King Arthur, what a guy. Somehow the grand old Celt still appeals to the popular imagination. Many works of art have spun out from the legends of Arthur and the Roundtable, and there are good reasons for the current revival of interest in the King and his court–and in the…
George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart wrote some of the best comedies of their era, teaming up in the 1930s and 1940s to produce, among other hits, the Pulitzer Prize-winning You Can’t Take It With You, which later became one of Frank Capra’s greatest movies. Hart was long on plot,…
Samuel Beckett thought it all through for us–what it means to live in a world where God is absent. In such a world, life is absurd because it has no ultimate meaning. If there is no God, we are all fools and clowns scrambling for bits of comfort and amusement…
In the arts, “experimental” can mean anything from innovative to amateurish, depending on the experience and creativity of the artists involved. But experimentation is invariably valuable, because it leads to the discovery of new forms. Unfortunately, things can get a little bumpy along the way. The Lida Project is one…
An opportunity to see the greatest of George Bernard Shaw’s early plays, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, doesn’t come along every day. And Boulder Repertory Company’s solid-gold production of the controversial drama offers just exactly the right occasion. The cast is excellent, the direction superb and the social issues still troubling. But…
Broadway Brunch. You’ve heard of dinner theater; now there’s breakfast theater. On Sunday mornings the Westin Hotel offers a musical review featuring four talented performers singing Broadway hits–sometimes in character, sometimes straight–in a good mix of salty and sweet. Reece Livingstone’s masterful presence demands attention and gets it; he’s particularly…
The good news about Nicky Silver’s Raised in Captivity is that actual social issues are raised. The bad news is that, apart from a few good lines and an impressive opening scene, Silver doesn’t seem to know what to do with those issues–or how to create characters who make us…
The Ballad of Baby Doe.The best acting of the Central City Opera’s season can be found in this, the company’s signature piece. The sordid love story about Baby Doe and Horace Tabor may make for a tragic bit of history, but it’s the stuff of grand melodrama–and all the more…
For the first few sets, it’s tempting to feel sorry for the four singers in Broadway Brunch, a musical review of Broadway hits playing at the Westin Hotel on Sunday mornings. But the sympathy pangs soon subside; these performers are having too much fun rising to the occasion in what…
Ah, the troubled young–how to deal with them in the theater? This past year we had the intense and frightening Saved, by British playwright Edward Bond, which indicted English society for its cruel, callous working-class teens. Then we had Eric Bogosian’s intelligent take on American youth in subUrbia. Both these…
The great thing about My Fair Lady is Pygmalion–the smash hit from 1914 that established George Bernard Shaw as England’s premier playwright of the era. Lerner and Loewe’s musical adaptation of that stageplay, while not quite hardcore Shaw, is saucy and intelligent, and the Boulder Dinner Theatre’s bright production treats…
Grand opera, like crime movies and modern tragedy, is largely peopled by sluts and scalawags. Big, blustery sins are committed and paid for, and the spectacle is thrilling. Often the innocent get mowed down in the process (usually as part of the naughty protagonist’s punishment), but in the end, the…
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. The Physically Handicapped Amateur Musical Actors League (PHAMALy) takes on Stephen Sondheim’s bawdy musical with energetic glee. Some of director Don Bill’s choices may offend–he goes a bit too far over the top for “family” entertainment. But sometimes Bill’s experiments…
The Physically Handicapped Amateur Musical Actors League (PHAMALy) has launched another hit–a lively production of Stephen Sondheim’s bawdy musical A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. This time, director Don Bill’s experiments get outrageous. Some of his choices are tasteless–a bit too far over the top for…
Roundfish Theatre Company is off to a fast start. The new group’s taut, smart production of David Mamet’s scathing indictment of American salesmanship gone awry, Glengarry Glen Ross, proves the new producers have guts–and taste. In this Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Mamet’s use of profanity is almost poetic. He stealthily reveals…
The Denver Center Theatre Company’s production of Bertolt Brecht’s Galileo earlier this year was terrific, but it wasn’t really Brecht. Much truer to the spirit of the radical German playwright is CityStage Ensemble’s testy, uneven production of The Good Person of Szechwan. Too long, sometimes annoying and certainly abrasive, this…
Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II wrote their first show together in 1943, and Oklahoma! has proven to be one of the most influential musicals in the history of American theater. With Hammerstein’s sentimental yet memorable lyrics and Rodgers’s lavishly melodic tunes (nearly impossible to refrain from humming), they built…
We don’t really understand our world. Flailing about in unsuitable relationships, many people really want a perfect blend of community and independence and just can’t find it anywhere–except maybe at a place like Stanton’s Garage, where life unexpectedly solves its own riddles and strangers help each other through emotional distress…
Extended families can be such a blessing–sometimes a mixed blessing, as two local theater productions remind us. American playwright Paul Osborn’s charming, poignant comedy Morning’s at Seven and Irish playwright Brian Friel’s dismal drama Wonderful Tennessee both step gingerly on the minefield of sibling tensions. But while the first is…
One of the great things about a show like Ain’t Misbehavin’ is its interactive dimension: The performers play directly to the audience members, who get to clap their hands and tap their feet in time with the boisterous, life-affirming music of Thomas “Fats” Waller. And the fabulous Pointer Sisters production…
A troubled mind struggling for decency, the neighborly hand held out to a wretched man–these are the elements of Tennessee Williams’s The Night of the Iguana, for my money the most meaningful of all the great American playwright’s works. Other Williams plays may be more poetic or tragic or psychologically…
Gospel, the musical form that arose at the turn of the century with Pentecostal revivalism in African-American churches, has had a lasting and profound effect on American music during its century-long evolution. While rhythm and blues and soul took off from gospel roots, gospel itself has retained its identity and…
