Art is more about friendship than art

Yasmina Reza’s cool, witty, much-celebrated and much-performed play is ostensibly about art, but it’s more about friendship. At the center of the action in Art is an all-white painting, purchased by Serge, a dermatologist, for a huge sum of money. Perhaps he feels a genuine affinity for the piece, perhaps…

Buntport Theater’s Moby Dick Unread benefit goes to a water-bound cause

Buntport — Denver’s funniest, cleverest, most low-key and least pretentious theater company — sets aside a benefit night for every production, usually to help a deserving local organization. Fittingly, with Moby Dick Unread, the company is wading into deeper waters. At Thursday’s 8 p.m. show, some ticket proceeds will go…

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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…

Curious Theatre’s new grant could be a boon for local actors

Resident theater companies have been on their way out for decades. One of the last was at the Denver Center under Donovan Marley, whose loyalty to his company meant that first-rate actors could actually make a home in Denver — while audiences reaped the benefits. That’s an economically unsustainable model…

Puff piece: Reefer Madness on stage at the Bug Theater

Reefer Madness is a take-off on a legendary 1930s movie about the dangers of marijuana — a black-and-white film, shadowy and portentous, full of lurid warnings about how dope leads to crime and madness. Now that marijuana clinics are opening all over the state, city councils are discussing zoning far…

Daily Calendar: Judith Ren-Lay at the Mercury Cafe

Native Denverite, dancer and quintessential performance artist Judith Ren-Lay long ago left these parts for New York, but she did return periodically to perform here in `80s and `90s, all the while wowing the critics in the places where it mattered most: The L.A. Times called her an “urban griot,”…

A fine madness: Reefer Madness makes a comeback in big way

That old reefer madness has us in its spell: The time is ripe in Denver for a revival of Reefer Madness (aka Tell Your Children), the 1938 anti-pot propaganda film directed by Louis Gasnier. The subject of various revivals over the years, now as a work of comedy, Reefer Madness…

Fringe benefits: Boulder Fringe Festival offers intriguing productions

Since most of us cherish the romantic idea that true artists exist outside the mainstream, we’re intrigued by projects like the Boulder Fringe Festival, a no-vetting proposition with performances selected on a first-come, first-served basis or by lottery. I was so intrigued that at first I contemplated devoting a couple…

Now Playing

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:…

Tireless satire: For Tomfoolery, don’t leave your brain at home

Sometimes the simplest things give us the most pleasure. Tomfoolery isn’t a big, complicated show: just four charming performers with a few props and costume changes, accompanied by a pianist and singing the brilliantly savage songs of Tom Lehrer. Written in the 1950s and ’60s by the Harvard-educated mathematician, many…

Droppin’ drawers: The Underpants is an airy, salacious comedy

Watching the king on parade, Louise Maske reached up to get a better view and accidentally dropped her drawers. As The Underpants opens, her husband, Theo, a stuffy conventional German bureaucrat, is deeply worried. He fears the incident will lose him both his job and his reputation. But what he…

Now Playing

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:…