Ever since Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and his band of Claymated misfits fled the North Pole’s hidebound environs, Santa’s helpers have had a hard time keeping their nonconformist attitudes in check. It’s not unusual, for example, for shopping-mall elves to adorn their ears with tree ornaments, coin suggestive greetings or…
Part of the promise of an evening of Rodgers and Hammerstein favorites is that the audience will be able to enjoy the company of charismatic artists. No matter how cleverly the selections have been juxtaposed for continuity’s sake, theatergoers rely on the actors to provide a sense of import and…
Veteran critic Mel Gussow’s fine biography of Edward Albee reveals that most people who knew the artist as a young man had an inkling of his potential but not a clue about his destiny. Nearly all agreed that Albee, whose streak of hedonism could sometimes turn self-destructive, would pursue some…
Lonely Planet, through December 11 at the Denver Civic Theatre, 721 Santa Fe Drive, 303-595-3800
Is total sincerity the key to maintaining healthy relationships, or should people bend the truth now and again to spare each other’s feelings? That’s the underlying dilemma facing seven disparate academic types in Germinal Stage Denver’s production of The Philanthropist, Christopher Hampton’s charming and erudite “bourgeois comedy.” Among other exploits,…
From the moment she strides through the red-curtained setting that represents Diana Vreeland’s Manhattan residence, Deborah Persoff exudes the ebullience that one typically senses only from established performers appearing in test-marketed star vehicles. Suffused with a regal pride that verges on but never becomes haughtiness, Persoff cuts a commanding figure…
Plays that illuminate the predicaments of entire cultural groups are inevitably propelled by richly detailed characters whose everyday struggles epitomize larger concerns. August Wilson’s soul-stirring dramas about twentieth-century black life, for example, strike universal chords because their theme of racial oppression never displaces the playwright’s broader message about the common…
The committee that awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 1962 cited John Steinbeck for his “sympathetic humor and sociological perception” — qualities that his detractors had long disparaged as little more than sappy sentimentalism and simplistic moralizing. Regardless which assessment is more valid, each suggests Steinbeck’s ability to articulate…
Smaller in scope and more conversational in tone than last season’s effort by the Denver Center Theatre Company, the Avenue Theatre’s production of Steve Martin’s Picasso at the Lapin Agile proves nearly as amusing and, at times, more affecting. More than anything else, though, John Ashton’s environmental approach enlivens and…
For anyone who likes sitcom-style playlets in which characters with low self-esteem point blaming fingers at their childhood, the media, the men in their life and/or the healing professions, Women Aloud: Artistic Estrofest ’99 might prove illuminating or even therapeutic. But those who easily tire of gripe sessions set in…
Vowing to “revivify the vital fluids stored in the neural coconuts,” a failed jazz singer and his eccentric, ivory-tickling sidekick attempt to explain how the “elastic wholeness of the biomatrix” — or, in layman’s parlance, life — has slowly deteriorated since an event known as the Big Snafu occurred. With…
As the longtime fashion editor at Harper’s Bazaar, where she started out writing a snobbish — and frequently satirized — advice column called “Why Don’t You…?” and later, as editor-in-chief of Vogue (where she was abruptly given the gate in 1971), Diana Vreeland ruled New York’s fashion world for nearly…
The meticulous staging smartly echoes Oscar Wilde’s intellectual choreography, the costumes are resplendent, the setting is tastefully appointed and the actors are eager to relish each epigram and witticism. But even though director Len Kiziuk has paid dutiful attention to the vital elements that prop up The Importance of Being…
It’s not hard to believe that the Devil has done earthly time as an erstwhile boxing promoter or even a professional critic, but did he really head up a Viennese Masonic lodge for fifty years? And has the same horned creature who’s rumored to frequent the power corridors of the…
Laden with postmodern gloom and narcissism, The Fastest Clock in the Universe is an offbeat play about “human cannibals” struggling to define themselves in a world bereft of meaning, sense or care. Despite the characters’ attempts to dial back the forces of time, they’re eventually compelled to reckon with the…
A hundred years before terms like “mommy track” and “telecommuting” crept into the common parlance, German expressionist painter Paula Modersohn-Becker wrestled with an agonizing dilemma: Would she settle for being a stay-at-home mom who filled her few idle hours by sketching portraits, or would she fulfill her prodigious talent by…
As the three characters in Art discuss the worth of a painting one of them has purchased for an extravagant sum, they argue, rail and bluster until they finally establish the play’s basic premise: When it comes to questions of art or relationships, there’s no accounting for taste. But while…
The dream of sustaining a repertory company dedicated to producing the classics has intrigued a host of theatrical luminaries — and drained the resources of many more. In 1960, for instance, respected actor and director Ellis Rabb’s company first took up residence at various universities, later merged with New York’s…
In an age when a former professional wrestler (and current elected official) declares organized religion a crutch for the weak-minded (who need strength in numbers), a talking-head presidential candidate spews inflammatory remarks about religious groups and a so-called reverend pickets the funeral of a murdered gay man, it seems a…
His radical American cousins have reduced the grandeur of character to the smithereens of personality. His angry English countrymen have rejected arch debate in favor of circuitous harangue. And his disaffected Irish forebears have alternately romanticized, upbraided and forsaken their motherland. But rather than siphon such tried-and-true iconoclasm, twenty-something playwright…
When it comes to dealing with the biblical question of who is his brother’s keeper, politicians blame the other party, theologians kowtow to the well-heeled while reminding them to help the less fortunate, and self-help enthusiasts consider the question confounding and untenable. Enter actor Laurence Fishburne, whose three-character Riff Raff…
A Depression-era board game invented to provide financially strapped folks with the chance to embark on vicarious — and harmless — voyages through the choppy waters of high finance serves as the central metaphor in Nagle Jackson’s A Hotel on Marvin Gardens. As a group of self-absorbed upwardly mobile types…
