The Denver Project. Created by Steven Sapp and Mildred Ruiz of New York’s UNIVERSES, this is an attempt to bring the realities of life on the streets to us, the well-fed patrons of Curious, to show that the homeless constitute a society and culture of their own, one that abuts…
Every semester, my freshman class at the University of Colorado stages a debate on whether or not you should give money to beggars, and every semester, my students reveal an almost identical set of prejudices and convictions. Those opposed to giving money seldom offer the one rationale that strikes me…
Dinah Was. The story opens with Dinah Washington, at the height of her fame, arriving at the Sahara in Las Vegas for a show. Though the manager expects her to fill the house, he refuses to give her a room at the hotel, insisting that she stay in the trailer…
Many years ago — before his current incarnation as a Scientology guru-cum-acting coach in Hollywood — I took acting classes with Milton Katselas in New York. Among my classmates was a tall, dark-haired gypsy named Bea. One evening, she gave an oddly flat monologue from Romeo and Juliet, sat down…
When Donald Margulies’s Sight Unseen opens, we’re in a house in the English countryside — but this is no cozy cottage surrounded by green, sheep-dotted fields. This is a gray, damp world. It’s inhabited by Patricia, an American expatriate, and her British husband, Nick, whom she married on the rebound…
Arcadia. There’s so much richness to this play that once you’ve seen it, you want to acquire the text, ask your mathematician friends to explain the science, re-read Byron, study the history of the English garden, and generally try to plumb the ideas that Tom Stoppard has set whirling about the stage, including…
There’s so much richness to Arcadia that once you’ve seen it, you want to acquire and read the text, ask your mathematician friends to explain the science, re-read Byron, study the history of the English garden, and generally try to plumb all the ideas that Tom Stoppard has set whirling…
These are the complete works of William Shakespeare, but not exactly as he wrote them. The Boulder Ensemble Theatre actors — Geoffrey Kent, Matthew Mueller and Stephen Weitz — spend around ten minutes on Romeo and Juliet, complete with lots of mock fighting and a hilarious rendition of Juliet’s puzzlement…
The Baseball Show. Evil, malaprop-prone Vincent Vascombe, owner of the Beloit Bulldogs, is determined to hold on to his star player, Bill “The Bomber” Dawson. But Dawson — aided by his smart, competent fiancée, Helen — has plans for the majors, and there’s a talent scout hanging around. So Vascombe…
We walked to the front door of Shadow Theatre Company’s brand-new home in Aurora on a strip of red carpet. Inside the spacious lobby, dozens of people were chatting, smiling, sipping wine. In Denver, people aren’t much given to dressing up for a night of theater, but the crowd here…
Written in 1978, when the feminist movement had woken us all up to the extraordinary fact that women could, and frequently do, like each other, Crimes of the Heart is about sisterhood. Literal sisterhood, as opposed to the metaphorical kind explored in other dramas of roughly the same period, such…
The Baseball Show. Evil, malaprop-prone Vincent Vascombe, owner of the Beloit Bulldogs, is determined to hold on to his star player, Bill “The Bomber” Dawson. But Dawson — aided by his smart, competent fiancée, Helen — has plans for the majors, and there’s a talent scout hanging around. So Vascombe…
The intimate Germinal Stage Denver theater is a perfect venue for The Birthday Party, Harold Pinter’s claustrophobic puzzler of a play. On the stage, the furniture is almost insultingly nondescript — a round wooden table, worn-looking chairs, a bulbous fish ornament. We’re inside an English bed-and-breakfast run by a very…
Artie Shaughnessy is an untalented songwriter with a dream — and it’s because she feeds this dream, as well as his ego, that he loves Bunny, his confident, glossy, mindlessly positive girlfriend. The fact that he’s married to the aptly named Bananas presents very little problem: As soon as he…
The Baseball Show. Evil, malaprop-prone Vincent Vascombe, owner of the Beloit Bulldogs, is determined to hold on to his star player, Bill “The Bomber” Dawson. But Dawson — aided by his smart, competent fiancée, Helen — has plans for the majors, and there’s a talent scout hanging around. So Vascombe…
Shelita is a poised and successful book editor, a young black woman determined to bring the urgent voices of her history and her people to life. As Thomas Gibbons’s play Bee-luther-hatchee opens, she’s riding the wave of a major success: A memoir she’s published has become a phenomenon, achieving bestseller…
John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt is a short, brilliantly constructed, engrossing play that seems straightforward on the surface — but there’s a lot going on below. The action begins with a voice speaking in the dark. As the lights come up, we see that this voice belongs to Father Flynn, who’s…
The Baseball Show. Evil, malaprop-prone Vincent Vascombe, owner of the Beloit Bulldogs, is determined to hold on to his star player, Bill “The Bomber” Dawson. But Dawson — aided by his smart, competent fiancée, Helen — has plans for the majors, and there’s a talent scout hanging around. So Vascombe…
The Merry Wives of Windsor tells the story of Sir John Falstaff — but not the cunning, cowardly and hilarious knight of the history plays, the Lord of Misrule who led astray a young Henry V and represented all the joys of drunkenness and revelry. No, this version is pretty…
Anyone who’s spent time in class listening while a self-important academic spins webs of obfuscatory words around a relatively straightforward idea, who has felt almost annihilated by the sheer number of those words, will sympathize with Carol, the perplexed and ultimately vengeful student in David Mamet’s Oleanna. If, on the…
The Baseball Show. Evil, malaprop-prone Vincent Vascombe, owner of the Beloit Bulldogs, is determined to hold on to his star player, Bill “The Bomber” Dawson. But Dawson — aided by his smart, competent fiancée, Helen — has plans for the majors, and there’s a talent scout hanging around. So Vascombe…
I passed the first act of My Fair Lady in a haze of pleasure. This is the touring version of Trevor Nunn’s acclaimed London production, complete with high-tech values, stunningly beautiful costumes, and leads who have significant and impressive resumés. The direction is inventive, making many of the familiar songs…
