He infiltrated the ranks of the Ku Klux Klan and almost single-handedly destroyed the Black Panthers. Using subversive and often illegal methods, he amassed file upon file of potentially embarrassing information on the major politicians and public figures of his day. He was also a secretive figure and a reputed…
It’s a rock-and-roll musical that puts a main character named Jesus in a land where people worship boobs. It’s also a classic hero-myth set to interpretive dance. It’s The Lovinator, and it’s going to be weird — but co-creator Brian Powell says it won’t be so weird as to not…
Beauty and the Beast. Though it’s backed by expert musicians and technicians, the real miracle is the Phamaly company itself. The leads are as good as — and often better than — anyone you’ll see anywhere. Jenna Bainbridge is the sweetest Belle imaginable, with a clear, strong soprano and, paradoxically,…
There are times when I want to scream at a director doing Shakespeare: For God’s sake, if you don’t like the damn play, don’t stage it. For this Colorado Shakespeare Festival production, Scott Williams has tarted up Measure for Measure with all kinds of extraneous trickery: red umbrellas and vinyl…
The songs from South Pacific are part of our daily diet. We hum them; we pray they don’t turn up in TV commercials; we endure bad renditions in a thousand amateur productions; and we occasionally stop to marvel that these melodies — “Some Enchanted Evening,” “Younger Than Springtime,” “This Nearly…
Garage Sale Loud: This Is It. Almost every summer, the folks at Heritage Square stage what is essentially a musical review with a thin sustaining plot line and the word “loud” in the title. The conceit is that T.J. Mullin and Annie Dwyer are siblings, and they’re reliving their youth:…
I love Phamaly, but I’m frequently unenthusiastic about the troupe’s choice of material. I skipped January’s Barefoot in the Park, having long ago been exposed to all the Neil Simon any human being should have to endure in a lifetime. When I heard that the current offering is the Disney…
If “Try to Remember” doesn’t move you, The Fantasticks plain isn’t working, and though the song carries all kinds of memories for me, I couldn’t summon up so much as a wistful thought hearing it sung in the Colorado Shakespeare Festival production. As written, the show is sweet, pretty, clever…
Garage Sale Loud: This Is It. Almost every summer, the folks at Heritage Square stage what is essentially a musical review with a thin sustaining plot line and the word “loud” in the title. The conceit is that T.J. Mullin and Annie Dwyer are siblings, and they’re reliving their youth:…
I’m not sure why director Lynne Collins chose to set her King Lear in the late nineteenth-century American West, since it doesn’t add much of anything to the theme or story. But it does very much fit the persona and acting style of John Hutton, who makes a fine, easy-talking,…
The premise of Steve Martin’s entirely ahistorical Picasso at the Lapin Agile is that Picasso and Einstein met at an artists’ hangout in Montmartre in 1904. The play that results is a meditation on the nature of creativity and the role of science and art in the twentieth century —…
Garage Sale Loud: This Is It. Almost every summer, the folks at Heritage Square stage what is essentially a musical review with a thin sustaining plot line and the word “loud” in the title. The conceit is that T.J. Mullin and Annie Dwyer are siblings, and they’re reliving their youth:…
At the start, Hedwig and the Angry Inch seems like a hipper, wilder, more raucous and contemporary variation on a theme that’s been around since Lanford Wilson’s The Madness of Lady Bright in the ’60s: the loneliness and ultimate psychic disintegration of a gay diva. But the show soon sets…
Garage Sale Loud: This Is It. Almost every summer, the folks at Heritage Square stage what is essentially a musical review with a thin sustaining plot line and the word “loud” in the title. The conceit is that T.J. Mullin and Annie Dwyer are siblings, and they’re reliving their youth:…
Dietrich & Chevalier. The Marlene Dietrich and Maurice Chevalier we all remember were artificial figures, carefully lit, costumed and photographed, their media images manipulated and protected. They were stunning in their glamour and originality, but meant entirely for the screen. For his play, Dietrich and Chevalier, Jerry Mayer has unearthed…
For the past two decades — ever since T.J. Mullin took over the space where William Oakley had been mounting melodramas — Heritage Square has produced some of this town’s most consistent entertainment. Over the years, Mullin and his actors have developed a style and approach all their own, producing…
Girls Only. The trouble with Girls Only, a two-woman evening of skits, singing, improvisation and audience participation, is that it’s so relentlessly nice. Barbara Gehring and Linda Klein have worked together for many years; at some point, they read their early diaries to each other and were transfixed by the…
The Marlene Dietrich and Maurice Chevalier we remember were artificial figures, carefully lit, costumed and photographed, their media images manipulated and protected. They were stunning in their glamour and originality, but meant entirely for the screen. For his play Dietrich and Chevalier, Jerry Mayer unearthed some unexpected biographical data on…
Girls Only. The trouble with Girls Only, a two-woman evening of conversation, skits, singing, improvisation and audience participation, is that it’s so relentlessly nice. Creator-performers Barbara Gehring and Linda Klein have worked together for many years; at some point, they read their early diaries to each other and were transfixed…
Kids’ shows can be tedious. I associate them with low production values, broad acting styles and condescension toward their intended audience. But the folks at Boulder’s Dinner Theatre approach Peter Pan with such imagination, intelligence, respect and — above all — giddy exuberance that you can’t help enjoying yourself. I…
Girls Only. The trouble with Girls Only, a two-woman evening of conversation, skits, singing, improvisation and audience participation, is that it’s so relentlessly nice. Creator-performers Barbara Gehring and Linda Klein have worked together for many years; at some point, they read their early diaries to each other and were transfixed…
You have to wonder at the sheer gutsiness of the Buntport Theater Company, whose members took an absurd idea and then — instead of playing around a bit, giggling and letting it go — decided to carry the concept forward, step by step, moment by moment, to its logical and…
