The heartbreaking thing about the Denver Center Theatre Company’s production of The Taming of the Shrew is just how close it comes to brilliance — and the banal reasons it falls short. This is a hard play to do well: As everyone knows, the pith of the story is the…
David Mamet wrote Glengarry Glen Ross in 1984, and by now it’s just so familiar. The play is about a group of small-time salesmen peddling worthless tracts of land, all of them pathetic, creeping, conscienceless creatures, jostling for power like rats in an overcrowded cage and willing to betray anyone,…
9 Circles. On March 12, 2006, five soldiers stationed at a dangerous traffic checkpoint in an area of Iraq that the military called the Triangle of Death entered the nearby home of a fourteen-year-old girl named Abeer Qasim Hamza. Steven Green, a private, took her parents and six-year-old sister into…
The American Theatre Critics’ Association had chosen the New Play Summit at the Denver Center Theatre Company as the site of its winter meeting, and a group of critics compared notes one morning. We had all seen the same plays; on some we agreed; now and then someone pointed out…
Here’s a tempting pre-Valentine’s Day possibility: sipping wine while being serenaded by some of Denver’s best musicians and most appealing actors. Rachel Fowler, Jeff Roark, Leigh Miller, Gabriella Cavallero, Mark Rubald, Jim Ruberto and the recently married Mare Trevathan and Eryc Eyl will perform scenes, songs and poems about love…
It’s ten at night, and the Jones Theatre is thronged with bodies, and smells of beer, wine and popcorn as the Playwrights’ Slam — a regular part of the Denver Center Theatre Company’s Colorado New Play Summit — is about to begin. “My woman wants your head to make a…
A note of congratulations should go to the Denver Center Theatre Company for its daring in premiering Lisa Loomer’s Two Things You Don’t Talk About at Dinner, which received a reading at last year’s New Play Summit, even if the organization has downplayed the gutsiest element: the presence of a…
When a U.S. soldier commits an atrocity overseas, Americans tend to respond in predictable ways. Some attempt to excuse the soldier, talking about the fog of war, the split-second decisions the forces are required to make, the inevitability of mistakes. Others speak of moral responsibility and culpability, no matter what…
It’s hard to imagine how you’d turn Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility into a musical, but a couple of artists have done it, and the result will be read at the Denver Center’s New Play Summit, today through Sunday, along with two other new plays. The musical will be directed…
Fat people are an entertainment staple these days, from The Biggest Loser to the Food Network’s new offering, Fat Chef. Still, you wouldn’t really expect a play about a 600-pound man slowly dying in his own living room to garner a whole lot of attention, especially when it’s textured and…
To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance. — Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest has been such a staple for so many years, multiply staged and filmed with a host of legendary acting talents, that anyone mounting it now faces a dilemma: How do you make…
What is it that makes us find Victorian murders so juicy, fascinating and macabre? And also so irresistibly funny? Is it the formal outfits, the contrast between butchery and Victorian prudery, the era’s fascination with death and the supernatural, or just the passage of time? With The Three Faces of…
9 Circles. On March 12, 2006, five soldiers stationed at a dangerous traffic checkpoint in an area of Iraq that the military called the Triangle of Death entered the nearby home of a fourteen-year-old girl named Abeer Qasim Hamza. Steven Green, a private, took her parents and six-year-old sister into…
There’s huge buzz around Smash, a television show premiering at 9 p.m. tonight on NBC. A procedural drama depicting the creation of a musical about Marilyn Monroe, Smash features such big-name acting talent as Anjelica Huston and Debra Messing, as well as American Idol Katherine McPhee; Uma Thurman appears in…
What is it that makes us find Victorian murders so juicy, fascinating and macabre? And also so irresistibly funny? The Catamounts, a relatively new company, has resurrected yet another Victorian murder story with The Three Faces of Doctor Crippen; judging by this lively, cheeky production, the company will be a…
The Israel-Palestine conflict has spawned furious arguments among friends and families at many a Jewish dinner table — even with guests who agree about almost everything else political. You’ll find hardcore Zionists who call the entire area Judea/Samaria and insist that every inch of it belongs to the Jews, others…
9 Circles. On March 12, 2006, five soldiers stationed at a dangerous traffic checkpoint in an area of Iraq that the military called the Triangle of Death entered the nearby home of a fourteen-year-old girl named Abeer Qasim Hamza. Steven Green, a private, took her parents and six-year-old sister into…
If you’ve always wanted to be part of the two week riot of performance that constitutes the Boulder Fringe Festival, you need to get your application in before 11:59 p.m. on Monday, January 30. The festival — organized in the anarchic spirit of Fringe Festivals all over the world –…
It takes guts and ingenuity to write a play in which the protagonist is a morbidly obese man, constantly on stage and essentially tethered in one place. Charlie is dying of his own weight. He sleeps on the sofa — propped up so he can breathe — and spends almost…
Playwright Steve Dietz never bores me. His dialogue is usually smart and his imagination fresh. He likes to come up with intricate plot twists, bend theatrical form and refuse the audience a satisfyingly tied-up — or even entirely comprehensible — ending. Becky’s New Car is the lightest of his works…
9 Circles. On March 12, 2006, five soldiers stationed at a dangerous traffic checkpoint in an area of Iraq that the military called the Triangle of Death entered the nearby home of a fourteen-year-old girl named Abeer Qasim Hamza. Steven Green, a private, took her parents and six-year-old sister into…
You could pretty much hear the yelps of joy all the way out here when The Book of Mormon opened in New York last year. The New York Times declared this musical — by our very own South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, along with Robert Lopez of…
