blighted urban landscape or, as is the case with Opera Colorado’s enjoyable production, amid…

When Joseph Kesselring’s Arsenic and Old Lace opened in January 1941, stiff competition from radio and film was fueling talk of the theater’s imminent demise. That idea permeates Kesselring’s only Broadway success. Fifty-eight years and several entertainment conglomerates later, though, the playwright’s old chestnut–filled with antiquated references, stock characters and…

Everything an artist produces is, to varying degrees, a manifestation of his or her own experience. In the case of playwright Henrik Ibsen, scholars have long speculated that The Master Builder was the great Norwegian’s attempt to channel a few of his personal demons through a series of fascinating characters…

After having paid double the price of admission to a movie, it’s a wonder that some of the Denver Victorian Playhouse’s patrons don’t object to their view of the stage being blocked by a large metal support pole or the night’s entertainment being compromised by a series of clearly amateur…

Nearly a year before a rat’s nest of tape recordings and a Pandora’s box of kitschy souvenirs became props for the interminable Bill and Monica show, Moises Kaufman’s Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde had already earned kudos as the surprise hit of the off-Broadway season. A year’s…

Learning from past mistakes isn’t always enough to prevent them from happening again. The 1978 murders of San Francisco mayor George Moscone and gay-rights activist Harvey Milk, for instance, nearly crippled a city still reeling from the news that former housing-authority chairman Jim Jones had committed suicide along with 900…

The greatest comic playwright to grace the English stage in the less-than-fertile period between Shakespeare’s fantastical exit and Shaw’s boisterous entrance, Richard Brinsley Sheridan was a dramatist of great-hearted humanity, sharp insight and exquisite wit. A gifted orator whose political opinions were prohibited full dramatic expression–Britain’s Licensing Act of 1737…

Begging forgiveness from God and anyone else who will listen, a mortally wounded policeman staggers through the West Indian jungle and bemoans the “Africa of my mind” and “glories of my race.” The mulatto corporal, ever aware that his mixed-blood origins effectively brand him an outcast among his fellow islanders…

After slogging through the two hours of aimless conversation and mildly entertaining lounge tunes that permeate Rick Lawson’s Incident at the Blue Parrot Cafe, it comes as welcome relief when one character finally says something that’s been on every theatergoer’s mind since the play began. Seemingly investing his remarks with…

A.R. Gurney is famous for writing middlebrow off-Broadway plays in which well-to-do WASPs comically mourn the passing of their cherished way of life. Past Gurney bromides examined such hallowed American myths as the old-boy network (The Old Boy, presented a few years back by the Director’s Theatre in Boulder), the…

As an undergraduate at University College in Dublin, James Joyce once published an 8,000-word article on Henrik Ibsen’s final play, When We Dead Awaken, that prompted the father of modern drama to dash off a sincere letter of thanks to his ardent admirer. Moved and humbled by his literary hero’s…

In the media hoopla surrounding the Denver Center Theatre Company’s 1998 Tony Award for outstanding regional theater, most theatergoers didn’t notice that the award was given for a body of work that wasn’t even produced last season. More to the point, the coveted prize (which is awarded annually by the…

Human beings have reveled in the mocking of solemnity as early as the twelfth century, when subversive subdeacons rang church bells improperly as part of the annual Feast of Fools and food-fighting choir boys mischievously sang out of tune during the Feast of the Boy Bishop. It comes as no…

Theodor Seuss Geisel won a pair of Academy awards for writing Design for Death, a 1947 film documentary about Japanese warlords, and Gerald McBoing Boing, a 1950 animated cartoon. But he was better known as Dr. Seuss, the prolific author who launched a new trend in children’s literature with such…

Its yearly appearance might be anticipated, dreaded or even lampooned, but Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol remains the quintessential holiday story about the transformative powers of love, forgiveness and redemption. Director Laird Williamson has an unabashed (and, among local practitioners, unparalleled) devotion to pageantry, mystery and grandeur; when these qualities…

Acutely aware that society routinely champions mendacity in matters of art, beauty and truth, the Lower East Side slackers in the musical Rent harbor no illusions about their place in the world. They’ll never be invited to place their names in the social register, for instance, or plaster their autographed…