The popular Buntport Theater, with its adventurous comedy troupe, has an abundance of hilarious regulars. None, however, are as side-splitting as Erin Rollman. Her characters are so funny, because although they’re impossibly overblown and shamelessly ridiculous, Rollman herself completely believes in them. And you almost believe in them, too. She…
In the Denver Center Theatre Company’s Lobby Hero, Bill Christ played a cop who seemed to have no insides, a kind of parody of a cop. He mouthed the heroic, tough-guy lines you so often hear in television dramas, bullying and prevaricating, and fluidly took on whatever persona suited his…
Bright Ideas is a story about a yuppie couple’s fight to get their toddler into the best preschool, and Ethelyn Friend played a mother who succeeded. The woman is so smug, bitchy and professionally successful that you know she won’t survive the first act. But Friend was riveting while her…
Ed Baierlein may be the most interesting, subtle, intelligent and multi-layered actor in Denver — a role he’s played for more than two decades. In Alan Ayckbourn’s hilarious comedy Relatively Speaking, which he also directed, Baierlein played the male half of what seemed at first like a very conventional English…
Who but Sallie Diamond — Ed Baierlein’s real-life wife — could play opposite him in Relatively Speaking? In the face of all her husband’s blustering, she stood her ground and gave as good as she got. With her fluting voice, dithery gestures and impeccably timed slow comic takes, Diamond was…
Directed by David McClendon for the intimate Jones Theatre at the Denver Center, Lobby Hero was an impeccable production of a charming play, one with just enough substance and insight to keep the viewer from going away hungry. The four quirky characters were played to perfection by Rick Stear, Bill…
Ben Hammer is living proof that the Method approach to acting is still one of the most effective imaginable. His interpretation of the title character in Visiting Mr. Green was rich and grounded, and it made the production soar. Hammer was so deeply immersed in the character that he didn’t…
Jamie Horton spent much of the past year working in New York, and from the moment he stepped on stage in John Brown’s Body, we all realized how much we’d missed him. His John Brown was stunningly authoritative, a rock-hard, unreasoning, narrow, immovable, plainspoken man who seemed simultaneously contemptible and…
In this excellent production, Randy Moore played Theodore Middleton, the schoolmaster husband of one of the sisters. Middleton was a boring man who had only to open his mouth to send the other characters fleeing. Nonetheless, he loved his mocking, angry, miserably unhappy wife. He even found his own odd…
Claire is the shallow sister of the moody, brilliant heroine, Catherine, in David Auburn’s Proof, and she could easily be played as the villain. But C. Kelly Leo brought the character to scintillating, multi-faceted life. Though you hated many of Claire’s words and actions, Leo made sure you understood their…
Last spring, William Hahn played Max in Martin Sherman’s Bent, a harrowing drama that revealed the plight of homosexuals in Hitler’s extermination camps. At the play’s opening, Max lived for booze, cocaine and easy sex. By the second act, his lover had been beaten to death in front of him,…
In Three Tall Women, Patty Mintz Figel played a very old woman whose mind and body deteriorated in front of us. The woman was angry, paranoid, agitated, incontinent, ungrateful and hell to take care of. She rambled about the past. She was a racist, though she barely understood her own…
Sarah Fallon’s Katharina was the high point of the 2003 festival. Fallon has a wonderful voice, and she knows how to speak Shakespeare’s verse. Funny, lithe and capering in her black, 1950s capri outfit, she made Katharina an appropriately angry little spitfire. But Fallon was also touching as she revealed…
Picnic was a generally forgettable production, with disappointing performances from some of the leads. But playing a befuddled neighbor, Kathleen M. Brady showed just how powerful gentleness can be. Sure, her character was confused and sometimes downright dumb, but all of her instincts were true. She was kind to the…
Many of the literati quarreled with director Donovan Marley over his decision to set the production of Chekhov’s classic, The Three Sisters, in the American South in 1862. But somehow James Warnick’s translation added resonance and implication while leaving intact the plight of the characters and the sense of a…
One of the great joys of Donovan Marley’s The Three Sisters was watching Annette Helde and Jacqueline Antaramian working together. Both of these women are extraordinary actresses, and both project entirely different personae. Helde brought a profound gentleness to the oldest of the sisters, Alma, along with a stifled tenderness…
There’s a lot to like about Chicago — brilliant songs, a witty script and a grown-up worldview — and Boulder’s Dinner Theatre gave the dark musical a sexy, vivid, energetic production, full of show-stopping performances. Joanie Brosseau-Beyette played Roxie Hart, a hard-eyed, murderous little blond, without a second’s sentimentality. Alicia…
Okay, his name is actually Brian Mallgrave, and he’s an excellent and very intense young actor, but we’d never seen him like this before. It took several seconds after B. Hamlette’s gliding, swooping entrance in Chicago before most of the audience realized he wasn’t a she. As gossipy, credulous reporter…
Sweet Corner Symphony was a doo-wop a cappella concert with amazing singing by Vincent Robinson, Ed Battle, Ken Parks, Dwayne Carrington and Hugo Jon Sayles. “Swanee” got the group’s own satiric spin, and they also performed dozens of lesser-known songs. Ken Parks was mesmerizing as the ringleader: tall and heavyset…
Those Denverites who saw Savion Glover perform at the Buell will someday tell their children about it. He just may be the best tap dancer alive, certainly one of the best who ever lived. Glover, who began dancing at the age of eleven, makes music with his feet. Bring in…
Though some of us wondered why New York kicked up such a fuss about The Producers, the “Springtime for Hitler” number made everything clear — or almost so. The entire show builds to this moment, and when it comes, it’s got the lot: a tease of a beginning, catchy tunes,…
Ulla was a Swedish sex bomb who longs to be a star. She was almost a cartoon, a flesh-and-blood Jessica Rabbit, and Charley Izabella King was a wonder in the role. Inhumanly gorgeous, wearing clothes that loved her body, she vamped around the stage and spoofed her own exaggerated accent…
