Every now and then, you realize you’re watching a genuine star. Not just a very good, emotionally generous actor who makes intellectually interesting choices, but someone possessed of a quality that goes beyond that, a performer you’d happily watch in the dumbest and most boring show imaginable. This happened to…
On Golden Pond. As this play opens, Norman and Ethel Thayer are moving back into their summer house in Maine. Every summer for 48 years, he’s come here to fish and she to putter around, read, gather strawberries. This, their last visit, represents a slow, gentle fading. There’s just a…
This week local stages will host the next installment in an ongoing series from Denver’s Control Group Productions and a cop drama from Edge Theatre Company (see below); a new company will also debut with an original world premiere. Keep reading for the details. See also: Police Action: A Steady…
Eugene Cordero is an improviser, actor, and comedian who developed his skills in comedy laboratory of the Upright Citizens Brigade theater. He’s recently appeared on the Showtime series House of Lies as well as Comedy Central’s Kroll Show and Key & Peele. Westword caught up with Cordero for a phone interview before he joins the 65 other comics descending on Denver for the High Plains Comedy Festival to discuss following the cues of soused storytellers on Drunk History and going to high school with HPCF co-owner Andy Juett.
Mack & Mabel purports to tell the story of the confused and conflicted love between Mack Sennett, impresario of the early comic silent movies, and Mabel Normand, the young woman he discovered and made a star. I’d read that the musical has a brilliant score and a piss-poor book, and…
On Golden Pond. As this play opens, Norman and Ethel Thayer are moving back into their summer house in Maine. Every summer for 48 years, he’s come here to fish and she to putter around, read, gather strawberries. This, their last visit, represents a slow, gentle fading. There’s just a…
“Playing Ogun, Cajardo Lindsey towers over the evening, terrifying in his anger, heartbreaking in his grief, and sometimes — like the play itself — wonderfully and unexpectedly funny.” Westword review of The Brothers Size at Curious Theatre, for which Lindsey received a 2014 Best of Denver award. Denver theatergoers know…
Troy Baxley is a comedian’s comedian. “He’s a brilliant comic; everything that comes out of his mouth is fucking hilarious,” says fellow Denver standup comic Heather Snow. “People know him from coming up — Ben Roy, Adam Cayton-Holland. All of those guys started in rooms that Troy started. He’s like…
Performances traditional — and untraditional — set the stage this week, from an impromptu dance in an art gallery to the revival of a chilling, tried-and-true tale. Here’s what you’ll find this week on late-summer stages. See also: Five 5ths of the Wizard of Oz: A Fringe Benefit!…
Kate Berlant’s performances defy easy categorization. Verbally non sequitur and tonally absurd, Berlant has crafted a truly sui generis comedic persona untethered to the traditions of the surprisingly hidebound medium of standup. An NYU alumnus, Berlant gained renown in the New York comedy scene, earning her glowing (if befuddled) profiles in Playboy and The New York Times. A highlight of last year’s High Plains Comedy Festival, Berlant also has a groundswell of fans among Denver’s comedy community who turned up to see her at one of the first few Sexpot Comedy showcases. Westword caught up with Berlant before she returns for this year’s festival to discuss touring with musicians, finding her unique style, and her contingent of bro fans.
Pete Holmes is a comedian whose irrepressible spirit has endeared him to audiences nationwide. His last special Nice Try, the Devil aired last year on Comedy Central to widespread acclaim, including within these very pages, where we named it
The Odd Couple. There’s not a lot of nourishment in Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple, which has been around since the mid-1960s, but the central pairing of two very different men who find themselves sharing an apartment, and the humorous way their fights and misunderstandings mirror those of regular marriage…
The audience for Ignite Theatre’s Rent is large, boisterous, young, and deeply involved with the action. Throughout the evening, you hear hoots of appreciative laughter, empathetic breath intakes and murmurs, audible sniffles at the sad parts. This enthusiasm is matched by the enthusiasm on stage, the actors singing their hearts…
Whether you’re looking for the element of surprise inherent in an off-the-cuff improv riff, a laugh-out-loud good time as light as a perfect summer evening or a chilling comedy about a woman who obsessively answers a dead man’s phone, it’s all yours this weekend. Read on for the details. See…
You see aerial dance in circuses and burlesque shows, at gymnastics meets and even on the formal dance stage — but it wasn’t always so. And as Nancy Smith of Boulder’s Frequent Flyers Aerial Dance will attest, aerial dance has not only grown in stature in this country, but it’s…
Podcasts are in tune with the democratized spirit of internet media; anyone with a microphone and a computer can offer their listeners unlimited hours of recordings, usually for free. Limited only by their imaginations, podcasters have a freedom of expression unrestricted by commerce, censorship, or geography. Indeed, several great podcasts have blossomed from Denver’s own flourishing arts community. Here to celebrate them is Podcast Profiles, a new series documenting the efforts of local podcasters and spotlighting the peculiar personalities behind them
Though I generally love Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals, The Sound of Music has never been one of my favorites. But continuing a tradition it started two years ago of bringing a more mainstream production down from the hills to Denver’s larger audiences, that’s the show Central City is presenting at…
Henry IV, Part 1. King Henry IV gained the throne by deposing his predecessor, Richard II, and having him murdered, and in Henry IV, Part 1, the crown lies uneasily on his head. Men who aided his insurgency have turned against him, and there’s rebellion brewing throughout the kingdom. Worst…
Going to a play in the summer isn’t that different from hitting a blockbuster film or burying your nose in a fat, classic novel: Big themes — Hurricane Katrina, the silent-film milieu of the early twentieth century and the rise of AIDS — power our current theater picks. Keep reading…
It’s always a treat to attend a play in the antique and elegant lobby of the Barth Hotel, one of fourteen residences maintained for elderly and disabled people by the nonprofit Senior Housing Options. In the past, the money from these annual fundraisers has been used to provide emergency kits…
By the time August rolls around, summer seems to have lost some of its summery luster. After sweltering in the muggy heat and unexpected downpours for two months, August
Schools re-open, attractions close, and Hollywood has already burned through its popcorniest blockbusters. It falls to comedy then, to entertain browbeaten Denverites, and fortunately for them, this August, Denver is replete with giggles. With two showcases in Boulder’s rapidly growing comedy market, a Red Rocks birthday celebration with an increasingly less reclusive comedy icon, and a homegrown comedy festival, there are enough great shows this month to keep you laughing until autumn.
Henry IV, Part 1. King Henry IV gained the throne by deposing his predecessor, Richard II, and having him murdered, and in Henry IV, Part 1, the crown lies uneasily on his head. Men who aided his insurgency have turned against him, and there’s rebellion brewing throughout the kingdom. Worst…
