Squire Lounge Comedy Night: It lives! It lives!

Denver’s comedy community despaired when heckler-ready Squire Lounge comedy night open-mike host Greg Baumhauer decided to call it quits. The comedy night was mean, it was ugly, it was the toughest crowd in town — if you could even get them to listen to you in the first place. But…

Metro State’s theater department wins accreditation

Bravo! The theater department at Metropolitan State College of Denver has become the first college theater department in the state to gain accreditation from the National Association of Schools of Theatre. And not for just one of its programs, but all three: the BA in theater, the BFA in musical…

Life is a drag with Viva las Divas at Lannie’s Clocktower Cabaret

If life is a drag, why not play to the hilt? Since this is the second Wednesday of the month, Lannie’s Clocktower Cabaret is presenting the Viva las Divas Art of Illusion Follies, hosted by female illusion artists (drag queens, in shorthand) Alexandra Winters and Harley Quinn and featuring a…

Law school is totally glamorous — at least in this CU musical

Glamorous Law School, a new musical written, directed and performed exclusively by University of Colorado Law School students, opens Thursday at the Dairy Center for the Arts in Boulder. So how glamorous can a musical about law school be? Glamorous enough to provide a brief respite from actual law-school life,…

Chess: A Musical is nearly saved by director Rod Lansberry

Did you understand it? I couldn’t hear the words. They just kept yelling and yelling. — Overheard in the women’s bathroom after the play The semi-operatic Chess doesn’t have a lot of dialogue, and the music ebbs and surges continually like the sea — sometimes lyrical, witty or moving, and…

The Thorn, a Vegas-style passion play, takes Easter up a notch

For hundreds of years, Christians all over the world have been telling the story of Jesus Christ’s life and death in the form of dramatic theater. From the devout actors in the Philippines using actual nails-through-the-hands, to Mel Gibson grossing $600 million portraying the bloodiest Jesus in Hollywood history, passion…

Then Sean Met Khalid handles racism with candor and humor

The death of Trayvon Martin has thrust race relations back to the top of America’s list of conversation topics. But Carlos Heredia hopes for discourse that doesn’t just happen as a result of violence. He wrote and directed a musical that he hoped would help create it: Then Sean Met…

National Theatre Conservatory offers final showcase performances

The National Theatre Conservatory — a training ground for young actors, and one of the jewels of the Denver Performing Arts Complex — is closing its doors after more than 25 years. As a parting gift, the last crop of graduating students will offer showcase performances of Fahrenheit 451, which…

Buntport’s Tommy Lee Jones Goes to Opera Alone is brilliantly original

Buntport Theater Company has always had a creative way with music: The ensemble’s choices for openings, accompaniment and intermissions are spot-on, and some of its shows have included fruitful collaborations with local musicians. So when two Buntporters spotted tough-guy movie star Tommy Lee Jones standing in line at the Santa…

Becky Shaw turns banal truisms about love and family on their heads

The Slater family in Gina Gionfriddo’s Becky Shaw comprises three odd, bitter and unhappy people who nonetheless live in uneasy equilibrium until Becky Shaw enters their lives through the always-dangerous mechanism of a blind date. Suzanna is relatively sane but obsessed with horror movies; as the play opens, she’s mourning…

Make a date with Becky Shaw, a play about a blind date

Becky Shaw, the new production that Chip Walton is directing at Curious Theatre Company, opened the weekend before the Best of Denver issue — in which we published no reviews. (We did, however, give several awards to Curious in the Best of Denver 2012.) So here’s a preview of Juliet…

Photos: Steampunks take over the Tivoli Student Union

AnomalyCon 2012, Denver’s “first and only steampunk convention,” came down March 23 through March 25 at the Tivoli Student Union. The highlight of the weekend-long string of conferences, celebrity appearances and networking was Saturday night’s Grand Ball; Emily Driskill brings these photos back from the party. See the full slide…

Five things William Shatner hasn’t done — yet

Everyone’s favorite eccentric Renaissance man, William Shatner, is in Denver for his one-man performance of Shatner’s World: We Just Live In It this evening at the Buell Theatre. For Shat-nerds, seeing this show will be a lot like making it with an alien hottie. And for everyone else who needs…

Now Playing

The Drowsy Chaperone. The role of the Man in the Chair is the spine for The Drowsy Chaperone, and the primary reason that this lighthearted, inconsequential and very silly show is so much fun to watch: Without him, it would just float off into the ether. But with him, we’re…