Top-notch performances lift Man of La Mancha

Based on the seventeenth-century masterpiece Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes, Man of La Mancha was an award-gobbling sensation when it first appeared in 1965 — but after decades of professional and community productions, the musical has less impact. Still, the Arvada Center has mounted a big, sumptuous show, filled…

Man of La Mancha still has impact at Arvada Center

Man of La Mancha, based on Miquel de Cervantes’s seventeenth-century masterpiece Don Quixote, was an award-gobbling sensation when it was first staged in 1965. The musical has less impact now that it’s been through decades of professional and community productions. Still, the Arvada Center has mounted a big, sumptuous show,…

The Other Place offers a riveting look at a mind unraveling

At the beginning of The Other Place, Sharr White’s absorbing study of a mind unraveling, a woman is standing at a podium giving a lecture on a new drug intended as a cure for dementia. She is poised, intelligent, witty, self-aware. This is Juliana, a neuroscientist originally involved in developing…

Photos: Drag Nation re-interprets Girls Gone Wild at Tracks

For the latest Drag Nation night at Tracks, performers tackled “Girls Gone Wild.” The night’s energy and costumes certainly fit the theme as personalities including Nina Flowers and Chad Michaels strutted and danced their stuff. Continue reading for highlights from the evening, and visit our full slide show for more…

Playwright Sharr White returns to Boulder with The Other Place

Sharr White’s plays have been workshopped and mounted around the country over the years, and he has received several awards — but it was The Other Place, his piece about a brilliant woman scientist’s battle with dementia, that brought him to Broadway last year. Laurie Metcalf played the scientist, Juliana;…

The Pitmen Painters isn’t as passionate as its characters

Based on historical events, The Pitmen Painters tells the story of a group of miners in a small town near Northumberland who sign up for an art-appreciation class taught by art historian Robert Lyon. When the men show no interest in his slides, Lyon realizes that having them create their…

The Brothers Size finds meaning in dreams, words and movement

With the regional premiere of The Brothers Size, Curious Theatre has given Denverites their first chance to experience the work of Tarell Alvin McCraney, an African-American writer barely out of his twenties who’s been hailed on both sides of the Atlantic as an important new voice in theater. McCraney grew…

The campy Bat Boy has the insane logic of a tabloid serial

The story of Bat Boy originated in the now-defunct Weekly World News tabloid, which announced that a scientist had found a creature that was half boy, half bat in a West Virginia cave. Many adventures followed: Bat Boy was captured for science experiments and escaped, captured by the FBI and…

Doug Benson on comedy, high concepts and Doug Loves Movies

Doug Benson’s appearance in Denver this weekend is a welcome addition to a long line of marijuana-themed events that have given Colorado a globally recognized identity as a THC utopia. As the co-star of The Marijuana-Logues and the documentary Super High Me — in which Benson takes on the Morgan…

Nick Sugar goes to bat for Equinox’s Bat Boy: The Musical

The opening weekend of Equinox Theatre’s Bat Boy: The Musical last month was a smash — sold-out houses on both nights, and standing ovations for the cast. But a few days later came the horrifying news that Adam Perkes, the intense actor who played Bat Boy, had been found dead…