Fiddler on the Roof. This production of Fiddler on the Roofdoes full justice to Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick's brilliant songs, tells the evocative story with clarity and feeling, and also — uniquely — sounds the musical's deeper, darker chords. The action is set in a rural Russian Jewish community whose members can be quarrelsome and petty or generous and helpful, but always unified by timeless bonds of ritual and tradition. At the center of the community is Tevye, a poor milkman struggling to survive and with five daughters to worry about. His worries come to a head when the three eldest daughters, each in turn, defy his patriarchal authority: Instead of submitting to the manipulations of matchmaker Yente, Tzeitel chooses the tailor Motel and only then asks her father's permission; Hodel falls in love with radical Marxist Perchik and prepares to follow him wherever his revolutionary work leads; and, worst of all, Chava marries outside the faith, choosing a Russian soldier. A lot of Tevyes come across like Jewish Santa Clauses, but Wayne Kennedy's version is a different animal entirely. He gives the comedy its due but lets us see the profound sadness beneath the jovial exterior — and something more. This man is loving to his children, generous to the stranger — as Jews are historically required to be — and jokey and argumentative with God. But there are deep currents of rage coursing through his veins as he contemplates the loss of everything he's cherished, including his little bird, his daughter Chava. The entire cast is strong and conveys a sense of authenticity and respect for Jewish history, and the menace humming beneath the action reminds us of the real dangers of the pogroms. Presented by BDT Stage (formerly Boulder's Dinner Theatre) through February 28 at 5501 Arapahoe Avenue, Boulder; for information, call 303-449-6000 or go to bouldersdinnertheatre.com. Reviewed December 4.
Forbidden Broadway: Alive and Kicking. The Broadway musical is a big, bloated, conventional, endlessly copycatting phenomenon that cries out to be skewered, and Forbidden Broadway— in various incarnations — has been busily skewering it for over three decades. Despite this, Forbidden Broadway: Alive and Kicking never feels packaged. Starring four of our brightest local talents, it's fresh, alive, and very, very funny. The roster of parodies takes in everything fromLes Misérablesthrough the Disney churn-outs to the serious, soulful Once, and the show manages to be savage without losing its good humor. If you hate the musical in question, you'll find the parody hilarious; the same is true if you love/hate it; and there's a subversive thrill in seeing even work you genuinely admire skillfully satirized. A couple of numbers miss, however. The Book of Mormon had to be in the mix, given its phenomenal success, but the song in which Trey Parker and Matt Stone exult in their own cleverness and wealth isn't nearly as funny as the musical itself. Still, most of the parodies sting beautifully. "On My Phone," sung by a bored Eponine texting away backstage in Les Misis a comedic gem. Then there's the jealousy duet between Chita Rivera, the first Anita in West Side Story, and Rita Moreno, who played the role in the movie, sung to the tune of "America." And no matter how often Wickedgets satirized, you can't prick that hot-air-filled balloon often enough. This show requires a lot of talent, and the performers have it in spades: splendid voices, clear enunciation (essential), charm and fearless comic chops. It all adds up to one of the brightest, sharpest, most entertaining evenings around. Presented by the Garner Galleria Theatre through March 1, Denver Performing Arts Complex, 303-893-4100, denvercenter.org. Reviewed December 25.
Grounded. As Grounded begins, The Pilot is at the top of her game, cocky and tough, exulting in her job of carrying out airstrikes on Iraqi targets, then veering off into the solitary blue freedom of the sky: "I'm long gone by the time the boom happens," she says. On leave, she whiles away the evenings drinking and playing pool with her "boys." But like many a warrior before her, The Pilot is undone by love. She gets pregnant, marries, has a little girl, and is grounded by the Air Force and assigned to launch drone attacks from the safety of an air-conditioned trailer in the Nevada desert. For twelve hours a day, she stares at a gray screen, periodically — after long hours of boredom — obliterating human beings judged guilty by her intelligence coordinator with a movement of her thumb. This kind of killing is different from the killing she's used to, though: There's a camera in the belly of her Reaper, and she can see the condemned. Every evening, she goes home to her devoted husband and her child. You know from the play's beginning that The Pilot will eventually fall apart — but you don't know how this will happen. Author George Brant has written a brilliant script: terse, angry, sad and poetic — not lyrically poetic, but a deep, tough, true poetry, and the central topic is resonant. Anyone who's been following the news knows about the controversy surrounding the U.S. use of drones — the civilian deaths, the wedding parties bombed, the fact that the administration defines all military-aged males in a strike zone as militants. Seated in a barcalounger, The Pilot metes out death and destruction with absolutely no danger to herself. But there's nothing polemical about Brant's script, which is essentially the story of a singular and fascinating woman, a soldier through and through, a hero in the parlance of the day. Laura Norman is brilliant in the central role: She lives every emotionally draining moment, and there's a profound truth to everything she does, from the heavy, authoritative walk to the jocular militarisms she spouts to her final ominous and despairing words. Going through this experience can't have been easy for either Norman or director Josh Hartwell, but their creative generosity has achieved something rare in the world of theater: a work with the power to change the viewer. Presented by Boulder Ensemble Theatre Collective through January 18, Dairy Center for the Arts, 2590 Walnut Street, Boulder, 303-440-7826, thedairy.org.
Miss Saigon. The plot of Miss Saigon is based on the opera Madame Butterfly, in which an American soldier takes a Japanese woman as a geisha wife — a temporary arrangement common during the early twentieth century — and then deserts her. Here it's Chris, a U.S. Marine falling in love with a seventeen-year-old Vietnamese girl and — in the midst of war and carnage — delighting in her gentle innocence. He is separated from her through no fault of his own and, once home, he eventually marries. But Kim still considers herself his wife, and she has some reason: After his departure, she gave birth to their child. I was intrigued to see Miss Saigon in a smaller venue, staged by a company that doesn't have tens of thousands of dollars for whiz-bang special effects. I had hoped the intimate setting would reveal subtle riches. But though the staging, including the helicopter scene, is ingenious, no one seems to have communicated the idea of intimacy to the music director or the sound designer — because the sound levels are excruciatingly loud. Rob Riney, who plays Chris, and Regina Fernandez Steffen, who plays Kim, have good voices; I know this because of their singing in the soft opening moments of their songs. But no sooner are those songs fully launched than the orchestra surges and the badly overmiked voices become distorted, ugly and assaultive. There are some high points: Keegan Flaugh, playing Chris's friend John, makes a very convincing Marine (which apparently he was) and has a fine voice. And Arlene Rapal is terrific as the cunning, profiteering pimp of an Engineer, coming across as a sort of mash-up of the Old Lady of Leonard Bernstein's Candide, who survived no matter how much trouble she found herself in; the salacious Emcee in Cabaret; and Brecht's titular heartless proto-capitalist in Mother Courage. There's also a nice performance from Abby McInerny as Chris's American wife, Ellen, and an exciting display of martial arts from Hao Liu. Presented by Vintage Theatre through February 1, 1468 Dayton Street, Aurora. vintagetheatre.org, 303-856-7830. Reviewed December 25.
Tommy Lee Jones Goes to Opera Alone. When two Buntporters spotted tough-guy movie star Tommy Lee Jones standing in line at the Santa Fe Opera to buy tickets for La Bohème, it got their speculative juices going. The result is a brilliantly original piece of theater called Tommy Lee Jones Goes to Opera Alone, with a large puppet Tommy Lee Jones at its center. The puppet is around five feet tall, pale and thin-limbed, with imposing eyebrows and large, highly articulated hands, courtesy of Denver puzzle-box master Kagen Schaefer (robotics teacher Corey Milner helped rig those hands for action). But if the hands are eloquent, the mouth is permanently shut tight. Four actors, all wearing black suits and masks, provide the animation: Brian Colonna works the head, Evan Weissman and Erin Rollman the tricky hands, and, sitting almost completely still, his features obscured, Eric Edborg serves as the puppet's voice. The action is set in a coffee shop where Tommy Lee comes regularly for coffee and pie. He has a longstanding teasing and affectionate relationship with waitress Jane — Hannah Duggan, the only troupe member who gets to be an actual, freestanding human being. Jones wants to talk to us, the audience, and he has a lot to talk about: cowboy boots, movies, his background, how human speech evolved (and the price we paid for it) and, of course, opera — the grandest use to which those evolved voices can be put. He explains that the melodies of many popular songs come from opera, and shows that opera belongs to everyone. One of Buntport's best — and that's saying a lot. Presented by Buntport Theater through January 31. 717 Lipan Street, 720-946-1388, buntport.com.
