A great production of an excellent play can set you on fire with passion for the art form. You walk out of the theater knowing that something authentic has been uncovered about the very nature of human experience. And you realize that this particular revelation could only come via the…
“It’s hard being easy,” remarks the prostitute in Erik Tieze’s new one-act, Motherlode, the first–and best–of three works by Colorado playwrights in the Changing Scene Theater’s Summerplay: Series 2. She’s wryly describing her own workload, of course. But the line also sums up the predicament faced by the play’s characters:…
Of all the summer musicals available this season, the best so far is Ain’t Misbehavin’, featuring the music of Fats Waller. The production now playing at the Eulipions cultural center erupts with energy, talent and intelligence. These songs are gutsy, wise and full of heart–earthy, sweetly romantic, at times patriotic…
The difficulty in writing a play about another culture and people far, far away is bringing the characters to life. So it comes as no surprise that City-Stage Ensemble’s production of Dan Hiester’s new play, Family Gatherings, a thinly disguised defense of the Palestine Liberation Organization, is a bad trip…
Witchcraft, murder, mayhem, suicide, cynicism and, finally, the tyrant’s head on a pike–Shakespeare really knew how to grab an audience. And despite a somewhat tedious first act, the Colorado Shakespeare Festival’s production of Macbeth ultimately gives this prurient material the treatment it deserves. The second act is splendid. Even the…
A middle-aged soldier loses his head over a beautiful slut, betrays his wife, his country and himself while spinning slowly into a libertine’s decline. He makes a lot of tactical mistakes as a soldier because he has lost his sense of proportion, all of which eventually leads to his defeat…
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead–and the production now at the Theatre on Broadway very nearly succeeds in burying them. Playwright Tom Stoppard takes two of the most ambiguous figures in Shakespeare, Hamlet’s school chums Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and gives them a life of their own, creating a story in which…
When the Puritan Malvolio is funny, Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night works. It’s an odd comedy, full of dark emotions and motives, sexual ambiguities, deliberate humiliations and mistaken identity. In some productions, these themes are played seriously and the whole show falls apart. Fortunately, the Colorado Shakespeare Festival production finds exactly the…
She lures him into her chamber and keeps him there like a big, hungry spider. First she seduces him, and then he can’t leave because he throws his back out. It’s Christmas Eve and there’s a blizzard raging outside–no cabs, no limos. All the while she works on him, because…
The lighthearted feminist musical review A…My Name Is Still Alice, a collection of songs and sketches now in its regional premiere at the Theatre on Broadway, is more about playful self-mockery than genuine social issues. It may not be a comic wonderland–there are some scratchy performances among the six-woman ensemble…
Something’s happenin’ here, and what it is ain’t exactly clear. But it’s exciting, funny and bugged-out. The Home Medical Shopping Network, an hour-long performance theater piece now playing at The Bug, takes on the business of medicine and the inanity of cable TV (and the culture that has produced them…
It’s great fun to see famous Broadway and Hollywood actors on a Denver stage–it seems to bring out the “golly gee” in all of us. Wendy Wasserstein’s slick, sophisticated and tepid comedy The Sisters Rosensweig, passing through Denver via the Auditorium Theatre’s “renovated” stage, boasts a fine professional cast–all established…
On the surface Nunsense II: The Second Coming may sound irreverent, anti-Catholic and irreligious. But like its predecessor Nunsense, it’s none of those things. The jokes are funniest to those most familiar with Catholicism–one former Catholic schoolboy informed me that the Latin motto on the floor of Mount Saint Helen’s…
Natalie Belcon is beautiful, funny and equipped with a luscious, rich voice. You can hear a long way down into the sound she makes, and in Robert Garner Center Attractions’ The World Goes ‘Round, she makes the world go around all by herself–almost. Belcon’s not really all by herself–there are…
Who is the real monster in the gothic tale of Dr. Frankenstein and his handmade man–the poor innocent creature born against his will at the hands of the scientist, or the scientist himself? Mary Shelley’s original story made it clear that those who presume to tinker with nature (or tread…
The villainous Iago makes everything happen in Othello. He pulls all the strings and pushes all the buttons to make others jump to his will. And since that will is evil, all his machinations lead as well to his own destruction. You’ve got to love it. Compass Theatre Company’s production…
Did you miss the road-show Phantom of the Opera? No problem: The Country Dinner Playhouse is presenting a far more spirited version of the classic horror tale, the excellent Arthur Kopit/Maury Yeston Phantom. For my money, it’s a better telling of the story than Andrew Lloyd Webber’s–or, for that matter,…
It will help if you like cruise-ship activities–conga lines, audience-participation skits and sing-alongs. Five Guys Named Moe, now at the Auditorium Theatre, is the kind of raucous musical designed to bring out the silliness in you. Jolly, extravagantly choreographed, riddled with jokes and sight gags, Moe is more music than…
Interesting, stimulating family entertainment is rare enough in Denver, so a sprightly show like Annie is welcome, indeed. Now playing at the Denver Civic Theatre, the musical revue offers local parents a breather from the inanities of television and a handy opportunity to introduce children to the excitement of live…
It’s all about power. The combination of skill, intelligence and soul-numbing, single-minded will that it takes to get rich in a capitalist society might propel one into the politburo in a communist society. So George Bernard Shaw speculated in his extravagant comedy of ideas The Millionairess, now in a hilarious…
Reinventing Japanese director Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 film Rashomon has become something of an American pastime. The movie was a huge international hit, a brilliantly acted, visionary retelling of two Ryunsuke Autagawa stories. It was first remade in America in 1964 as The Outrage, a pretentious but still engaging version of…
There is so much to Brian Friel’s Dancing at Lughnasa, it’s a pity there isn’t more. The Denver Center Theatre Company production is so rich in character, so well acted, so humane, so involving, it is difficult to say why it also just misses being completely satisfying. But then, the…
