Defending the Caveman. This is a low-key, low-budget one-man show, part standup comedy, part general nightclub act. Written by Rob Becker, the piece has been appearing in intimate venues around the country for several years. Becker was inspired by the comment he frequently heard from women that “men are assholes,”…
After the Revolution. Playwright Amy Herzog enters a very specific world in After the Revolution: the passionate, close-knit, hyper-idealistic world of Jewish Communism in New York City during the early decades of the twentieth century. For these activists, Soviet Russia was a model. But when Khrushchev denounced Stalin during the…
Vigil opens with an old woman in a bed and a looming figure in the shadows of the doorway behind her. It looks like a true Halloween scenario — the big bad wolf approaching the helpless grandmother — and this impression isn’t altogether off, because the intruder is indeed a…
I remember standing in front of a pyramid of potatoes at the supermarket many years ago in my hippie days, tripping on mescalin and trying to select a few spuds for dinner. It was taking a long time because every potato in that pile had its own unique and mesmerizing…
Eve Ensler — who will be in Boulder for a benefit for LOCAL Theater Company on Friday, October 11, is known to Coloradans primarily as the author of that raucous, liberating and unflinching theater piece, The Vagina Monologues, which has been performed several times in the Denver area — as…
Anyone who has ever attended a writers’ workshop (guilty!) will recognize the characters in Theresa Rebeck’s Seminar, and also the dynamics among them. There’s Douglas, the apparently confident son of a somewhat well-known writer, who’s a few steps ahead of the other students in terms of his literary career: He…
I’ve never liked Death of a Salesman, but I figured that maybe I’d just never seen a really first-rate production. With their current production, the Denver Center Theatre Company and director Anthony Powell have fielded the perfect cast: Mike Hartman — whose performance as the ethically compromised protagonist of All…
After the Revolution. Playwright Amy Herzog enters a very specific world in After the Revolution: the passionate, close-knit, hyper-idealistic world of Jewish Communism in New York City during the early decades of the twentieth century. For these activists, Soviet Russia was a model. But when Khrushchev denounced Stalin during the…
It’s been a rough year for local farmers. Late spring snows wiped out a lot of early crops, especially fruit, and then — when they’d started to recover and at the height of the growing and selling season — came the flood. Some acres of crops were completely wiped out,…
After the Revolution. Playwright Amy Herzog enters a very specific world in After the Revolution: the passionate, close-knit, hyper-idealistic world of Jewish Communism in New York City during the early decades of the twentieth century. For these activists, Soviet Russia was a model. But when Khrushchev denounced Stalin during the…
Defending the Caveman is a low-key, low-budget one-man show, part standup comedy, part nightclub act. Written by Rob Becker, the piece has been appearing in intimate venues around the country for several years, promoted as a fun way to pass an evening with a drink in your hand and your…
You wouldn’t expect this production of The Full Monty at a dinner theater — not so much because of the script, but because of the daring with which it’s staged. Places like Boulder’s Dinner Theater are kept alive in large part by church groups and Rotary-type clubs, and they need…
After the Revolution. Playwright Amy Herzog enters a very specific world in After the Revolution: the passionate, close-knit, hyper-idealistic world of Jewish Communism in New York City during the early decades of the twentieth century. For these activists, Soviet Russia was a model. But when Khrushchev denounced Stalin during the…
Throughout all three hours of Camelot, I was entertaining a single question: Why would anyone decide to stage this thing? I’d been pleased when I first read the show’s title on the Arvada Center’s season announcement: I had never seen Camelot before, and was anxious to make up for it…
Playwright Amy Herzog enters a very specific world in After the Revolution, now receiving its regional premiere at Curious Theatre: the passionate, close-knit, hyper-idealistic world of Jewish Communism in New York City during the early decades of the twentieth century. In The Romance of American Communism, Vivian Gornick showed this…
Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo. There are so many levels to Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo and such a mix of clarity and evocative ambiguity in the way these levels are presented. The play talks about the ugliness and irrationality of war and the dividing lines between cultures…
It felt strange waking up Saturday and remembering that the Boulder County Farmers’ Market had been cancelled because of the flood. Wondering how the loss of revenue — not to mention the flooding itself — was affecting the farmers I see and talk to every week, I called a few…
Multimedia artist Adam Stone has collaborated on four of Buntport’s most interesting shows, making music for three and contributing a soundscape and his own haunting presence to Wake, the company’s take on Shakespeare’s The Tempest. So a fair amount of excitement greeted the recent announcement that he had created a…
Zoos tend to fare badly during wartime, with the plight of captive animals mirroring that of besieged populations. Diane Ackerman’s beautiful book The Zoo Keeper’s Wife tells the story of the Zabinskis, who ran a zoo in Warsaw that was devastated by German bombers: “The moaning of lions and yowling…
T.S. Eliot’s Prufrock famously measured out his life in coffee spoons. For the last several weeks, I’ve been measuring mine out in peaches. Stands at the Boulder Farmers’ Market are overflowing with blushing fruit, so I’ve had peaches for breakfast, a peach with a piece of blue cheese for an…
50 Shades of Loud. Heritage Square Music Hall will close down at the end of the year after more than two decades of hilarity in its Golden home, where a unique small company evolved an equally unique performing style. The shows are simultaneously bumbling and brilliantly staged, professional and apparently…
About half an hour into Peter and the Starcatcher, I started wondering: What is it with the New York critics? They were so excited by this show — exhilarated, ecstatic. They loved that the tech wasn’t grindingly, massively hyper-expensive, but rather low-key, using ordinary objects in the way that experimental…
