Prospero in The Tempest, now receiving a checkered production at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, rules over a magical island — magical in a way that only the Elizabethan imagination, which saw dragons and sea serpents inhabiting all unknown territories, could summon up. Prospero is the rightful Duke of Milan, but…
Bryce and Giulia De Meo Licht had been talking about opening a location for their amazing Italian gelato in downtown Boulder for quite a while, and now — after a lot of work and planning, including a Kickstarter campaign that netted the project $10,143 — their dream has been realized:…
Shrek: the Musical.T here are a lot of things to like about Shrek: The Musical at Boulder’s Dinner Theatre. They include the Dragon, created by Cory Gilstrap and manipulated by a handful of actors. Blessed with the rich, seductive voice of the inimitable Amanda Earls, she’s a riveting, literally huge…
The more you think about it, the more you realize what a weak play The Graduate really is. Adapted for the stage by Terry Johnson from a 1960s novel by Charles Webb — which in turn became an iconic film starring Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft — it tells the…
There’s a large bus with peeling white paint parked at one end of 13th Street for the Boulder Farmers’ Market Saturday; it’s part of Boulder Valley School District’s School Food Project. The school lunch program has been being revamped since chef Ann Cooper was brought on board to shake things…
I picked up a small bunch of dill from Far Out Gardens at Saturday’s Boulder Farmers’ Market. Dill is such an ordinary, unassuming herb. You see basil, cilantro and rosemary — with their connotations of full-flavored summery warmth — all over the place these days, but we associate dill with…
Peggy Jo Tallas was an outwardly conventional, quiet-spoken Texas woman who, after a mildly adventurous youth, lived with her mother for many years. Starting at the age of forty, she also robbed banks — perhaps because she was bored, perhaps because she was seeking a fuller and more interesting life,…
Shrek: The Musical.There are a lot of things to like about Shrek: The Musical at Boulder’s Dinner Theatre. They include the Dragon, created by Cory Gilstrap and manipulated by a handful of actors. Blessed with the rich, seductive voice of the inimitable Amanda Earls, she’s a riveting, literally huge presence…
Why is the dance company whose “Welcome to the Madhouse” plays in Longmont this weekend called Point Your Damn Toes? Founder-director Julia Kay laughs. “We first started dancing together two or three years ago, and when we decided to become a company, I was bouncing back and forth among names,”…
A Lie of the Mind. Thundery weather and a voice in the darkness: At the very beginning of A Lie of the Mind, Jake is on the phone telling his brother Frankie that he’s killed his wife. Over his brother’s protests, Frankie insists on visiting his sister-in-law to discover her…
There are a lot of things to like about Shrek: The Musical at Boulder’s Dinner Theatre. Here are some of them: The Dragon. Manipulated by a handful of actors and with all her segments skillfully constructed and articulated, this Dragon is a major star, a riveting, literally huge presence. She’s…
Tornadoes are threatening Denver as I drive into Boulder, but things are calm, even sunny, at the Wednesday edition of the Boulder Farmers’ Market. To be truthful, the market has been a little less than scintillating over the past week or two. I have bought dutifully; I have feasted on…
Thundery weather and a voice in the darkness: This is how A Lie of the Mind begins. Jake is on the phone telling his brother Frankie that he’s killed his wife. Previously, he’d only hurt Beth, but this time it’s different. Over his brother’s protests, Frankie insists on visiting his…
The Great Gatsby. The Arvada Center does costume drama very well, and The Great Gatsby, based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel, is no exception. The costumes, by Clare Henkel, are lovely, and the production is filled with beautiful, stylized people, posing and languidly interacting. Central is charming Daisy, who…
The setting is the kind of rehearsal room every performer is familiar with: dusty and relatively bare, the windows grimy and patched over, an ancient rotating fan. Slap-bang in the middle, though, there’s a red velvet divan. Subtle shifts of light periodically change the feel of the place; it goes…
A Round-Heeled Woman. Jane Juska’s memoir, A Round-Heeled Woman: My Late Life Adventures in Sex and Romance, an account of her search for no-strings-attached sex, was a brave gamble — as was Edge Theatre’s decision to produce the play based on the book. But Juska’s gamble paid off, and so…
I can’t stop buying asparagus. It’s there in abundance at the Boulder Farmers’ Market when I visit Saturday. The season is so short, and you really can’t get that sweet, crisp, grassy kick at any other time of year: Asparagus doesn’t freeze well, and the imported-from-somewhere-else bundles you get in…
We don’t often get to see busy actor-writer Jessica Robblee on stage, and it’s a treat when we do. Now she’s lending her smart, vibrant presence to Melissa James Gibson’s ambiguously titled and much-lauded This, about a group of people approaching forty, being presented by the Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company…
Animal Crackers. Animal Crackers is a romp, a trifle — full of puns, malapropisms and visual jokes, and utterly, unabashedly silly. The plot is just an excuse for the crazy brothers, nominally playing actual characters, to visit a Long Island mansion and pull off a series of stunts. There are…
The Arvada Center tends to do costume drama very well, and The Great Gatsby, based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel, is no exception. The costumes, by Clare Henkel, are lovely, and the production is filled with beautiful, stylized people, posing and languidly interacting. Central is charming Daisy, who —…
Periodically, I ask my daughter — who has requested I tell her my last wishes for health care, disposal of belongings, funeral, etc., in case I’m unable to express them when the time comes — what she wants done with my body. Does she need it buried, so she’ll have…
We love Dixie — have since she invited us to Dixie’s Tupperware Party a couple of years back (the show returned last month), calling people up from the audience, improvising seamlessly, indulging in bawdy humor and sharing with us everything about her trailer-trash life. And we still love her now…
