If Curious Theatre Company had only brought us Clybourne Park — Bruce Norris's witty and insightful update of Lorraine Hansberry's famed A Raisin in the Sun — this season, well, dayenu, as we say at Passover: It would have been enough. If artistic director Chip Walton had seized only on Tony Kushner's Homebody/Kabul to introduce to Denver audiences, that might have been enough, too. But instead, in a season that also included Caryl Churchill's strange little brain tease A Number, the (frankly forgettable) On an Average Day, and Alison Moore's clever comedy Collapse, Walton presented another regional premiere: Bill Cain's 9 Circles, a play about a war crime in Iraq that left audiences stunned. Curious is one of those rare theaters where programs are shaped by a unified artistic vision: There's no pandering, no holding a finger to the wind to see what's likely to sell. Which means that over the years, the company has developed the kind of discriminating audience that makes its risk-taking possible.
Readers' Choice: Curious Theatre