The first act of Next to Normal is brilliant. As almost everyone surely knows by now, the subject is an unusual one for a musical: a woman’s long struggle with bipolar disorder. Mental illness is hard to dramatize. Most attempts degenerate into sob-sodden sagas about someone’s obsessive pill- and therapist-aided…
Bedroom Farce is the story of four couples and three bedrooms. The oldest pair, Delia and Ernest, are looking forward to a pleasant dinner and a quiet night. They chat peacefully about repairs to the roof, share a late-evening plate of pilchards on toast and cradle cups of bedtime cocoa…
Mare Trevathan exists in the local theater scene on many levels: She’s an actress, publicist and booster all rolled up into one dynamic ball of energy, who’s played roles for numerous companies, including Curious Theatre, where she also manages community affairs. Mare has been all over the world and has…
Bono recently took time out of his busy touring schedule to save his investment opportunity, Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark — a Broadway musical boasting tunes written by the investor himself, daredevil scenes of amazing acrobatics and, according to a November New York Times interview, “wows from the soul and…
After getting her start in the inner workings of the entertainment biz as a music promoter (for a while in Denver), Tig Notaro got an itch to be on stage — not as a musician, but as a comedian. In that respect, she’s been more successful than many; she’s done…
It’s been a rough couple of years for the Shadow Theatre Company. Not long after moving into what it calls a “state-of-the-art” space three years ago, founder Jeffrey Nickelson took ill; he died in early 2009. After that, it seems — from an operational standpoint, anyway — things got rough…
Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey’s musical Next to Normal won the Pulitzer for its authors — the book and lyrics are by Yorkey, the music by Kitt. Yet it began simply as an exercise for a musical theater workshop, one of those “show us everything you’ve learned in 10 minutes”…
There aren’t enough opportunities for local playwrights to please Frank Oteri. It’s a shortage that drove Oteri to create A Very Dark Holiday Playwright Festivus at the Vintage Theatre, a showcase that spotlights work from six local writers. The show includes an original comedy from Oteri titled “Intimate Information,” a…
Hello, Dolly! You’re looking for a warm, lively, music-filled, sweetly sentimental holiday season show — but you’ve had it up to here with Santas and Tiny Tims, as well as not-so-funny take-offs on Santas and Tiny Tims. Say hello to Hello, Dolly!, an old warhorse finding new life at Boulder’s…
December holidays such as Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and Solstice are forced to make their case to a bureaucrat intent on streamlining the calendar. Santa’s compulsive list-making may have far more sinister implications than most people realize. A festive dinner gets couples quarreling, while a young man fights his clock on…
When you share a bill with Gwenyth Paltrow on Conan O’Brien’s step-down-but-still-in-the-game TBS vehicle, you know you’ve sort of made it. Such was the case last night for T.J. Miller, the latest in an increasingly long line of semi-stars to come out of Denver’s East High School that also includes…
Like many art forms, the craft of standup comedy is, for the most part, a boys’ club. “We wanted to take back the night,” jokes participating comedian Alicia Jacobs of Ladies Laugh-in, a monthly comedy showcase happening tomorrow night at 8 p.m. at Beauty Bar. Started back in July by…
Dixie’s Tupperware Party. Dixie is a booze- and sex-addicted, trash-talking, child-neglecting ex-con from Alabama who holds Tupperware parties in her trailer, and she’s invited you to this one. Dixie’s Tupperware Party at the Galleria really is a Tupperware party — you get a name tag and raffle number when you…
Though I’ve managed to skip all Sugarplums, Scrooges and Child’s Christmases this year, I couldn’t avoid the Colorado Shakespeare Festival’s A Christmas Carol. Director Philip C. Sneed’s readers’ theater approach — few actors, a cappella Christmas songs, minimal glitz, functional rather than exquisite sets and costumes — puts the focus…
Unless you count bandleader Natalia Perez del Villar’s festive red vest, there wasn’t too much Christmas-y about the tenuously Christmas-themed Navidad Flamenca at the Mercury Cafe on Friday night. Though the band played a few villancicos, or traditional Spanish Christmas songs, the jingling bells your typical North American might expect…
Dixie is a booze- and sex-addicted, trash-talking, child-neglecting ex-con from Alabama who holds Tupperware parties in her trailer, and she’s invited you to this one. Dixie’s Tupperware Party really is a Tupperware party — you get a name tag and raffle number when you walk into to the Garner Galleria…
Pamela Mencher has spent eleven years working on her play — but in some ways, she’s been working on it her whole life. Born on a Lakota/Sioux reservation in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, Mencher spent her formative years there and on a Blackfeet reservation in Montana during the civil rights…
Dixie Longate has come to Denver to ply her Tupper-wares (har) at the Garner Galleria Theatre. The show opened last week and will be here through early January, so there’s still plenty of time to go and reevaluate your tupperware needs. I went on Friday. Truly, it was ridiculous –…
Marguerite Endsley wants to spread the word about something near and dear to her heart: pole dancing. And in the process, she wants to raise some money for a fellow pole dancer who recently suffered a horrific accident: 32-year-old Debbie Plowman, a mother of two from England who fell on…
At most performances, a front row seat is the most desirable spot to be — aside from marking your status as the best person to shank and rob after the show, it’s also the best way to see the action. At a comedy show, though, it’s a little different. Much…
Astronomical Sunset. Jim is a man destroyed by guilt because a social-networking site he created led to…actually, it’s not quite clear what, but it had to do with a teenage boy posting compromising photographs of his girlfriend, and the boy is now in prison. The plot doesn’t make a whole…
You’re looking for a warm, lively, sweetly sentimental holiday-season show, but you’ve had it up to here with Santas and Tiny Tims, as well as would-be funny take-offs on Santas and Tiny Tims. Say hello to Hello, Dolly! Boulder’s Dinner Theatre director Michael Duran has a long history with Hello,…
