Inside a moral vacuum is a bad place to be: Not only is it fraught with violence and suffering, it’s boring, too. But somehow that boredom is conveyed without boring the audience in The Lida Project’s consuming production of Edward Bond’s notorious urban horror story Saved. It all takes place…
Materialism is destructive, especially when its false ideals lodge in the breast of a man who is too good for them. In director Jeremy Cole’s beautifully realized staging of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, Willy Loman’s wrenching descent into madness and death speaks eloquently to the “winners and losers”…
The archetypal tale of Beauty and the Beast takes many cultural forms. In all of them, a “beast” loves a “beauty,” wins her love and is then saved by her love from the curse that turned him into a beast. Edmond Rostand’s flagrantly romantic version of the story, Cyrano de…
However extravagant it may seem to say so, Ad Hoc’s production of Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters is simply fabulous–hauntingly beautiful and ultimately even inspiring. It’s not perfect, because not all the actors are equally gifted. But those imperfections never detract from the production’s effect on the viewer: nothing less than…
The issues described in Inherit the Wind, now at the Arvada Center, continue to lurk in the news. There are still religious zealots all over America who would like to censor and control those who disagree with them about a wide variety of issues–including the teaching of evolution in the…
Sweetly sardonic, Ronald Harwood’s The Dresser takes as its subject the whole world of the theater. And from the abused and neglected support staffers to the stars in all their megalomaniacal glory, Harwood tells it like it is. The truths he uncovers are amusing, sometimes grand and, finally, disturbing. The…
The ghostly and the ghastly haunt two stages at the Plex just now–one a folk tale metamorphosed into coolly intellectual high art, the other a literary classic mutated into a pop musical. Tony Kushner’s adaptation of S. Ansky’s A Dybbuk offers a rare window into nineteenth-century Hasidic culture with its…
All-male theater–what a concept. The feminist thing has got a number of guys confused, so they’re rethinking issues like the meaning of sports and male bonding, science and metaphysics and, in some instances, the use of profanity. At least that’s the initial impression one gets from Patrick Meyers’s K2. The…
A good journey makes a heroic tale–especially when the protagonist ultimately arrives at new insight. Terrence McNally’s A Perfect Ganesh, though flawed as drama by its own heady ambitions, is one such quest story. And the sterling production at Theatre on Broadway illuminates an already bright play with layers of…
Angels and devils hover in the local theater this season–and it’s about time. First the Broadway road show Angels in America graced the Auditorium Theatre last fall with its tale of God in retreat. Now we have Lucifer Tonite, by Denver’s most intense writer/performer, Don Becker. But while Angels could…
August Wilson is one of America’s great playwrights. His rage, his humor and his humanity find their deepest expression in the construction of character; plot is not the point. Yet each of his plays tells a compelling story, and each story moves us because it strikes home as true and…
If you’re going to revive a period thriller as clunky and passionate as Dial “M” for Murder, for heaven’s sake don’t ignore the very elements that make it interesting–go for the noir! The road-show production of the classic 1950s murder mystery now at the Auditorium Theatre features TV and movie…
Sometimes a play can leap through the centuries and land gracefully in our midst. But it takes a crack cast to handle antiquated language forms and old-fashioned sentiments. To work really well, a revival must speak some fundamental truths about the human condition. The Triumph of Love, an eighteenth-century farce…
The French loved him when America all but deserted him. But who cares what the French think? Now Jerry Lewis is enjoying a revival of public favor guaranteed to increase an already endless ego–fully displayed in the slick and (mostly) charming Damn Yankees. Even the death of his erstwhile sidekick…
The most important community theater arises out of a community’s need–and El Centro Su Teatro is a prime example of what the best community theater should be. Producing original plays in Spanish and English, Su Teatro draws on amateur and trained performers to give voice to the Hispanic community’s struggles,…
Most of the holiday shows now playing in Denver are secular pieces that capitalize on the season’s frenetic nostalgia but have no commitment to its meaning. But there is one authentic Christmas piece in town: Black Nativity at Eulipions. The play by poet Langston Hughes has a doubly emotional edge–a…
They’re baaaack. With the just-opened Beethoven ‘N’ Pierrot, Czech director Pavel Dobrusky and Norwegian counterpart Per-Olav Sorensen have once again brought “process theater” to the Denver Center Theatre Company. The first of their offbeat pieces–Stories, based on Isabel Allende’s novel The Stories of Eva Luna–was a delightful, technically brilliant bit…
Cross-gender performances are not all equal. When women play male characters, we tend to take them seriously. But when men play female roles, we can’t help but laugh–it always looks like parody. CityStage Ensemble director David Quinn’s version of Richard Sheridan’s eighteenth-century comedy The Critic includes a riotous array of…
Something about the Roaring Twenties still seems naughty–and in the best sense of the word. Maybe it’s just nostalgia for a simpler time, but even the wild flappers, the speakeasies and the social experimentation had a much more innocent feel than our own jaded, cynical era. That’s why Mame, the…
The first of many holiday shows, She Loves Me may well turn out to be this season’s best. This delightfully quirky musical has been given a delicious, intimate staging by the South Suburban Theatre Company, with a charming cast, fine direction and a very cool set. The action takes place…
Psycho Beach Party is yet another outrageous parody of B movies and pop psychology–and it’s somewhat brighter and cleverer than most. The cast at Theatre on Broadway is right on down the line, but the show depends upon the ingenious antics of its star, Andrew Shoffner, to really make it…
George Gershwin’s pop tunes hold up after all these years. Tunes like “Embraceable You,” “I Got Rhythm,” “They Can’t Take That Away From Me” and “But Not for Me” have beautiful melodies and jazzy energies that are still capable of knocking your socks off. Crazy for You brings many of…
