God of Carnage. Let’s start with the setting, so pristine, white, minimal and tasteful — chairs with gracefully curving legs, a glass table on which art books are meticulously arranged, a vase of white tulips, nicely grouped, with just one flower swaying slightly out to the side. Even if you…

God of Carnage. Let’s start with the setting, so pristine, white, minimal and tasteful — chairs with gracefully curving legs, a glass table on which art books are meticulously arranged, a vase of white tulips, nicely grouped, with just one flower swaying slightly out to the side. Even if you…

At the end of Long Day’s Journey Into Night, the audience members at Germinal Stage did something I’ve never seen at that theater: They stood up and applauded. It’s not that Germinal hasn’t staged excellent works in the past — works worthy of a standing ovation. It’s just that audiences…

Dividing the Estate. Dividing the Estate is a quietly incisive play about a large and contentious family. Stella Gordon, the 85-year-old matriarch, rules over a grand old house in the fictional town of Harrison, Texas. She is strong-willed and authoritative but essentially kind — and she’s determined that the family…

The power of mothers — for good and ill — is a theater trope that never quite loses its potency. In Shelagh Stephenson’s The Memory of Water, three daughters convene for the funeral of their mother, Vi, who has, in different ways, ruined all their lives. Mary was the repository…

Dividing the Estate is a quietly incisive play about a large and contentious family. Stella Gordon, the 85-year-old matriarch, rules over a grand old house in Harrison, Texas — the fictional small town where author Horton Foote set most of his sixty plays. Stella is strong-willed and authoritative, but essentially…

If I were as intensely clever as playwright Itamar Moses, author of Bach at Leipzig, and as fond of intellectual games, I would write this review first as a review, then as an analysis of the forms of the review and the ways in which my piece of writing does…

The Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company has just announced its upcoming season, the eighth for this troupe, and it’s an intriguing one that includes three regional premieres and one significant capture: And the Sun Stood Still, a play about Copernicus and his struggle to publish On the Revolutions of the Heavenly…

When it was published in 1985, Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple was a groundbreaker — illuminating places that had been in shadow and, like most groundbreakers, intensely controversial. It described the plight of many poor, black rural women through the unforgettable voice of the protagonist, Celie, a voice that…

Let’s start with the setting, so pristine, white, minimal and tasteful: chairs with gracefully curving legs, a glass table on which art books are meticulously arranged, a vase of white tulips, nicely grouped with just one flower swaying slightly out to the side. Tall panels of white brick form a…

We’ve had a few theatrical art lessons around here recently. And not so recently. Red, at Curious Theatre Company last year, revealed Mark Rothko’s genius, insecurity and narcissism as he bullied his assistant and gave urgent instructions about how he wanted his work viewed. Then there was the Miners Alley…

Buntport Theater Company put several peculiar messages on Facebook before A Knight to Remember opened. These implied that the theater group — known for the creative synergy of its members — was divided on this piece about Brian Colonna’s childhood fantasies of knighthood. Erik Edborg would not be involved, the…

Based on the seventeenth-century masterpiece Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes, Man of La Mancha was an award-gobbling sensation when it first appeared in 1965 — but after decades of professional and community productions, the musical has less impact. Still, the Arvada Center has mounted a big, sumptuous show, filled…