Frankie and Johnny work at a greasy spoon in New York. He’s a short-order cook and she’s a waitress. When we first encounter them in Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, they’re having passionate sex in the dark. Which leaves us, the audience, in the dark, too, listening…
The Boulder Fringe Festival is under way, with performances in unexpected places around the town. In fact, tonight you can see the redoubtable Band of Toughs present its adaptation of As You Like It, which is set in the Forest of Arden, as a kind of primitive rager outside the Highland…
Though they’re usually buried under weightier news stories, mainstream media outlets are full of outlandish tales, bizarre characters and endless comedic possibility — especially this election season. Brent Gill digs up these gems for Infauxmation!, an improvised comedy show that presents a series of wacky news stories to a crew…
It doesn’t so much arrive as it does infiltrate. The Boulder Fringe Festival sweeps into town for its twelfth annual celebration, twelve days beginning August 17, sprouting up in the most unlikely, ad hoc places all over downtown Boulder. Twenty-five acts will freewheel along, entertainers from around the world that…
Daniel Reskin, a transplant from Miami, relocated to Denver with little but solid material and a few connections; he quickly ingratiated himself with the local performance scene. (An under-acknowledged benefit of new residents is that they find opportunity where locals see only wreckage.) Space Owl Alliance, Reskin’s new comedy/music hybrid showcase,…
“The Bug Theatre is truly the most unique performance venue in Denver,” says Deb Flomberg, who’s used the Bug for some very unique performances. But on Friday, August 5, Under the Big Top was all about the Bug itself — the second annual family-friendly event designed to raise funds for…
“The first time I wrote a play, I was teaching high-school theater, 25 years ago,” says John Moore, the award-winning former Denver Post theater critic and current senior arts journalist at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. After that came a long hiatus until Brian Freeland, then artistic director…
The Colorado Shakespeare Festival wraps up its 2016 season this weekend on the University of Colorado Boulder campus. To see if you can still score a ticket, call 303-492-0554 or go to coloradoshakes.org. Read our capsule reviews of three of this season’s shows, all still playing. The Comedy of Errors. Egeon…
In August, many people escape the city for one last summer vacation — but here in Denver, you can escape your everyday life by simply spending a night at the theater. Here are three new options: The Greater Good Three Leaches Theater at Spark Theater 985 Santa Fe Drive 7:30…
Every year, Senior Housing Options, which provides safe, caring housing for indigent older and disabled people in several Colorado locations, mounts a theater production at Denver’s Barth Hotel as a fundraiser. This year, the play is Joe DiPietro’s The Last Romance, and the money will go toward safety equipment and…
With the dog days of summer fully under way, sweaty Coloradans may wish to heed the stars and avoid the sweltering outdoors. A second skyward glance, however, reveals that the August firmament sparkles with comedic luminaries all month long — many of them products of the Denver comedy braintrust. In…
Love will be in the air, along with the loins of several able-bodied improvisors, when the Air Sex Championships gyrate onto the Oriental Theater stage on Tuesday, August 2. Air Sex is conceptually similar to air guitar — if the axe were replaced with the body of an imaginary lover…
For years, Quincy Jones was known in the independent comedy scene in Los Angeles for his welcome presence and laidback observational humor. Like most fledgling comics, he hustled hard at local shows and open mics, longing for the opportunity to get a crack at the infinitely larger audience that a…
In Little Shop of Horrors, currently showing at Miners Alley, Seymour, a nerdy young guy who works in a failing florist shop that’s situated, inexplicably, on skid row, is hopelessly in love with fellow worker Audrey. Unfortunately, she is in a relationship with Orin Scrivello, a sadistic dentist, and is…
The fourth annual High Plains Comedy Festival begins just thirty days from now, and the 2016 lineup has all the makings of an old-fashioned giggle gauntlet. From August 25 through August 27, over 100 of the country’s funniest people will descend upon Denver’s Baker neighborhood to crack wise, tickle fancies and…
Whatever happens at Voodoo Comedy Playhouse this weekend, it will definitely come as a surprise. “They like to keep it a secret,” says Voodoo head honcho Steve Wilder of the mockable movies on the menu for Friday and Saturday, when Trace Beaulieu and Frank Conniff, stars of TV’s iconic 1988-1999 Mystery Science…
I’ll Eat You Last is subtitled “A Chat With Sue Mengers,” who was the top-tier agent to some of Hollywood’s starriest stars — or, as she calls them here, “my twinklies”; those twinklies included Gene Hackman, Candice Bergen, Gore Vidal, Nick Nolte, Michael Caine and, most important, Barbra Streisand. And…
The set for Thaddeus Phillips’s the ARCHIVIST is perhaps the most important character in this experimental, brain-dizzying work-in-progress at Buntport. Towering white columns of file boxes divide the playing area, boxing in — almost literally — the Archivist in all his magnificent and delusional loneliness. Beyond the columns, the darkened…
Finishing School got its start in 2001 in Los Angeles; the art collective builds site-specific work, does studio art and creates other forms of media, all with the intention of sparking conversation around social issues, politics and shared everyday human experiences. The artists recently produced Finishing School: BLISS, a social-engagement project…
Drained by the heat of summer? Take a seat in a cool theater and get refreshed at one of the rousing musicals opening this week at Denver theaters. What else is up? Try the Colorado Theatre Guild’s annual Henry Awards at 7 p.m. Monday, July 18, at the PACE Center…
There actually was a time when rock and roll and the happy gyrations of teens dancing to the music were considered sinful and a sure precursor to every kind of sleazy and drug-hazed sex, a time when respectable parents were so nervous about Elvis Presley’s hip thrusts and controversy ran…
I didn’t want to see the Colorado Shakespeare Festival’s production of Troilus and Cressida. I had seen the play once before — and read it as a student — and vaguely remembered the plot, though almost no details. Still, I knew it was a problem play that sits somewhere between…
