After thirteen years with Buntport Theater, actor Brian Colonna knows his fellow collaborators and they know him. They write together. They perform together. They even share directorial responsibilities. As a result, they have built one of the funniest theater troupes in Colorado. But sometimes, they know each other so well…
Spamalot is a terrific musical, a hilarious romp through English myth and history — and a fine Aurora Fox production underlines its strengths. The fabled King Arthur sets forth accompanied by his faithful squire, Patsy, who serves as an overworked and underappreciated beast of burden. After a while, God himself…
Animal Crackers. Animal Crackers is a romp, a trifle — full of puns, malapropisms and visual jokes, and utterly, unabashedly silly. The plot is just an excuse for the crazy brothers, nominally playing actual characters, to visit a Long Island mansion and pull off a series of stunts. There are…
And the Sun Stood Still. The shining strength of Dava Sobel’s And the Sun Stood Still is that, at a time when the sciences have been so muddied by sloppy thinking, willful ignorance and financial pressure, it provides insight into the scientific process and eloquently communicates the sheer beauty of…
The musical Animal Crackers, starring the Marx Brothers, debuted on Broadway in 1928 and was filmed a couple of years later. It’s a romp, a trifle — full of puns, malapropisms and visual jokes, and utterly, unabashedly silly. The plot is just an excuse for the crazy brothers, nominally playing…
Winnie Wenglewick was introduced to the threater through the Orlando International Fringe Theatre Festival, where she volunteered for ten years. That experience so inspired her that in 2006 she opened Denver’s Dangerous Theatre, and started not just producing and directing, but acting. She’ll do all three with Dangerous Theatre’s production…
Andy Haynes is a veteran of several standup scenes, moving from Washington D.C. to Seattle, then from New York to Los Angeles, cultivating his sharp joke-telling style and putting in strong appearances on Conan and the Comedy Central Half Hour. Haynes is also known for his Midnight Run comedy showcase, which enlists comedians, gets them unreasonably stoned, and let them sort through the weirdness onstage. A natural fit for the Sex Pot Comedy brand, Haynes is in town to bring his Midnight Run showcase to an appreciative and equally stoned Denver audience. Featuring Billy Wayne Davis, Noah Gardenswartz, Ian Douglas Terry, local chieftains Nathan Lund and Brent Gill, and as always, ably hosted by Sex Pot’s go-to emcee, Jordan Doll, this comedy show is the perfect way to kick off your 4/20 holiday three days early.
I walked into the Arvada Center for the Judy Garland bio-play-musical End of the Rainbow thinking about the intense gay identification with such icons as Judy Garland, Edith Piaf and Maria Callas in the mid-twentieth century, the sheer awfulness of being gay in those days, and how it created a…
Athol Fugard’s The Road to Mecca, currently playing at Miners Alley, explores huge and unanswerable questions: questions about age, death, love and trust, the meaning of home and the significance of art — how creativity animates our lives, what happens when creativity’s lost. It does this through the lives of…
The shining strength of Dava Sobel’s And the Sun Stood Still — which is currently receiving its world premiere in Boulder — is that, at a time when the sciences have been so muddied by sloppy thinking, willful ignorance and financial pressure, it provides insight into the scientific process and…
April is a month of rejuvenation and light-hearted trickery, a season of pranks, afternoon showers, and street-sweeping tickets. The truly April foolish thing to do would be to miss out on the fine assortment of comedy shows in Denver this month. With a visit from the reigning ice queen of late night talk shows, a benefit for down syndrome, some great local showcases and an appearance from improviser, singer, and all-around showman Wayne Brady, there’s plenty of levity available to carry local comedy fans through the month. Fortunately, many of these shows are free, which should provide at least a little relief to the unjustly ticketed.
When DeVotchKa’sShawn King approached Raul Pacheco to collaborate, he accepted the invitation with open arms. Despite being in the middle of recording, releasing and then touring for Ozomatli’s new album, Place in the Sun, Pacheco carved out time to work on Dreaming Sin Fronteras: Stories of Immigration and American Identity,…
Chris Fairbanks is a standup comedian, illustrator, and skateboarder who has appeared on Conan, Comedy Central’s Premium Blend,
and Jimmy Kimmel Live. Fairbanks is making the most out of his trip to Denver, with performances scheduled every night. On thursday the 20th, Fairbanks will be at the Deer Pile at 8:00pm, sharing a story for the Narrators podcast. On Friday at 8:00pm at the Oriental Theater, he’s co-headlining Sexpot Comedy’s Vernal Equinox showcase with Rory Scovel and a bevy of local chucklers. Fans can also catch Fairbanks with the Fine Gentleman’s Club at 10:00pm Saturday at the Meadowlark and performing with Andrew Ovredahl, 7:00pm on Sunday at Comedy Works South. Westword caught up with Fairbanks before his busy visit ta talk about Sexpot comedy, Texan highway system and the Tosh rape joke controversy.
David Lindsay Abaire, who first achieved fame with such surreal and fantastical comedies as Kimberly Akimbo, about a young girl with a disease that causes rapid and premature aging, and Fuddy Meers, in which a woman wakes up day after day remembering neither who she is nor what recently happened,…
The Beauty Queen of Leenane. Martin McDonagh’s The Beauty Queen of Leenane is a brilliant work, its flaws so intertwined with its crazed strengths that you can hardly separate one from the other. McDonagh grew up in London, the son of Irish parents, and invented an Ireland — and an…
DeVoktchKa’s Shawn King may not think too highly of didactic protest songs, but he has devoted himself to Dreaming Sin Fronteras: Stories of Immigration and American Identity, a massive theatrical collaboration about “dreamers”: undocumented students who have been in the United States since they were children and are seeking a…
The Beauty Queen of Leenane. Martin McDonagh’s The Beauty Queen of Leenane is a brilliant work, its flaws so intertwined with its crazed strengths that you can hardly separate one from the other. McDonagh grew up in London, the son of Irish parents, and invented an Ireland — and an…
As you walk into the theater for There Is a Happiness That Morning Is, you are handed what looks like a school notebook, the kind with a stiff black-and-white-speckled cover. You take your seat before a long blackboard. A bearded fellow watches as you settle in, chiding the latecomers. He…
Amongst the striking coal miners and their family members murdered by the Colorado National Guard during the Ludlow Massacre were five Mexican-American children. To commemorate this almost-forgotten chapter of history, Su Teatro’s Anthony J. Garcia wrote Ludlow: El Grito de Las Minas (The Cry of the Mines); he’s directing a…
As American National Poetry Slam Champion and executive director of the award-winning Minor Disturbance Youth Slam Team, Ken Arkind gets to share his words with the world. A lot of those words are about his native turf of Denver, Aurora and the Colfax Avenue connection, and his second book, Coyotes,…
Martin McDonagh’s The Beauty Queen of Leenane is a brilliant work, its flaws so intertwined with its crazed strengths that you can hardly separate one from the other. McDonagh grew up in London, the son of Irish parents, and shot to fame in the 1990s. He invented an Ireland —…
Ed Baierlein founded Germinal Stage in 1973 in a Market Street space, and later moved to a tiny theater on West 44th Avenue, just off Federal Boulevard. Here, for 26 years, he staged an eclectic mix of American and European plays: some experimental, others realistic, some profound and others just…
