There are moments from Paula Vogel’s And Baby Makes Seven that stick with me: Anna, a pregnant woman, seated on a kitchen chair and smiling while her gay male roommate, Peter, cups one of her breasts, and Ruth, her lesbian lover, holds the other; Ruth fighting her alter ego, a…
Theresa Rebeck’s black comedy Our House is smart and timely, and makes a serious point in a highly comic way. But much of the dialogue in the first half — little jabs about Prada, wine-tasting (“pear, some floral, maybe some crushed stone”) and the general idiocy of television news (“apple…
9 Parts of Desire. Heather Raffo is the daughter of an American woman and an Iraqi father, so she’s uniquely qualified to bring the two cultures face to face in this one-woman play about the lives of Iraqi women. She herself is represented by one character, an American who feels…
For most Americans, the first Gulf War was a video-game war. We knew it only as television images of blurry streaks across greenish skies, talking heads, excited voices giving a play-by-play on tactics and military decisions; we found it impossible to understand what was happening on the ground, who was…
Life was rough for the average white male in 1950s America. Although few women had jobs and fewer still had any semblance of power in the political or business world, women actually ran the entire country. At home, they psychologically emasculated their husbands and sons. Outside the house, they helped…
The 1940’s Radio Christmas Carol. For a while, as radio manager Clifton Feddington pitches us questions, hustles his performers and generally works to keep things on track, you can’t help wondering just why you’re watching this show. Clearly, it’s supposed to be a slice of life, as awkward, desultory and…
Marley was dead.” Those are the first words of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, although he still pops up again a couple of times: Scrooge sees his old partner’s face in the door knocker, looking like “a bad lobster in a dark cellar,” and Marley’s ghost later appears festooned in…
La Cage Aux Folles. This is a big, splashy musical with lots of big, splashy song numbers. But unlike many such musicals, La Cage Aux Folles also has heart, humor and a good story to tell. In a time of intense mean-spiritedness and prejudice, it carries a message of tolerance…
I’ve already seen Buntport Theater’s Titus Andronicus: the Musical twice. But with a few honorable exceptions, theater-going has been pretty dismal this fall, so I figure I’m entitled to a little fun. As we prepare to file in, we see an eccentrically clad woman in the lobby. She’s commenting loudly…
Visiting my daughter and her family after Thanksgiving, I discovered that my two-year-old grandson was entranced by the lights outside of people’s houses. He kept wanting to drive or walk down the street and gaze; he couldn’t figure out why we couldn’t just remove the twinkling strings and take them…
La Cage Aux Folles. This is a big, splashy musical with lots of big, splashy song numbers. But unlike many such musicals, La Cage Aux Folles also has heart, humor and a good story to tell. In a time of intense mean-spiritedness and prejudice, it carries a message of tolerance…
To turn Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice into a play, writer Jon Jory chose an approach somewhat reminiscent of reader’s theater, and the current Denver Center Theatre Company production maintains the style. The story of the vulgar Mrs. Bennet’s attempt to marry off her five daughters — and how, despite…
For many years, the Denver Center Theatre Company presented A Christmas Carol every holiday season, but this year, artistic director Kent Thompson has replaced it with a big song-and-dance-laden musical: White Christmas. Both shows are sentimental, feel-good fare; both feature protagonists who learn to renounce their own cynicism and hard-heartedness…
La Cage Aux Folles. This is a big, splashy musical with lots of big, splashy song numbers. But unlike many such musicals, La Cage Aux Folles also has heart, humor and a good story to tell. In a time of intense mean-spiritedness and prejudice, it carries a message of tolerance…
La Cage Aux Folles is a big, splashy musical with lots of big, splashy numbers. But unlike most such musicals, it’s also got heart, humor and a good story to tell. Beyond all that, in a time of intense mean-spiritedness and prejudice in the political arena, this show carries a…
When he was a student at Yale in 1974, Walton Jones created The 1940’s Radio Hour, a tuneful, low-key Christmas charmer. Jones went on to a career in writing, directing and teaching, eventually taking over the theater division at Colorado State University. There he wrote a sequel: The 1940’s Radio…
The Diary of Anne Frank. The Denver Center Theatre Company has mounted Wendy Kesselman’s rewritten version of The Diary of Anne Frank, the 1955 play by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett that not only sugarcoated the horror that drove Anne into hiding and eventually destroyed her, but — in deference to…
Forget the 1950s play and movie about Anne Frank’s diary, the generations of schoolchildren assigned to read the book, the myths that have arisen around the image of Anne Frank herself, the controversies about the way she’s been represented. Just focus on Anne Frank’s words. After all these years —…
Sometimes I wonder if there’s a kind of thespian hell, in which actors who are clearly capable of so much more are stuck forever in stale shows as punishment for being bad in some way. If so, Plaid Tidings definitely qualifies. There are a few good things about this holiday…
For Better. Karen has just become engaged to Max. She’s met him face-to-face only once, but they’ve conducted a three-month relationship via cell-phone conversations, texting and instant messaging. Everyone in Karen’s small circle —- sister Francine, brother-in-law Michael, old friend Stuart (who’s secretly in love with her) and Francine’s best…
After you’ve finished your dinner and listened to the usual pre-show stuff about sponsors and visiting groups, out of the corner of your eye you see an old man shlumping around the stage, checking furniture, fiddling with props. Minutes go by without much more happening, and the audience continues to…
By 8 p.m., the place is jammed. Some in the audience look as young as high-schoolers, while others seem to be college students; there are couples, gay and straight, and a scattering of older folk. People greet each other and make plans for post-theater drinks. But they quiet down once…
