I once contacted all the girls who had ever played Clara in Boulder Ballet’s Nutcracker for an article. Several were now college students, one at Princeton; one of them was dancing in Canada. In every ballet company — professional, amateur or somewhere in between — the role of Clara is…
I didn’t want to see Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman; I’d read the reviews from London and New York, which all said that the play — which deals with torture, interrogation, child mutilation and murder — was brilliant, but harrowing to watch. I’ve been trying not to obsess about torture (while…
Aphrodisiac. Playwright Rob Handel’s inspiration is the affair between Congressman Gary Condit and intern Chandra Levy, which erupted into the media when Levy disappeared in 2001. Her body was discovered a year later; although suspicion clouded his career, Condit was never officially accused of murder. Aphrodisiac approaches this story obliquely…
Yes, yes, yes, we all know that power is the ultimate aphrodisiac, although I think it’s seduced more powerful men into selling their souls — like Henry Kissinger, the morally decayed author of that quote — than it has nubile young women into hopping in bed with the old goats…
I loved Our Town when I was sixteen and played Emily at school, but I didn’t remember much about it. I knew that Thornton Wilder’s play was a sweetly moving evocation of small-town American life at the beginning of the twentieth century, but with a plot involving perpetually kitchen-bound women,…
The Big Bang. Sometimes it’s nice not to have to think too much, to just settle back and watch a couple of frenetically energetic guys working really hard to earn your good will — and your entertainment dollars. Oh, and to make you laugh. The Big Bang posits the following…
There’s a historic tension between science and religion — at least between science and literalistic, primitive religion — and it’s become especially virulent over the last decade or so. The schism has never made much sense: Some religious people find that scientific advances only feed their sense of wonder and…
The Big Bang. Sometimes it’s nice not to have to think too much, to just settle back and watch a couple of frenetically energetic guys working really hard to earn your good will — and your entertainment dollars. Oh, and to make you laugh. The Big Bang posits the following…
The Big Bang. Sometimes it’s nice not to have to think too much, to just settle back and watch a couple of frenetically energetic guys working really hard to earn your good will — and your entertainment dollars. Oh, and to make you laugh. The Big Bang posits the following…
The Big Bang. Sometimes it’s nice not to have to think too much, to just settle back and watch a couple of frenetically energetic guys working really hard to earn your good will — and your entertainment dollars. Oh, and to make you laugh. The Big Bang posits the following…
I went to Ebenezer expecting the usual hilarious, free-form mayhem of Heritage Square and encountered an unexpected solemnity. The company’s version of A Christmas Carol made up the first half of the evening, and it was swift and workmanlike, if lower-key than many of the group’s offerings. Still, there were…
The Big Bang. Sometimes it’s nice not to have to think too much, to just settle back and watch a couple of frenetically energetic guys working really hard to earn your good will — and your entertainment dollars. Oh, and to make you laugh. The Big Bang posits the following…
When you enter Buntport Theater, you find yourself facing what looks like the front of a long, low, open dollhouse with rooms on two floors. These spaces are inhabited by various eccentric characters. Theres Polly, the little girl who serves as narrator; a pair of gossiping old crones; the hapless…
The big draw for this Denver Center production of Sweet Charity is Molly Ringwald in the title role. Almost everyone remembers Ringwald from the films with which director John Hughes defined American teendom: Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink. A talented actress and physically beautiful — although not…
The Big Bang. Sometimes it’s nice not to have to think too much, to just sit back and watch a couple of frenetically energetic guys work really hard to earn your good will — and your entertainment dollars. Oh, and to make you laugh. The Big Bang posits the following:…
From its unappetizing title to its use of a narrator Lockstock, a police officer who pontificates humorously about exposition, metaphor and politics for the benefit of a quintessentially Dickensian orphan named Little Sally Urinetown is a self-consciously anti-musical musical. The songs are tuneful, varied and appealing, and almost every one…
With Season’s Greetings, estimable and prolific English writer Alan Ayckbourn has created an antidote not only to the usual Christmas saccharine, but also to all of the half-baked, skit-filled attempts to make the holiday hip. The play shows a dysfunctional middle-class family gathering for their annual celebration. These people have…
The Big Bang. Sometimes it’s nice not to have to think too much, to just settle back and watch a couple of frenetically energetic guys working really hard to earn your good will — and your entertainment dollars. Oh, and to make you laugh. The Big Bang posits the following…
I want to like Arthur Miller’s plays — and I do like his politics. But the truth is, I have trouble with Miller even at his best — with his lack of humor, ponderousness and stultifying self-pity, with his dated tropes and florid language. And The Price, currently playing at…
The Big Bang. Sometimes it’s nice not to have to think too much, to just settle back and watch a couple of frenetically energetic guys working really hard to earn your good will — and your entertainment dollars. Oh, and to make you laugh. The Big Bang posits the following…
I had a great time at Boulder’s Dinner Theatre’s Crazy for You, and now I’m trying to figure out just why. First and foremost, I suppose, were the songs. You know how it is with musicals, especially those from the first half of the twentieth century, on which this show…
The Big Bang. Sometimes it’s nice not to have to think too much, to just settle back and watch a couple of frenetically energetic guys working really hard to earn your good will — and your entertainment dollars. Oh, and to make you laugh. The Big Bang posits the following…
