In the arts, “experimental” can mean anything from innovative to amateurish, depending on the experience and creativity of the artists involved. But experimentation is invariably valuable, because it leads to the discovery of new forms. Unfortunately, things can get a little bumpy along the way. The Lida Project is one…
An opportunity to see the greatest of George Bernard Shaw’s early plays, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, doesn’t come along every day. And Boulder Repertory Company’s solid-gold production of the controversial drama offers just exactly the right occasion. The cast is excellent, the direction superb and the social issues still troubling. But…
Broadway Brunch. You’ve heard of dinner theater; now there’s breakfast theater. On Sunday mornings the Westin Hotel offers a musical review featuring four talented performers singing Broadway hits–sometimes in character, sometimes straight–in a good mix of salty and sweet. Reece Livingstone’s masterful presence demands attention and gets it; he’s particularly…
In Tin Cup, Kevin Costner swaps his swim fins for a three-wood and hits one down the middle of the fairway. Costner has, I think, always come off better playing ordinary guys–the aging bush-leaguer of Bull Durham, the farmer who reconciles with his father’s ghost in Field of Dreams–than stainless-steel…
Kansas City, Robert Altman’s moody valentine to his hometown, unfolds on the eve of an election in 1934, when Boss Tom Pendergast was setting new standards for public corruption in the Midwest, the fleshpots were thriving, and the wide-open city’s famous jazz life was in full swing in the smoky…
Thursday August 8 Lunar tunes: A little bit of music and magic will intertwine under the stars when Denver’s enduring Chicano/Latino theater group, El Centro Su Teatro, presents local playwright Anthony Garcia’s Return of the Barrio Moon for three nights at the Greek Amphitheater in Civic Center Park, Broadway and…
Watching over the nearly completed destruction of I.M. Pei’s Zeckendorf Plaza is reminiscent of those “thinnest books in the world” sold in novelty shops. You know the kind–Honest Lawyers or Inspired Bureaucrats. Unfortunately, the pageless gag in this case could be titled something like Great Denver Buildings. But that’s not…
The good news about Nicky Silver’s Raised in Captivity is that actual social issues are raised. The bad news is that, apart from a few good lines and an impressive opening scene, Silver doesn’t seem to know what to do with those issues–or how to create characters who make us…
The Ballad of Baby Doe.The best acting of the Central City Opera’s season can be found in this, the company’s signature piece. The sordid love story about Baby Doe and Horace Tabor may make for a tragic bit of history, but it’s the stuff of grand melodrama–and all the more…
For the first few sets, it’s tempting to feel sorry for the four singers in Broadway Brunch, a musical review of Broadway hits playing at the Westin Hotel on Sunday mornings. But the sympathy pangs soon subside; these performers are having too much fun rising to the occasion in what…
By all accounts, Francis Ford Coppola is putting some pretty good wine into the bottle at his vineyard in Napa. Let’s hope so. Because the filmmaking career of one of America’s great directors has now hit the bottom of the barrel, and his future may lie entirely in viniculture. In…
The genteel pleasures of Jane Austen have recently become a familiar commodity to American moviegoers–even if quite a few of them are, like, unaware of it. To wit: The sublime English novelist’s comedy of manners Emma, published in 1816, was the inspiration for last year’s teen smash Clueless, in which…
Thursday August 1 Them’s fightin’ words: At the Bug, Denver’s peerless, hole-in-the-wall avant-garde film and performance center, the talk is anything but idle. Instead, Adversity and Diversity: The Bug History Talks, a new lecture series that debuts this evening, will provide provocative fuel for serious thinkers. CU-Boulder instructor and archivist…
Putting together a credible exhibit takes three things: space, money and an organizing concept. But in the art world, it’s often those curators or gallery directors with the least space at their disposal–and even less money–who come through with the biggest ideas and the best shows. The latest case in…
Ah, the troubled young–how to deal with them in the theater? This past year we had the intense and frightening Saved, by British playwright Edward Bond, which indicted English society for its cruel, callous working-class teens. Then we had Eric Bogosian’s intelligent take on American youth in subUrbia. Both these…
The great thing about My Fair Lady is Pygmalion–the smash hit from 1914 that established George Bernard Shaw as England’s premier playwright of the era. Lerner and Loewe’s musical adaptation of that stageplay, while not quite hardcore Shaw, is saucy and intelligent, and the Boulder Dinner Theatre’s bright production treats…
The exhilarating paradoxes in the new Scottish drugs-and-destruction movie Trainspotting–fast becoming a hip hit on this side of the Atlantic, too–are that it takes as much pleasure in the depth of its nightmares as it does in the sting of its satire, and that its self-wasting junkies manage somehow to…
Thursday July 25 Show some retrospect: Celebrating its twentieth anniversary this year, the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities can look back on a job well done. Along with its stellar track record of music, dance and stage performances, the center also enjoys continued excellence as a fine-art venue…
The distinction between sculpture and installation is a blurry one–and that makes sense, given that the two mediums are both essentially concerned with artfully occupying space. Many local contemporary sculptors and installation artists test the boundary between the two art forms. But no one knows the territory better than well-known…
Grand opera, like crime movies and modern tragedy, is largely peopled by sluts and scalawags. Big, blustery sins are committed and paid for, and the spectacle is thrilling. Often the innocent get mowed down in the process (usually as part of the naughty protagonist’s punishment), but in the end, the…
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. The Physically Handicapped Amateur Musical Actors League (PHAMALy) takes on Stephen Sondheim’s bawdy musical with energetic glee. Some of director Don Bill’s choices may offend–he goes a bit too far over the top for “family” entertainment. But sometimes Bill’s experiments…
John Grisham’s legal thrillers are the Big Macs of American publishing–more filler than meat and devoured in alarming numbers by consumers who are not interested in real nourishment. Then the books are dutifully recycled as Hollywood movies–because waste never really goes to waste in pop culture’s digestive tract. The former…
