Last August, a selection from the Denver Art Museum was reduced to a tiny canvas, but it reached a global audience. An intricate 1940s Navajo weaving by master artisan Daisy Taugelchee was one of ten artifacts depicted in “The Art of the American Indian” stamp, a series of 37-cent stamps…
Organized by Pamela Jamruszka of the Red Rocks Community College theater faculty, and with the support of the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities, the first Playwrights Showcase of the Western Region featured three intense days of panels, workshops, discussions and play readings. The series was designed to inform…
Edward Albee’s play about a man in love with a goat makes you question every assumption about sexual mores you’ve ever made. Just where are the boundaries between the permissible and the impermissible, and what do they mean in the lives of actual people? The Goat or, Who Is Sylvia?…
Inventing Van Gogh unleashes a torrent of ideas about art — possibly enough for a dozen plays. But its primary achievement is illuminating the artist’s struggle to wrench meaning from a recalcitrant world, and to ransom his own soul. Steven Dietz’s script incorporates historical fact without lecturing; bits of Vincent…
In a luminous portrayal, Brett Aune made Vincent van Gogh an essentially gentle and guileless man, a little uncomfortable in his own body. Aune possessed an arrogance that stemmed from the artist’s bone-deep understanding of the rightness of his work, coupled with the insecurity of someone who has laid bare…
Angels in America’s Harper is a pill-popping young Mormon wife who spends half her time yearning for her faithless husband and the other half in a fantasy. She could easily seem fey or just plain irritating. But Laura Norman moderated Harper’s dopey ethereality with a wry humor and a sense…
Christopher Leo gave two confident star turns in Inventing van Gogh — as an unscrupulous art authenticator named Bouchard, and as the painter Paul Gauguin. Bouchard was self-mockingly mannered, effete in the most amusing way, while Gauguin was arrogant and thick-skinned. Both characters possessed a juicy vitality that served as…
Harold Pinter’s Old Times is a bleak, enigmatic play, but Denise Perry-Olson’s sensual energy and radiant smile animated it. Her Anna — sophisticated, sexy and well-traveled — flirted equally with onetime best friend Kate, and with Kate’s husband, Deeley. It sometimes seemed she was about to stride off with Bas…
Many regular customers of Boulder’s Dinner Theatre stayed away from Cabaret. The show’s seedy settings, writhing dance numbers and uncomfortable focus on fascism clearly set it apart from most BDT fare. But in a just world, it would have attracted dozens of people who normally never set foot in a…
Bat Boy: The Musical is based on a character in the Weekly World News, a bat-human creature found in a cave. In this musical, he’s discovered by some teenagers, one of whom he bites. Nicholas Sugar — an actor we should be seeing a lot more of — plays the…
Dulcet-voiced and warm, Shelley Cox-Robie is always a joy to watch. As Joseph’s narrator, she was the constant presence that stitched together all of the jokes and wild goings-on in the Boulder’s Dinner Theatre reading of this early Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. Cox-Robie’s empathetic work with the children in the…
Most people remember Guys and Dolls’ Adelaide as the chanteuse (or chantoosie) who sings “Take Back Your Mink” and “A Bushel and a Peck.” PHAMALy’s Lucy Roucis delivered these songs with sass and sang the famous “Adelaide’s Lament” so feelingly that you didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Either…
Hi-Hat Hattie was a sentimental, one-dimensional piece of theater, but Sheryl Renee made it work. She’s a fine actress, but it was her vocal abilities that transfixed us as she sang a mix of blues, funk and show music. At times, Renee’s voice emanated from the depths of her being;…
Randy Moore’s Scrooge was pinch-mouthed and mean, but he was also an aging child, with a child’s unconcern for decency and politeness, as well as a vulnerability. Although Moore has played the role for several years, this was his most joyous and deeply felt performance. When the reformed Scrooge humbly…
Anna is one-half of a prickly lesbian couple that forms the heart of Boston Marriage, David Mamet’s first play to feature female protagonists. She likes falling dramatically onto the chaise lounge, having the vapors, exploring flights of self-pitying fantasy, and tossing off acerbic witticisms. In a tour-de-force performance, Annette Helde…
The Fourth Wall featured a housewife so distressed by contemporary politics that she arranged the furniture to create an invisible fourth wall in her living room. Rhonda Lee Brown played Julia, a brittle interior decorator from New York, brought in by the protagonist’s husband to help unravel her motives. Affected…
Tongue of a Bird is a pretentious, forgettable play about a woman pilot searching the mountains for a lost child. But it had a bright spot in teenage actor Brittany Heileman. She appeared to the protagonist in visions, her face bloodied, in a performance that was sharp, quick, cheerful and…
In one of the funniest, sweetest scenes in Kafka on Ice, Erin Rollman skated on a floor of artificial ice, skidding, gliding and falling cutely about as a Chaplinesque Kafka (played by Gary Culig) sped to her rescue again and again. Rollman is one of Denver’s most inspired comic actresses;…
Playwright Mary Zimmerman incorporated large segments of poetry into Metamorphoses, including passages from Ovid and Rilke’s extraordinary “Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes.” The poems lend the script much of its power, but they can also be a mouthful. Elocution isn’t taught much these days, and many actors scorn verbal precision and fluidity…
The dying Prior in Angels in America is often whiny, snappish or unreasonable, but he has intellect and dignity, too. In the Bas Bleu/OpenStage Theatre and Company production, Todd Coulter gave all these characteristics their due. Late in the play, Prior receives a reprieve, thanks to new AIDS drugs, and…
Good impressionists don’t just mimic their subjects, they become them — and Frank Gorshin simply was George Burns in this production. He had the man’s walk and mannerisms, and also seemed to possess his spirit…
In Paul Robeson, a one-man show detailing the life of the scholar/athlete/performer of its title, Russell Costen held the stage for over two hours on his own. Robeson was a tall, powerful man with a rumbling bass voice, while Costen is shorter and more muted. Still, Costen communicated Robeson’s gravitas…
