Who is the real monster in the gothic tale of Dr. Frankenstein and his handmade man–the poor innocent creature born against his will at the hands of the scientist, or the scientist himself? Mary Shelley’s original story made it clear that those who presume to tinker with nature (or tread…
The villainous Iago makes everything happen in Othello. He pulls all the strings and pushes all the buttons to make others jump to his will. And since that will is evil, all his machinations lead as well to his own destruction. You’ve got to love it. Compass Theatre Company’s production…
In recent years, visiting moviemakers have recast Ireland as a kind of cultural theme park packed with nostalgic folk wisdom exhibits, ongoing political tragedy rides and postcard views of verdant countryside. In this fantasyland, picturesque locals loose torrents of reheated Yeats in lilting brogues. At night everyone settles in at…
Penny Marshall probably won’t win the Nobel Prize anytime soon, but the TV-star-turned-director has a minor gift for detective work. After discovering the little boy inside the man (Big) and the ballplayer within the woman (A League of Their Own), Marshall has now unearthed the deep thinker in the dumb…
Wednesday June 1 Hit or Ms.: No member of the feminist movement has been more visible or accessible than Gloria Steinem, the brainy co-creator of Ms. magazine who now writes bestsellers on self-esteem. Steinem, here to plug her latest volume, Moving Beyond Words, appears this evening at the Radisson Hotel…
Dania Pettus uses the “principles” of black-and-white photography, assemblage and puppetry to construct the harrowing shadow boxes of Do It Until the Principles Are Burned Into Your Mind, at Edge Gallery. No problem there. Pettus’s searing images of disembowelment, dismemberment, piercing and bondage, though they involve anonymous paper-doll puppets, are…
Did you miss the road-show Phantom of the Opera? No problem: The Country Dinner Playhouse is presenting a far more spirited version of the classic horror tale, the excellent Arthur Kopit/Maury Yeston Phantom. For my money, it’s a better telling of the story than Andrew Lloyd Webber’s–or, for that matter,…
It will help if you like cruise-ship activities–conga lines, audience-participation skits and sing-alongs. Five Guys Named Moe, now at the Auditorium Theatre, is the kind of raucous musical designed to bring out the silliness in you. Jolly, extravagantly choreographed, riddled with jokes and sight gags, Moe is more music than…
Has Bernardo Bertolucci flipped out? The man who once explored the frontiers of carnal obsession (in Last Tango in Paris) and the fervid intrigues of Italian politics (The Conformist, 1900) began gazing eastward last decade, coming up with a gauzy Chinese head trip called The Last Emperor. That’s the one:…
Amid the clatter of summer blockbusters, Red Rock West is the kind of terrific sleeper that could get lost. That would be a shame. Here is a taut little thriller that depends on such classic virtues as the well-timed double-cross, clever plotting and vivid low-life characters, rather than on high-octane…
Wednesday May 25 Tool of the trade: L.A. band Tool gets the thumbs up from Beavis and Butthead–enough said. These alternative performers were the surprise of last year’s Lollapalooza tour, where they started out headlining the second stage and, on the strength of their blistering performances, moved up to the…
Fans of sophisticated contemporary sculpture will be delighted with the array of styles and media on display at Foothills Art Center. The 16th Annual North American Sculpture Exhibition fills the space with bronze, steel, wood, glass, ceramics and found objects, all material elements of 76 sculptural works from 66 artists…
Interesting, stimulating family entertainment is rare enough in Denver, so a sprightly show like Annie is welcome, indeed. Now playing at the Denver Civic Theatre, the musical revue offers local parents a breather from the inanities of television and a handy opportunity to introduce children to the excitement of live…
It’s all about power. The combination of skill, intelligence and soul-numbing, single-minded will that it takes to get rich in a capitalist society might propel one into the politburo in a communist society. So George Bernard Shaw speculated in his extravagant comedy of ideas The Millionairess, now in a hilarious…
This is what things have come to. Hollywood has spent $60 million on a Western movie derived from an old TV show that borrowed heavily from earlier Westerns, which were in turn based on dime novels that glamorized beyond recognition what actually happened on the American frontier. Naturally, the star…
Like his earlier films, Pedro Almodovar’s Kika is the kind of outdated bedroom farce that could only come from post-Fascist Spain, where artistic freedom is still a novelty. As in Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! and High Heels, this tale of a garrulous Madrid makeup artist’s sexual misadventures flaunts…
Can a quarter-century really have passed since Ratso Rizzo first sneered “I’m walkin’ heaahh!” and Joe Buck grinned at himself in the mirror, straightening the Stetson on that golden Texas rube’s head? Midnight Cowboy returns to the big screen this Friday for a one-week run at the Mayan, and its…
Wednesday May 18 Fit to be tried: The Regional Transportation District, which has a lot riding on the future, is throwing a Try Transit Week shindig that includes a little entertainment, a nostalgic look at the past and a good look at the future. Today, citizens can get a firsthand…
Human figures appear in representational art so frequently that new and exciting interpretations hardly seem possible. Even so, artists continue to render the figure, finding an inexhaustible source of inspiration in the body human. Three artists take over 1/1 Gallery with original, thought-provoking twists on the genre, infusing the well-worn…
Reinventing Japanese director Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 film Rashomon has become something of an American pastime. The movie was a huge international hit, a brilliantly acted, visionary retelling of two Ryunsuke Autagawa stories. It was first remade in America in 1964 as The Outrage, a pretentious but still engaging version of…
There is so much to Brian Friel’s Dancing at Lughnasa, it’s a pity there isn’t more. The Denver Center Theatre Company production is so rich in character, so well acted, so humane, so involving, it is difficult to say why it also just misses being completely satisfying. But then, the…
Yuppies hit the bottle, too. That’s the lesson of When a Man Loves a Woman, in which pretty Meg Ryan falls through a glass shower door, sweats out detox and fights to reclaim alienated husband Andy Garcia–all without messing up her hair or smudging her makeup. This is another gooey…
