As Reasons to Be Pretty opens, Steph is railing at her lover, Greg. The girl’s a spitfire, with a habit of tossing Greg’s goldfish into the john when she’s angry, but at this moment she’s beyond all reason, incandescent with rage, a shrieking, spitting harridan who won’t allow the poor…
Reality TV is great because it’s obnoxious, because it’s trashy and because it’s unpredictable. The former characteristics are more or less unique to television (little else owes its appeal to the fact that it’s so terrible), but the latter element of relentless surprise is also definitive to Improv Star. This…
“I don’t think in terms of clean or dirty,” says comedian and promoter Onus Spears. ” I think in terms of funny or not funny.” Spears’ Huge Comedy Show, which goes down tonight, is definitely poised to be the former. Spears, who put this night together, got his start at…
Adam Carolla comes to Denver this weekend to perform some visual-aided stand-up. Carolla, who is most famous for his stints on Love Line and The Man Show, now runs a daily podcast and last year released a book, In Fifty Years We’ll All Be Chicks. We talked to him before…
From a very young age, Edie was chasing a dream common to many young girls: She wanted to be a showgirl. Except Edie is actually a boy. A dancer since age 8, Christopher Kenny spent years as a professional ballet dancer, but he never stopped chasing his real dream, the…
The Catch. Ken Weitzman’s play explores the well-worn concept of baseball as a metaphor for America itself, but in new and interesting ways. In the hands of Darryl Love, the boastful, charismatic player at the center of the story, the ball itself becomes a symbol, its seams stitching over the…
It’s hard to get enthusiastic about another production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I’ve seen so many oafishly boring and over-the-top Bottoms; puppet-like Hermias and Helenas; Demetriuses and Lysanders so generic you can’t tell them apart; annoying Pucks. And just what in hell is a director supposed to do with…
This weekend’s New Play Summit at the Denver Center Theatre Company made it clear that after decades of sometimes sputtering movement, Denver has finally become a serious force in American theater. A large crowd — local and national playwrights, press folk, tech people, poor actors and rich benefactors, along with…
Though he’s almost universally known for his children’s books — the lineup of which included one of the best children’s books of all time — Shel Silverstein was, in the truest sense of the term, a renaissance man. Aside from his poetry, he was a prolific songwriter (you know Johnny…
After a seven year run at its home in Fort Collins, the Nonesuch Theater — currently in the midst of its run of The Art of Murder, by Joe DiPietro (the same guy who wrote I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change) — is gearing up to draw the red…
The Catch. Ken Weitzman’s play explores the well-worn concept of baseball as a metaphor for America itself, but in new and interesting ways. In the hands of Darryl Love, the boastful, charismatic player at the center of the story, the ball itself becomes a symbol, its seams stitching over the…
Having created a full-out exploration of women’s relationships to their vaginas in The Vagina Monologues, feminist Eve Ensler has turned her attention to female bodies in general in The Good Body, a compassionate, would-be reassuring look at the near-universal American neurosis on the subject. The show is watchable and empathetic,…
It’s a testament to the selling power of both Ballet Nouveau Colorado and Paper Bird that this past Sunday — the biggest game day in football all year — the matinee performance of Carry On at the Lakewood Cultural Center was almost entirely sold out. And it’s safe to say…
Boulder-based cartoon company Mighty Fudge Studios revels in hijinks and notoriety, whether its producing spots for The Spike & Mike Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation or creating animated attacks on Jay Leno. No wonder the operation seems to be bursting in pride over the fact that their classic animated…
Circle Mirror Transformation. At a small-town community center, four people are participating in an acting workshop run by Marty, who combines a little knowledge of theater with quite a bit of new-agey yearning. The participants are Marty’s husband, one-time hippie James; sexy Theresa, who spent time in New York and…
There’s a lot going on in The Catch, a world premiere that grew out of a reading at last year’s New Play Festival. Ken Weitzman’s script presents a swirl of ideas — some of them fairly obvious, but all explored in interesting ways. Preeminent among them is the well-worn concept…
How perfect that Buntport is reviving Kafka on Ice — first produced in 2004, and one of my favorite of the company’s many inventive works — as part of a citywide celebration of all things Czech. First, because Franz Kafka is the Czech author best known in this country, with…
It’ll be a substantially less gay old time than previously anticipated at the Curious Theatre tomorrow: OUT @ Curious, the theater company’s tribute to the more festive segment of its audience that we told you about in the Night+Day section of this week’s print edition (still on the racks), has…
More than once during the Buntport Theater’s Kafka on Ice, the character of Franz Kafka (played by Josh Hartwell) comments on how stupid it is to stage an ice-capade revolving around his life and work. “It’s inappropriate!” he protests. As justification, toward the end of the play, another character offers…
For the last year, something’s been missing from the Lida Project. Certainly, it hasn’t been creativity or an open mind; under the energetic guidance of stand-in artistic director Julie Rada, the local experimental theater group in fact thrived as well as any small group of its kind can in Denver,…
With a name like the 24rd Triannual Intronational Dance Competition, absurdity was to be expected. And the event did not disappoint in the ridiculous department. The interpretive dance-off at the Mercury Cafe featured a juggling unicyclist, a girl in a bubble-wrap gown and many people unafraid to roll around on…
Comedian Hal Sparks will perform the first of five Denver shows tomorrow at Comedy Works South. Sparks, who has hosted Talk Soup and starred in Queer As Folk, has been focusing more lately on his stand-up career. His comedy special is available now through Showtime, he has a CD coming…
