It’s funny how all discussion of the Mafia these days references The Sopranos — that distinctive accent; Carmela’s American-Italian cooking with its thick red sauces; the racism and homophobia; the women who were either protected and indulged family members or whores; the vivid energy of the culture; the sense of…
Franz Kafka’s novel The Trial, in which a man is accused of an unnamed crime and, having faced all kinds of baffling and inexplicable encounters as well as a wall of bureaucratic obstruction, is eventually executed, was published in 1925. In its evocation of the menace lurking in the shadows…
Quilters has a strong local history. Based on the journals and remembrances of pioneer women, it was co-written by Molly Newman and Barbara Damashek in the early 1980s at the request of the Denver Center Theatre Company — where it has now returned. The piece is very much a product…
Damien Hirst. You’d have to be living under a rock — or have absolutely no interest in contemporary art — not to know that Damien Hirst is a superstar, and that everything he makes is worth millions of dollars apiece. The tight solo at MCA Denver (formerly known as the…
Bus Stop. A snowstorm has closed the road ahead, and a bus is stranded outside a diner, where worldly-wise owner Grace supervises her high-school-aged waitress, Elma. Among those requiring doughnuts and coffee or bacon and eggs are driver Carl, who is Grace’s occasional lover, and disgraced philosophy professor Gerald Lyman…
Partway through The Squabble, I did something I’ve never done before in all my years of faithful and happy attendance at Buntport: I glanced at my watch to see how much longer we had to go. Based on Nikolai Gogol’s “The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich,”…
Olivia, a fifteen-year-old girl living unhappily with her father, Aaron, and stepmother (who’s never seen on stage and appears to be either vicious or neurotic to the point of pathology), finds herself throwing up uncontrollably for reasons we’ll learn only later in the play. In a fever pitch of loneliness…
Imagine having reached the highest level of skill in your field through hours of grueling work that began when you were four years old. Now imagine knowing that you’ll never get a permanent job, but will, if you’re lucky, be hired periodically — that is, if your potential boss likes…
Bus Stop is set in a diner, where worldly-wise owner Grace supervises her high-school-aged waitress, Elma. On this particular night, a snowstorm has closed the road ahead, and a bus is stranded outside. Among those requiring doughnuts and coffee or bacon and eggs are driver Carl, who is Grace’s occasional…
52 Pick-Up. The central conceit of this love story involves a pack of cards that two actors scatter, then pick up, one by one, announcing what the card is and reading its caption, which is always something evocative and elliptical, like “What happened?” or “Cities.” That statement cues a brief…
Eccentricities of a Nightingale. It’s fascinating to observe the different acting styles on stage in this production, and to think about the ways they work with Tennessee Williams’s characters and dialogue. Brian Landis Folkins subsumes his personality to the role he’s playing. Minute by minute, the outlines of the character…
T. S. Eliot wrote “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” in 1917, while the First World War was devastating Europe and imperial absolutes were beginning to crumble. It was the year of the Russian revolution; in two more years, the victorious powers would meet in Paris to reconfigure the…
Morisot Reclining tells two love stories — both involving great artists of the impressionist period, neither of them consummated. Edouard Manet had a decades-long friendship with Berthe Morisot, who eventually married his brother, and there is great warmth and intensity in the paintings he did of her. Edgar Degas, arrogant…
Eccentricities of a Nightingale. It’s fascinating to observe the different acting styles on stage in this production, and to think about the ways they work with Tennessee Williams’s characters and dialogue. Brian Landis Folkins subsumes his personality to the role he’s playing. Minute by minute, the outlines of the character…
There couldn’t be a better way to celebrate spring than by attending Opera Colorado’s perfectly timed Così fan tutte — roughly translated, “women are like that” — an opera that shows Mozart at his most playful and lighthearted while retaining all the deep beauty of his melodies. The story is…
It’s fascinating to observe the different acting styles in the Germinal Stage production of The Eccentricities of a Nightingale, and to think about the ways they work with Tennessee Williams’s characters and dialogue. When Brian Landis Folkins, who plays John Buchanan, walks on stage, you’re momentarily disappointed, so nondescript and…
Girls Only. The trouble with Girls Only, a two-woman evening of conversation, skits, singing, improvisation and audience participation, is that it’s so relentlessly nice. Creator-performers Barbara Gehring and Linda Klein have worked together for many years; at some point, they read their early diaries to each other and were transfixed…
Sunsets and Margaritas is so energetic, jolly and good-natured, and presents such an appealing political and familial viewpoint, that it seems coldhearted not to like it, like kicking away a friendly puppy as it darts at your feet. But there are too many unfunny jokes and plot turns in this…
It isn’t strange that in 1942 a major American playwright would be concerned with the possible extinction of humanity and pondering what it would take to save the human race, but it is odd that Thornton Wilder chose to do all of this in a comedy. Luckily, The Skin of…
Eurydice. Playwright Sarah Ruhl has created her own magical, eccentric, gutsy and entirely original interpretation of the Orpheus-Eurydice myth, one in which the Lord of the Underworld is a comic-fearful shape-changer, ruling over a place populated by people of stone; Eurydice’s father, already dead, longs for her from the Underworld…
A Prayer for Owen Meany begins with John Wheelwright alone on stage remembering Owen Meany, the friend whose life and actions caused him to become a Christian. As a child, John lived with his charming, flirtatious mother, Tabitha, and his grandmother; all he knew of his father was that Tabitha…
Eurydice. Playwright Sarah Ruhl has created her own magical, eccentric, gutsy and entirely original interpretation of the Orpheus-Eurydice myth, one in which the Lord of the Underworld is a comic-fearful shape-changer, ruling over a place populated by people of stone; Eurydice’s father, already dead, longs for her from the Underworld…
