June has arrived, and Denver’s comedy calendar is full of follies ranging from Saturday Night Live alumni and a comedian supergroup to an improv presidential debate and a comedy festival masterminded by local standups. While the entertainment continues all month long, this June is front-loaded with particularly great comedy shows. Here they…
When Timothy Orr, then the assistant director of the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, was called on to take over the whole thing following the departure of CSF artistic director Philip Sneed in early 2013, he found himself immersed in what he now calls — in a profound understatement — “a very…
Comedian Nick Thune is often recognized as the tall, aloof guy who strums a Midsummer Night’s Dream–like tune while tossing out whimsical and deranged notions — so fans may be surprised to learn that he’s abandoned the guitar altogether. In the two years since his Netflix special Folk Hero, Thune has…
Sweet & Lucky, an offering from the Denver Center for the Performing Arts’ Off-Center in collaboration with Third Rail Projects, is not a play, but an experience. The idea of theater as something that should change consciousness rather than being passively viewed isn’t new; it was big in the hallucinatory,…
In Greetings from Camp Katabasis, two campers are out in nature, annoying the hell out of each other, bickering, philosophizing, attempting to bond and mourning the death of a friend called Chuck. Katabasis, according to counselor Amie (Friend?) — whose hysterically funny monologues frame the action and is probably just…
Uncalled Four is a diabolical comedy game show that blends Mad Libs-style prompts with standup comedians indulging their very worst impulses. While navigating their way through legal snafus, changing staff and venues and releasing a Colorado-themed expansion pack, co-producers and engaged couple Jake Browne and Samantha Sandt have continued to…
This week on metro Denver stages, you can enjoy a modern classic with Neil Simon’s Biloxi Blues at Miners Alley Playhouse or explore the avant garde world of multimedia performance at MediaLive in Boulder, with plenty of stops in between. Which direction will you take? Biloxi Blues Miners Alley Playhouse…
Podcasts are in tune with the democratized spirit of Internet media; anyone with a microphone and a computer can offer their listeners unlimited hours of recordings, usually for free. Limited only by their imaginations, podcasters have a freedom of expression unrestricted by commerce, censorship or geography. Several great podcasts have…
I’m always skeptical when told that a play is going to shock and startle me, particularly when the play’s about race. Almost daily I watch spokespeople for Black Lives Matter on talk shows and hear commentators speculate about who will get the black vote that Barack Obama commanded. I read…
This week on Denver stages, you can experience the lives of a couple in love and trapped in an asylum, a chatty family at a birthday dinner, or four men in the muddled-up, comic world of a group home. Here’s where to snatch up tickets. Germinal Stage, Echoes 73rd Avenue…
David Mamet, the caustic playwright who’s an unapologetic right-winger these days, has always liked to offend, and he does so with brilliant scripts filled with intelligent, jazzy and sometimes incisive dialogue. His November, now showing at the Avenue Theater, premiered in 2008, as George W. Bush’s second term was coming…
“Death takes a holiday” is one of those wise, cynical, darkly funny old-European concepts that should yield rich fictional results, both comic and philosophical. The idea, which got its start in a 1924 play by Italian Alberto Casella, is that Death decides to take a break from collecting souls to…
Doug Benson, comedy’s stoner laureate, defies the facile stereotype that weed makes you slothful and unmotivated. Despite being a habitual wake and baker, Benson currently runs two live podcasts, spends a healthy percentage of every year working the road, has starred in three documentaries and released an album and live…
This week on Denver stages, you can find everything from tongue-in-cheek local color to a play about origami in which love and life fold up into the plot. Or don your best chapeau to help ensure that women playwrights continue to be heard in the Mile High City. Here’s the…
As spring begins in earnest and Denverites bask in the long-awaited sunshine, our city’s parks and a variety of outdoor activities tend to outshine cultural pursuits. While little can compare to the allure of the natural beauty blooming us, the comedy calendar this May is pollinated with a series of…
Theater in the area has really come to life lately, introducing new plays and writers, posing interesting ideas and offering glimpses into worlds I’ve never really known. Harvey Fierstein’s Casa Valentina, receiving its regional premiere at Edge Theater, brings us into an enclosed and semi-secret world: a 1962 Catskills retreat…
Ladies first: Three local productions opening this week in Denver feature great women’s words and roles, showcasing a prize-winning contemporary playwright, the noir drama of Norma Desmond’s fall from the spotlight and the influence of literary light Jane Austen. Here’s where to here them roar: And Toto too Theatre Company,…
Eddie Pepitone is a hero to a certain stripe of comedy nerd, so his debut in the Mile High City would be newsworthy on its own. But rather than appearing at a club or theater, he’s headlining a local showcase produced by homegrown Denver comics Matt Monroe and Stephen Agyei…
Podcasts are in tune with the democratized spirit of Internet media; anyone with a microphone and a computer can offer their listeners unlimited hours of recordings, usually for free. Limited only by their imaginations, podcasters have a freedom of expression unrestricted by commerce, censorship or geography. Several great podcasts have…
Edmond Rostand’s 1897 Cyrano de Bergerac is a big, romantic beast of a play, written in poetic couplets, featuring a love as doomed and all-encompassing as any in literature — that of Romeo and Juliet, or Tristan and Isolde — though it doesn’t end in a lovers’ suicide. The story includes duels…
Denverites have no shortage of places where they can drink drink beer and watch local comics, but for the uninitiated there’s little sense of quality control. Denver also has plenty of spaces where the efforts of skilled comedians and passionate venue owners dovetail in giggly harmony, but most shows are…
Since inauspiciously starting out by habitually bombing at Chicago open mics (a developmental stage every comedian must endure in their own city) all the way through to the heights of his current fame, Hannibal Buress’ jokes have had a rhythm and sensibility unlike anyone else in comedy. After gaining a…
