Great playwrights have always attempted to illuminate broad human truths by writing about their own individual demons. Tennessee Williams is the classic American example: His plays consistently give voice to the strange psychoses of the Southern women–his mother and sister–who were significant in his life. Likewise, Ireland’s greatest living dramatist,…
When last we heard from famed G-man Eliot Ness, film star Kevin Costner was portraying the crimefighter in Brian DePalma’s flamboyant film The Untouchables, itself a knockoff of the 1950s television series starring Robert Stack. But DePalma’s tale of Ness’s outwitting and outgunning mobster Al Capone and company in Prohibition-era…
For the last thirty years, comedy writer Neil Simon has reigned as the king of America’s community-theater circuit, where his plays are a favorite choice of groups strapped for cash, talent and time. Amateur performers need only speak the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright’s lines clearly and distinctly in order to evoke…
Just when it appeared that the reputation of noted Christian apologist and children’s book author (The Chronicles of Narnia) C.S. Lewis might naturally diminish with the passing of time, British playwright William Nicholson rescued the prolific writer’s name from virtual oblivion with the play Shadowlands. The absorbing drama, which tells…
As murder mysteries go, the Country Dinner Playhouse staging of Agatha Christie’s The Hollow has much to recommend it. Bill McHale’s well-directed show features a stellar cast of veteran actors. What’s more, superb costumes from Nicole Hoof and a tasteful set by Craig Cline and Eric Lawrence create a feast…
Ask a professor of ancient history for an explanation of the architectural history of theaters, and he might tell you the large, circular dancing space that is the centerpiece of all Greek theaters took its inspiration from the threshing circles that Greek farmers have used for the last three millennia…
British playwright Harold Pinter once confessed that his ear for dialogue is something of an acquired talent: He gleans some of his material from conversations overheard in bars and restaurants. In that respect, he’s not much different from many other playwrights. However, what distinguishes Pinter from the horde of minutiae-obsessed…
The overwhelming success of the Broadway tap-dance extravaganza, Bring in ‘Da Noise, Bring in ‘Da Funk might disappoint, dismay or even shock some musical-theater purists: There’s no Fred Astaire clone as the show’s main character. Instead, the unorthodox musical offers us an abstraction–a solitary dancer known only as “‘da Beat”–as…
“Get yourself some puppets, put ’em on ice skates, and you’ll be a millionaire,” laments one character in the Avenue Theater’s interactive murder mystery Murder Most Fowl, a nine-year-old production that annually lampoons local celebrities and events. At a recent performance of the show, that line drew gentle laughter and…
Why does Denver need yet another theater company? What can a new group producing plays in a downtown storefront theater offer us that older, more established theaters aren’t already providing? People once asked those same questions about Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company, formed during the Seventies by a handful of students…
Contemporary playwrights face the same nagging question each time they write a script: Should it be a comedy, a tragedy or a dogmatic disaster-documentary? The latter is mostly the accepted province of Hollywood, and the only form of tragedy that seems to bubble up to the surface these days is…
Last year 28 of America’s regional theaters presented A.R. Gurney’s comedy Sylvia, giving it the dubious distinction of being the most-produced play of the professional theater season apart from holiday regulars such as A Christmas Carol. There’s an obvious reason: Despite some of Gurney’s off-the-cuff remarks about politics, self-help gurus…
The violence that engulfed America shortly after the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy is well-documented. What isn’t as well known is that many churches responded to the unrest by pulling together in a unique and effective way. In order to heal the wounds of their…
Suppose you have a few million dollars to invest in The King and I. Naturally, you want to create a touring production of the highest quality, but you’re also concerned about turning a profit. What you need is some sort of guarantee that will eliminate the possibility of financial failure…
No matter how hard playwright Eugene O’Neill tried to distance himself from his anguished past, the personal demons of his family life continued to hound the great writer until his death in 1953. He passed on his obsession to his widow, Carlotta, instructing her to refrain from producing his most…
The closing moments of CityStage Ensemble’s production of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead are ripe for a rendition of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.” After all, director Dan Hiester bills his production as ” Stoppard’s comedy with a holiday twist.” Given that no discernible holiday references appear elsewhere in the…
Actor’s Studio founder and Broadway director Robert Lewis wrote in his memoirs about a 1931 exchange he had with a then-unknown Katharine Hepburn. Lewis was working for the legendary Group Theatre, an American ensemble that emulated the venerable Moscow Art Theatre by producing plays that preached august emotional truths and…
Plays about death understandably are not very popular. True, the occasional one does stimulate some thoughtful discussion among theatergoers. And when given national exposure, such as the kind Michael Cristofer’s The Shadow Box attained when Paul Newman directed a made-for-TV version of the drama several years ago, plays about death…
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat is an ideal microcosm of the contemporary Broadway musical. It’s based on a story written by someone else (the complete text may be found in the Book of Genesis, Chapters 37 through 50); it borrows from several popular musical genres (including calypso, country-Western and…
Thirty years ago, Richard Schechner created the Performance Group in New York, an avant-garde company whose shows were riveting because of their carefully rehearsed spontaneity. What was important in Schechner’s productions was the unpredictable series of events that took place between actor and audience, and the art form he created…
Give Barbara Walters credit. Or maybe it’s Sigmund Freud who deserves the accolades. While we’re at it, let’s not forget the hordes of celebrities now clamoring to publish their memoirs or autobiographies. All of them must be taken into consideration when attempting to explain the contemporary worship of every famous…
When A Chorus Line first splashed onto the Broadway stage in 1975, its creator, Michael Bennett, was routinely hailed as a genius, an innovator, and the best and brightest choreographer on the American musical scene. Some even felt that he was heaven-sent. At the heart of his more successful shows…
