Performing Arts

Theater companies are packing up the tinsel and fake snow for another season, but there are still a few more options on local stages. Keep reading for capsule reviews of productions around town, including one stunner that closes this weekend: The Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess.

Who has the most popular version of The Nutcracker? Colorado does.

The Edge Theater’s production of Arthur Miller’s A View From the Bridge doesn’t go for electrifying drama or make a point of foreshadowing the play’s incipient violence in the naturalistic early scenes. But this in no way diminishes the involving nature of the experience, the shock of the climax or…

Once a year or so, the Lone Tree Arts Center enlists the services of director Randal Myler and puts on a play; these productions are always impeccably cast and stylishly staged. This year’s is a festive holiday piece, It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play, writer Joe Landry’s version…

After first getting noticed in the Boston comedy scene while attending grad school, Myq Kaplan rose to prominence for his clever jokes and domination of standup contests. In addition to strong showings on Last Comic Standing and America’s Got Talent, Kaplan has performed on late-night staples such as Conan, The…

A gargantuan juniper tree twists its way from the floor to the ceiling of Junction Box, Wonderbound’s studio and rehearsal space; dancers rehearse combinations underneath leaves constructed from umbrellas.  Anyone stumbling across this scene might feel that they’ve walked into a fairy tale, or maybe a scene from James and…

Patrick Barlow’s adaptation of A Christmas Carol, now playing at Miners Alley, walks the line between comedy and moments of real pathos. Barlow is the author of the Tony-winning The 39 Steps, a send-up of Hitchcock that’s also an homage, and his witty Christmas Carol script is fairly faithful to the…

Tracy Jones joined Colorado Ballet during the 2012-’13 season. In 2013, the native of Ireland was named one of Pointe Magazine’s ten corps de ballet dancers to watch. She is certainly an eye-catcher on the stage, with flawless technique and a flair that ensures she will have a lengthy career…

Despite enduring a lifetime’s worth of adversity in a few short months, Tig Notaro has remained indefatigably prolific and unfailingly hilarious throughout her struggles with health, heartbreak and loss. Since releasing the instant-classic album Live, Notaro has worked ceaselessly; she was the focus of the heart-wrenching documentary Tig, performed shirtless…

I’ve seen many productions of A Christmas Carol over the years, most of them pleasant in a Hallmark card sort of way, none of them memorable. So I’m trying to figure out just what makes this year’s A Christmas Carol, an annual offering at the Denver Center for the Performing…

The Arvada Center for the Arts’s holiday show, I’ll Be Home for Christmas, is a world premiere — but that doesn’t mean its world-class. In fact, I’ll Be Home for Christmas is nothing to write home about, according to reviewer Juliet Wittman. But one reader disagrees. Says Susan: Are you…

In these uncertain times, the programatic cheeriness of the holiday season can become oppressive. Fortunately for local sad sacks, nothing cuts through the happy humbuggery better than standup comedy. In addition to fine selections at clubs and theaters across the state, Coloradans can enjoy a bevy of brewery shows, gut-busting…

The Aurora Fox’s production of The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess left me with a head swimming with music, ideas and feelings inspired by the sweep and majesty of the chorus’s offerings, the sheer beauty of the songs, and questions about changes to the original 1935 folk opera, titled simply Porgy…

Terry Dodd, a fixture on Denver’s theater scene for decades, passed away in October; he will be remembered with a celebration of his life at 6 p.m. Monday, November 29, at the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities. Juliet Wittman, Westword’s longtime theater critic, not only wrote about his…

While the Arvada Center production of I’ll Be Home for Christmas is a lump of coal in the holiday-show stocking (read the review of I’ll Be Home here), other offerings around town look much more promising. Here are four to explore: 1. A Christmas Carol is essentially the same production…

Usually a show having its world premiere in Denver is something to celebrate, but every now and then you wonder if you’re witnessing a premiere only because no other theater in the country wanted to stage the thing. I’ll Be Home for Christmas, a musical written by Kenn McLaughlin with…

Many Coloradans are still reeling from last week’s election results. In the hours following the final tallies, social media was essentially one nationwide primal scream of despair. Friendships ended in an acrimonious storm of tweets, Thanksgivings were made even more awkward and hope was very nearly lost. But in a heartening…

Both recovering addicts and comedians, Mark Lundholm and Kurt Matthews, aka The Addicts, have built careers of making their respective recovery processes not only relatable, but funny. No, it wasn’t funny when Matthews got in a drunk-driving accident in 1984 and almost killed himself and the girls in the other car. Losing relationships and being arrested wasn’t necessarily funny, either. But both Lundholm and Matthews recognize the humor in their flaws. “The insanity is funny,” says Lundholm.

In Lost Creatures, local playwright Melissa Lucero McCarl imagines a meeting between two highly theatrical figures of the last century. The first is Kenneth Tynan, a theater critic whose brilliant writing brought him early fame. Guardian reviewer Michael Billington recently wrote that reading the book of essays that Tynan released…