The Fourth Wall. Playwright A.R. Gurney is a courteous, upper-crust kind of guy, so when he found himself enraged by national politics, he didn’t respond with agitprop or searing realism. Instead he imagined a comfortably middle-class housewife, Peggy, who — by way of protest — rearranges all the furniture in…
I loved this production of The Fourth Wall when I saw it at the late lamented Nomad Theatre — directed, as now, by Billie McBride and featuring the same cast — and I fully expected to love it again at the Avenue. But I didn’t. The script remains witty and…
The Fourth Wall. Playwright A.R. Gurney is a courteous, upper-crust kind of guy, so when he found himself enraged by national politics, he didn’t respond with agitprop or searing realism. Instead he imagined a comfortably middle-class housewife, Peggy, who — by way of protest — rearranges all the furniture in…
In 1955, when Inherit the Wind was written, religious attacks on evolution seemed safely in America’s past, and authors Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee weren’t so much re-arguing the topic as using it as a metaphor for the stifling of thought in the McCarthy era. It’s astonishing to realize…
The plot of An Ideal Husband isn’t as absurd as that of Oscar Wilde’s best-known play, The Importance of Being Earnest — there’s no mention, for instance, of a baby in a carpet bag — but it’s still a featherweight thing. Husband concerns a politician, Sir Robert Chiltern, whose spotless…
Impulse Theater. Basements and comedy go together like beer and nuts or toddlers and sandboxes. The basement of the Wynkoop Brewery where Impulse Theater performs is crowded, loud and energetic. Impulse does no prepared skits, nothing but pure improv — which means that what you see changes every night, and…
When you walk into the East Theater at the Dairy Center for the Arts, you see a man puttering quietly about the stage. The setting is simple: a white chair dead center; a set of coveralls suspended from a hanger to your left; a table holding sound equipment to your…
Oil begins with an unidentified, cowboy-hatted oilman leaning back in a chair and justifying drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The speech is droll — the work is so environmentally sound, the oilman tells us, that the caribou sidle up to the pipelines to keep warm — and the…
Death of a Salesman. This is one of those low-budget shows held together with chewing gum, string and ferocious determination. Which means that it’s uneven, the set and lighting are minimal, and a couple of the performances are downright amateurish. Arthur Miller’s critique of American materialism remains relevant, but his…
Denver Repertory’s Death of a Salesman is one of those low-budget shows that’s held together with chewing gum, string and ferocious determination. Which means it’s uneven. The set and lighting are minimal, because neither the company nor the John Hand Theatre has the resources to create the mix of dream,…
Impulse Theater. Basements and comedy go together like beer and nuts or toddlers and sandboxes. The basement of the Wynkoop Brewery where Impulse Theater performs is crowded, loud and energetic. Impulse does no prepared skits, nothing but pure improv — which means that what you see changes every night, and…
Impulse Theater. Basements and comedy go together like beer and nuts or toddlers and sandboxes. The basement of the Wynkoop Brewery where Impulse Theater performs is crowded, loud and energetic. Impulse does no prepared skits, nothing but pure improv — which means that what you see changes every night, and…
The Winter’s Tale, part of the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, is a peculiar hybrid of a play. It begins as tragedy, then lurches into full comic mode. There’s a sixteen-year gap in time, more comedy, and it’s back to gravitas for the final scenes. The play contains many familiar tropes –…
Impulse Theater. Basements and comedy go together like beer and nuts or toddlers and sandboxes. The basement of the Wynkoop Brewery where Impulse Theater performs is crowded, loud and energetic. Impulse does no prepared skits, nothing but pure improv — which means that what you see changes every night, and…
Twelfth Night begins with the lovestruck Count Orsino ordering up music to match his pleasurably melancholy mood. When his “If music be the food of love, play on” is answered by cheerful calypso sounds and he proceeds to practice a few dance steps, you know you’re in the hands of…
The Full Monty. The Full Monty follows a group of men who are out of work in Buffalo, New York. Amazed to discover that the women of the town are willing to pay high prices to watch a Chippendale-style strip show, the men decide they have nothing to lose and…
Central City Opera’s Madama Butterfly is beautifully sung, if a little over-directed. First performed in 1904, Puccini’s opera tells the story of an American officer, B.F. Pinkerton, who is stationed in Japan and enters into an exploitative union with a teenage geisha. Such fake marriages, which the groom could leave…
The Elephant Man. The Elephant Man is based on the life of Joseph Merrick, who was born in Victorian London and suffered from a hideously deforming disease that resulted in overgrowths of bone and hanging excrescences of putrid flesh. Abandoned by his father and stepmother, Merrick became the primary attraction…
My friend Julia, 24 years old, tall and striking and a one-time ballet dancer, was wearing rhinestone-encrusted stiletto heels for the occasion. When she rose to her feet, put her hands to her hips and did “The Time Warp,” I knew the Avenue Theater’s Rocky Horror Show was a success…
The Elephant Man. The Elephant Man is based on the life of Joseph Merrick, who was born in Victorian London and suffered from a hideously deforming disease that resulted in overgrowths of bone and hanging excrescences of putrid flesh. Abandoned by his father and stepmother, Merrick became the primary attraction…
This was the most fun I’ve had at the Arvada Center — in fact, the most fun I’ve had at the theater for a while. This venue generally attracts a pretty staid crowd, many of them middle-aged and older, and it was clear that some people were offended by The…
The Elephant Man. The Elephant Man is based on the life of Joseph Merrick, who was born in Victorian London and suffered from a hideously deforming disease that resulted in overgrowths of bone and hanging excrescences of putrid flesh. Abandoned by his father and stepmother, Merrick became the primary attraction…
