When Joseph Kesselring’s Arsenic and Old Lace opened in January 1941, stiff competition from radio and film was fueling talk of the theater’s imminent demise. That idea permeates Kesselring’s only Broadway success. Fifty-eight years and several entertainment conglomerates later, though, the playwright’s old chestnut–filled with antiquated references, stock characters and…
Nearly a year before a rat’s nest of tape recordings and a Pandora’s box of kitschy souvenirs became props for the interminable Bill and Monica show, Moises Kaufman’s Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde had already earned kudos as the surprise hit of the off-Broadway season. A year’s…
After having paid double the price of admission to a movie, it’s a wonder that some of the Denver Victorian Playhouse’s patrons don’t object to their view of the stage being blocked by a large metal support pole or the night’s entertainment being compromised by a series of clearly amateur…
The greatest comic playwright to grace the English stage in the less-than-fertile period between Shakespeare’s fantastical exit and Shaw’s boisterous entrance, Richard Brinsley Sheridan was a dramatist of great-hearted humanity, sharp insight and exquisite wit. A gifted orator whose political opinions were prohibited full dramatic expression–Britain’s Licensing Act of 1737…
Learning from past mistakes isn’t always enough to prevent them from happening again. The 1978 murders of San Francisco mayor George Moscone and gay-rights activist Harvey Milk, for instance, nearly crippled a city still reeling from the news that former housing-authority chairman Jim Jones had committed suicide along with 900…
After slogging through the two hours of aimless conversation and mildly entertaining lounge tunes that permeate Rick Lawson’s Incident at the Blue Parrot Cafe, it comes as welcome relief when one character finally says something that’s been on every theatergoer’s mind since the play began. Seemingly investing his remarks with…
Begging forgiveness from God and anyone else who will listen, a mortally wounded policeman staggers through the West Indian jungle and bemoans the “Africa of my mind” and “glories of my race.” The mulatto corporal, ever aware that his mixed-blood origins effectively brand him an outcast among his fellow islanders…
As an undergraduate at University College in Dublin, James Joyce once published an 8,000-word article on Henrik Ibsen’s final play, When We Dead Awaken, that prompted the father of modern drama to dash off a sincere letter of thanks to his ardent admirer. Moved and humbled by his literary hero’s…
A.R. Gurney is famous for writing middlebrow off-Broadway plays in which well-to-do WASPs comically mourn the passing of their cherished way of life. Past Gurney bromides examined such hallowed American myths as the old-boy network (The Old Boy, presented a few years back by the Director’s Theatre in Boulder), the…
In the media hoopla surrounding the Denver Center Theatre Company’s 1998 Tony Award for outstanding regional theater, most theatergoers didn’t notice that the award was given for a body of work that wasn’t even produced last season. More to the point, the coveted prize (which is awarded annually by the…
Theodor Seuss Geisel won a pair of Academy awards for writing Design for Death, a 1947 film documentary about Japanese warlords, and Gerald McBoing Boing, a 1950 animated cartoon. But he was better known as Dr. Seuss, the prolific author who launched a new trend in children’s literature with such…
Human beings have reveled in the mocking of solemnity as early as the twelfth century, when subversive subdeacons rang church bells improperly as part of the annual Feast of Fools and food-fighting choir boys mischievously sang out of tune during the Feast of the Boy Bishop. It comes as no…
Acutely aware that society routinely champions mendacity in matters of art, beauty and truth, the Lower East Side slackers in the musical Rent harbor no illusions about their place in the world. They’ll never be invited to place their names in the social register, for instance, or plaster their autographed…
Its yearly appearance might be anticipated, dreaded or even lampooned, but Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol remains the quintessential holiday story about the transformative powers of love, forgiveness and redemption. Director Laird Williamson has an unabashed (and, among local practitioners, unparalleled) devotion to pageantry, mystery and grandeur; when these qualities…
Are the crystal-arranging rituals of gong-happy new-agers really any different from the solemn-voiced genuflecting that undergirds the world’s established blood religions? Does our willingness to profess unwavering belief–whether in the rock of ages or the age-old healing properties of rocks–somehow guarantee us a higher place in the grand scheme of…
On the surface, Beth Henley’s The Wake of Jamey Foster looks like a typical American dysfunctional-family play. In fact, before Act One is twenty minutes old, we’ve become acquainted with an undiscovered ectomorphic genius who makes a living cashing in beverage bottles; an insufferable financial type grown newly contemptuous of…
Near the end of Riverdance–The Show, there’s a brief yet moving scene that beautifully clarifies and unifies all thirteen of the Irish dance extravaganza’s far-flung episodes. To the bow-shredding accompaniment of a lone violinist, the fervent company of singers and dancers–who transport us to such outposts of the unofficial Irish…
Setting his huckster’s sights on no less a prize than the United States presidency, a slick-talking loudmouth unabashedly declares, “Truth is in the eye of the beholder or the mouth of the seller.” Before his TV-reporter girlfriend can convince him otherwise, the smooth operator embarks on an ambitious though clearly…
What, exactly, constitutes our national character? Are we largely the sum of our popularly determined and time-tested beliefs? Or is our collective psyche a more mercurial interfusion of passionate and ephemeral desires? Before you get all centrist-minded and declare in your best chardonnay-sipping, Brie-nibbling way, “Why, a healthy mixture of…
Soon after Tennessee Williams finished writing his last great play, The Night of the Iguana, in 1961, America’s preeminent dramatic poet plunged into a severe decline marked by acute drug and alcohol dependency, extended periods of mental illness for which he was hospitalized, and macabre public appearances where he seemed…
For a touchy-feely play written at the beginning of America’s politically correct modern age, Michael Brady’s To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday is surprisingly humorous, delightfully risque and impishly entertaining. The romantic drama about a strong-willed widower’s long-running bout with mourning sickness is being presented by the Morrison Theatre in…
Against the sounds of clicking typewriter keys, a disembodied voice tells us that Voices From the Soul is dedicated to “the brother on the corner who never had a chance.” As the stage lights slowly illuminate several cardboard silhouettes that represent a few of the play’s characters, playwright Hugo Jon…
