Fall premieres and season-openers: Five more plays to catch this week

Denver’s fall theater season is already off to a hot and heavy start with offerings of every stripe, from classically funny (The Liar and Unnecessary Farce) to explosive (Justin Bieber Meets Al Qaeda) to thought-provoking (Clybourne Park) to just plain silly (Completely Hollywood (abridged)). And due to the wealth of…

Curious Theatre’s production of Clybourne Park is a stunner

Racism persists, but the ways in which we feel and express it change with the times — as exemplified in Bruce Norris’s brilliant Clybourne Park. The play was inspired by Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, at the end of which the Youngers, a struggling black family, are about…

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Cats. There’s not much of a plot to Cats. You meet the Jellicles, with their cheerful faces and bright black eyes, who dance “under the light of the Jellicle moon”; the Ming-vase-smashing cat burglars, Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer; fat, elegant, gentleman’s club-haunting Bustopher Jones; and contrary-minded Rum Tum Tugger. The show’s…

The Book of Mormon will come to Denver early but won’t stick around long

Despite their nearly two decades of golden success, Trey Parker and Matt Stone have always put on for Colorado — magnum opus South Park, for example, is basically a fifteen-year-long-and-counting tribute to the home state — and given that track record, we weren’t surprised at all when they announced that…

Now Playing

Cats. There’s not much of a plot to Cats. You meet the Jellicles, with their cheerful faces and bright black eyes, who dance “under the light of the Jellicle moon”; the Ming-vase-smashing cat burglars, Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer; fat, elegant, gentleman’s club-haunting Bustopher Jones; and contrary-minded Rum Tum Tugger. The show’s…

For 9/11 play The Guys, too much time has passed

Anne Nelson, a journalism professor, wrote The Guys very soon after 9/11, and the play closely follows her own experiences. Like her protagonist, Joan, Nelson could think of no real way to contribute — plumbers were needed, Joan tells us, but not intellectuals — until she learned of a fire…

Now Playing

Cats. There’s not much of a plot to Cats. You meet the Jellicles, with their cheerful faces and bright black eyes, who dance “under the light of the Jellicle moon”; the Ming-vase-smashing cat burglars, Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer; fat, elegant, gentleman’s club-haunting Bustopher Jones; and contrary-minded Rum Tum Tugger. The show’s…

Now Showing

Cats. There’s not much of a plot to Cats. You meet the Jellicles, with their cheerful faces and bright black eyes, who dance “under the light of the Jellicle moon”; the Ming-vase-smashing cat burglars, Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer; fat, elegant, gentleman’s club-haunting Bustopher Jones; and contrary-minded Rum Tum Tugger. The show’s…

Edge Theatre Company’s Faithful misfires

The opening scene of Chazz Palminteri’s Faithful is intriguing: a woman tied to a chair, a mobster with a gun preparing to finish her off. The tension is ready-made, and the dialogue comically and continually upends our expectations. The woman, Margaret, is feisty, scoffing at the very idea of a…

Now Playing

Cats. There’s not much of a plot to Cats. You meet the Jellicles, with their cheerful faces and bright black eyes, who dance “under the light of the Jellicle moon”; the Ming-vase-smashing cat burglars, Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer; fat, elegant, gentleman’s club-haunting Bustopher Jones; and contrary-minded Rum Tum Tugger. The show’s…

The Shape of Things offers truthful, touching performances

Adam, an undergraduate, encounters free-spirited graduate student Evelyn (note the names, please) while working as a guard at the university art museum. Incensed by the town’s prudery, which dictated covering the genitalia of a statue of God himself with vine leaves, Evelyn is about to vandalize the piece by spray-painting…