Animal Farm. Germinal Stage’s new theater — only a few miles from the one the company left last year, and even smaller — is cozy, welcoming and workable. Walking in feels a bit like entering a time warp. The Germinal faithful, along with a few young initiates, throng the lobby,…

All the Rage is a sequel to Martin Moran’s first one-man play, The Tricky Part, which told the story of his molestation by a counselor at Colorado’s Camp St. Malo when he was twelve — a relationship that continued over three conflicted years. Moran, who’d grown up in Denver and…

“I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” So said J. Robert Oppenheimer of his work on the atomic bomb, quoting the Bhagavad Gita. There’s grief and guilt in the statement, as well a daunting realization of just what he’s unleashed on the world. But as you think about it,…

Animal Farm. Germinal Stage’s new theater — only a few miles from the one the company left last year, and even smaller — is cozy, welcoming and workable. Walking in feels a bit like entering a time warp. The Germinal faithful, along with a few young initiates, throng the lobby,…

The public is becoming more and more aware of the dangerous power wielded by the nation’s police. We’re learning that as cops charge into civilian neighborhoods, they’re armed with equipment developed for military combat — and few of them have the training to handle such equipment. With the explosion of…

Josh Hartwell, writer, actor and director, is one of the area’s treasures. A modest, diffident soul, he seems to prefer being out of the limelight, but we recently named him one of our 100 Colorado Creatives, and he’ll be getting even more attention this week, when he directs George Brant’s…

Mack & Mabel. Mack & Mabel has a brilliant score and a piss-poor book. The musical purports to tell the story of the confused and conflicted love between Mack Sennett, impresario of the early comic silent movies, and Mabel Normand, the young woman he discovered and made a star. The…

At the beginning of last year, we heard that Germinal Stage Denver was closing its doors after forty years — 25 of them in a small theater just off Federal Boulevard. But Germinal wasn’t going away completely; artistic director Ed Baierlein simply wasn’t ready to stop his work. He’s always…

On Golden Pond. As this play opens, Norman and Ethel Thayer are moving back into their summer house in Maine. Every summer for 48 years, he’s come here to fish and she to putter around, read, gather strawberries. This, their last visit, represents a slow, gentle fading. There’s just a…

Every now and then, you realize you’re watching a genuine star. Not just a very good, emotionally generous actor who makes intellectually interesting choices, but someone possessed of a quality that goes beyond that, a performer you’d happily watch in the dumbest and most boring show imaginable. This happened to…

On Golden Pond. As this play opens, Norman and Ethel Thayer are moving back into their summer house in Maine. Every summer for 48 years, he’s come here to fish and she to putter around, read, gather strawberries. This, their last visit, represents a slow, gentle fading. There’s just a…

Mack & Mabel purports to tell the story of the confused and conflicted love between Mack Sennett, impresario of the early comic silent movies, and Mabel Normand, the young woman he discovered and made a star. I’d read that the musical has a brilliant score and a piss-poor book, and…

“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.” Westword review of The Brothers Size at Curious Theatre, for which Lindsey received a 2014 Best of Denver award. Denver theatergoers know…

The audience for Ignite Theatre’s Rent is large, boisterous, young, and deeply involved with the action. Throughout the evening, you hear hoots of appreciative laughter, empathetic breath intakes and murmurs, audible sniffles at the sad parts. This enthusiasm is matched by the enthusiasm on stage, the actors singing their hearts…

The Odd Couple. There’s not a lot of nourishment in Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple, which has been around since the mid-1960s, but the central pairing of two very different men who find themselves sharing an apartment, and the humorous way their fights and misunderstandings mirror those of regular marriage…

Henry IV, Part 1. King Henry IV gained the throne by deposing his predecessor, Richard II, and having him murdered, and in Henry IV, Part 1, the crown lies uneasily on his head. Men who aided his insurgency have turned against him, and there’s rebellion brewing throughout the kingdom. Worst…

Though I generally love Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals, The Sound of Music has never been one of my favorites. But continuing a tradition it started two years ago of bringing a more mainstream production down from the hills to Denver’s larger audiences, that’s the show Central City is presenting at…

It’s always a treat to attend a play in the antique and elegant lobby of the Barth Hotel, one of fourteen residences maintained for elderly and disabled people by the nonprofit Senior Housing Options. In the past, the money from these annual fundraisers has been used to provide emergency kits…

There’s not a lot of nourishment in Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple, which premiered on Broadway in 1965, spawned a film and television show, and is now showing at Miners Alley. But the central pairing of two very different men who find themselves sharing an apartment, and the humorous way…