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…
Alicia Dunfee wasn’t the obvious choice to play Sally Bowles, Cabaret’s immature heroine; Dunfee is a grown-up woman who takes the stage with authority. Nonetheless, the interpretation worked. As always, Dunfee gave herself fully to each musical number and held the audience mesmerized. But she also created a convincing portrait…
Casting Terry Burnsed as Bloom in Circe, a staged chapter from Ulysses, was a stretch. Burnsed is slender and small, closer in body type to James Joyce himself than to such traditional Blooms as Zero Mostel. But his performance in the role was masterly. He managed the difficult feat of…
William Nicholson’s The Retreat From Moscow was a real find for the Aurora Fox — the best production staged there in several years. The play details the breakdown of a highly civilized marriage, unfurling in low-key, logical increments. It’s subtle, passionate, assured and full of magnificent bits of quoted poetry…
In PHAMALy’s Guys and Dolls — and with a nod to Marlon Brando — Leonard Barrett Jr. shone as the seductive conman Sky Masterson. In Angels in America, he played a completely different role: that of Belize, a former drag queen. Here his acting was playfully self-aware without being self-conscious;…
Gypsy’s Rose is usually played as an iron-sided belter, but Susan Dawn Carson made her warm and sympathetic. This interpretation brought out interesting nuances in the role, actually highlighting the character’s narcissism. Marcus Waterman gave Rose’s partner, Herbie, a sad integrity that made him the moral center of the play…
Jacques Brel is about roses and wine, nostalgia, love, and bright, toe-tapping songs. But there is also a sense of bitter world-weariness to Jacques Brel’s music, which was brought to life by three talented musicians and four superb performers, including singer Erica Sarzin-Borrillo. Sarzin-Borrillo is a unique stage presence, lacquered…
Some observers speculated that Dirty Story represented departing artistic director Donovan Marley’s raised middle finger to the Denver Center Theatre Company. Others viewed it as an intelligently provocative selection. Either way, it was a brilliant choice. The production transformed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into a sadomasochistic relationship between a middle-aged English…
Racism is a common enough topic in theater, but Dael Orlandersmith’s Yellowman explored a different kind of bigotry: the contempt felt by some lighter-skinned African-Americans toward their darker-skinned brethren, and the reciprocal rage it engenders. The play dares to evoke all kinds of stereotypes as Alma, one of the two…
Director Stephanie Shine set her Comedy of Errors in nineteenth-century New Orleans and gave the actors a lot of freedom to improvise, resulting in many hilarious bits. But she also reined them in when necessary and protected the music of the lines. The result was funny, relaxed and magical –…
Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Dreamcoat is a mishmash of silly jokes and pulsing tunes. For his first show as artistic director at Boulder’s Dinner Theatre, Michael J. Duran energized the company’s talented actors, including a group of delightfully unself-conscious children. He tossed in just enough zaniness to keep the audience engaged…
True, it’s hard to continue loving an outfit that started cheeky and small but is now a multimillion-dollar endeavor that becomes more expensive by the year. But these folks keep delivering. Where does Cirque du Soleil find these extraordinary people — clowns, dancers and athletes who combine precision, explosive power…
The Fourth Wall gave pleasure on many levels. It was erudite without a trace of pomposity, forceful without ever becoming mean-spirited. Well cast and directed by Billie McBride, the production had audience members snorting with surprised laughter time and again. It also gave them something to think about on the…
What kind of director would think of staging chapter fifteen of James Joyce’s Ulysses, with its stream-of-consciousness representation of one man’s mental processes during a single day? Who’d want to tackle all those puns, metaphors, allegorical riffs, allusions, fragments of liturgy and bits of drama, poetry, Shakespeare and even Gilbert…
Buntport is known for wacky, iconoclastic humor, but the group is also highly literate. So it makes sense that this ice-skating version of Franz Kafka’s life (along with an exposition of his most famous story, “The Metamorphosis”) would be both laugh-out-loud funny and respectful, even beautiful. No one but the…
In A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur, set during the Depression years, Tennessee Williams was exploring less poetic lives than in his earlier work. He used caricature, slapstick, even diarrhea jokes, and maintained a fine balance between humor and his customary melancholy. He also gave us moments of grace in…
Last year, Bas Bleu, which has been presenting theater in Fort Collins for over a decade, moved from its exquisite small theater building to a roomier location. For the first event in the new space, the group staged a two-evening production of Tony Kushner’s brilliant seven-hour epic, Angels in America,…
Jeremy Cole assembled an excellent group of actors, each of whom played several roles, to bring Ovid’s fables into the twentieth century in Metamorphoses. He balanced the tone of the production comfortably between comedy and tragedy, mythic resonance and contemporary humor. The set — a huge, water-filled granite pool that…
Wendy Ishii is the artistic director and co-founder of Bas Bleu, a major theatrical force in Fort Collins. She has also gained attention for her work on the plays of Samuel Beckett with faculty from Colorado State University. Ishi’s energy and vision keep Bas Bleu going: Her efforts to secure…
