I have to admit, I spent almost the entire evening at the Aurora Fox either glancing at my watch or wondering why Nilo Cruz’s Anna in the Tropics had won a Pulitzer. It’s not that the concept isn’t terrific: The play is set at the turn of the last century…
Look at me,” Uncle Peck pleads to his young niece, the narrator-protagonist of How I Learned to Drive. “Listen to me.” And that’s just what she does. Deeply and over a period of years, she ponders her relationship with the uncle who first molested her when she was eleven, a…
From the moment you walk into the theater and see the topsy-turvy set, the central metaphor of Vote for Uncle Marty is obvious. And although the suggestion that we live in an upside-down world isn’t particularly original, the play certainly is, since it arises from the collaborative work of Buntport’s…
All in the Timing. David Ives’s six one-acts are all about language, communication and understanding, and also chance and fate. The dialogue is light and funny and fizzy, and it gets your frontal lobes buzzing as you attempt to catch and process all the flying puns, allusions, jokes, rhythms and…
John and Jen are not lovers, as the title of John & Jen might lead you to believe, but children of a violently abusive father in the ’60s. Jen, the older sibling, does everything she can to protect her little brother. But when she leaves for college, becoming a free-spirited,…
All in the Timing. David Ives’s six one-acts are all about language, communication and understanding, and also chance and fate. The dialogue is light and funny and fizzy, and it gets your frontal lobes buzzing as you attempt to catch and process all the flying puns, allusions, jokes, rhythms and…
At the opening-night performance of The Little Mermaid, I saw a little girl perched on a booster seat, ecstatically dancing her upper body to the big numbers; in the row behind me, a pair of sisters waved their small sparkly shoes. At intermission, wide-eyed boys wandered the corridors in adorable…
In Craig Lucas’s Prelude to a Kiss, Peter and Rita meet cute and proceed to have one of those idiosyncratic, charming conversations that invariably herald on-stage love — except that this conversation has points of real shadow and light. Soon after discovering that she has a passion for social justice,…
All in the Timing. David Ives’s six one-acts are all about language, communication and understanding, and also chance and fate. The dialogue is light and funny and fizzy, and it gets your frontal lobes buzzing as you attempt to catch and process all the flying puns, allusions, jokes, rhythms and…
Modern Muse has kicked off its new season with All In the Timing, six one-acts by David Ives, a witty, sometimes brilliant word-spinner. The plays are all about language, communication and understanding, and also chance and fate. The dialogue is light and funny and fizzy, and it gets your frontal…
Sista’s and Storytellers. This is not a play, and it’s not exactly a cabaret act, either. It’s sort of a cross between a slumber party and a church service, as a group of women who sang together as children in a choir called the Heavenly Voices come together for a…
Before I saw Central City Opera’s The Saint of Bleecker Street, my knowledge of Gian Carlo Menotti was confined to the Christmas classic Amahl and the Night Visitors and his short ballet The Unicorn, the Gorgon and the Manticore, about a poet and the three mythical animals that represent different…
I was so impressed by Next Stage’s Assassins that in Westword’s 2007 Best of Denver issue, it was named Best Production of a Musical. The current revival features most of the same cast members, and Sondheim’s score — which takes on such American idioms as ballads, hymns, rock music and…
All’s Well That Ends Well. This play isn’t Shakespeare’s best: It lacks the usual poetry and insight, and the plot is highly problematic. Helena, one of those smart, resourceful, charming heroines we’ve seen in other Shakespearean comedies, is in love with Bertram, son of the Countess who raised her, but…
Urinetown, the Musical, the show about a world in which a money-grubbing corporation controls a population’s right to relieve itself by charging exorbitant fees, is not as odd and daring as it once seemed, but it remains highly entertaining, cleverly written and filled with witty, hummable songs in several styles,…
There’s a reason why All¹s Well That Ends Well is rarely performed: The play is far from Shakespeare’s best. For the most part, it lacks the usual poetry and insight, and the plot is highly problematic. Helena, one of those smart, resourceful, charming heroines we’ve seen in other Shakespearean comedies,…
Around the World in 80 Days. The Victorians became increasingly fascinated with stories of adventure as technological advances in travel made their world smaller and more accessible. It didn’t hurt that so much of that world map was colored an imperial red. In his famous novel Around the World in…
The Colorado Shakespeare Festival’s production of Julius Caesar has some strong performances and interesting ideas, but it doesn’t hang together conceptually. The play itself is problematic. It begins with a focus on the uses and abuses of state power, as Julius Caesar, home from the wars, seems set to become…
The Central City Opera production of Jules Massenet’s Cendrillon, or Cinderella, is a visual feast. The costumes of Sara Jean Tosetti — who looks a little witchy herself in her playful program photo — combine charming empire lines with the crooked, cunning shapes we associate with fairy tales. From the…
Around the World in 80 Days. The Victorians became increasingly fascinated with stories of adventure as technological advances in travel made their world smaller and more accessible. It didn’t hurt that so much of that world map was colored an imperial red. In his famous novel Around the World in…
On one level, Who¹s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a very literate and sophisticated Jerry Springer show. George and Martha are a longtime married couple. He’s a history professor at a small New England college whose career is far less glittering than he’d once hoped it would be; she’s the…
Around the World in 80 Days. The Victorians became increasingly fascinated with stories of adventure as technological advances in travel made their world smaller and more accessible. It didn’t hurt that so much of that world map was colored an imperial red. In his famous novel Around the World in…
