The novel Phantom of the Opera was written by Gaston LeRoux in 1911. Although it has inspired several films, most people know the story from the massive, windy Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, with its throbbing score and astonishing special effects. Before that version hit, playwright Arthur Kopit and songwriter Maury…
The Big Bang. Sometimes it’s nice not to have to think too much, to just settle back and watch a couple of frenetically energetic guys working really hard to earn your good will — and your entertainment dollars. Oh, and to make you laugh. The Big Bang posits the following…
It was the end of the week, and I was so tired I was leaning on my friend’s shoulder as we waited for Someone Else’s Life to start. I could tell this was going to be a classy production by Conundrum. All the signs were there: the high-quality stock on…
As I was going up the stair I saw a man who wasn’t there. He wasn’t there again today. I wish, I wish he’d go away. — Hugh Mearns In Jeffrey Hatcher’s adaptation of The Turn of the Screw, an unworldly young governess is employed by a wealthy Londoner to…
Amadeus. The Denver Center Theatre Company’s glittering, sumptuous version of Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus focuses more on a clean, elegant delivery of the text than on the passion at the play’s core. The central figure, Antonio Salieri, was the best-known composer of eighteenth-century Vienna, an upright man dedicated to serving his…
The Denver Victorian Playhouse production of The Weir is the third I’ve seen in six years, and it’s easily the best and most moving. One reason for this is director Terry Dodd’s strong and nuanced sense of place. The play is set in a rural pub in County Leitrim, Ireland,…
Occasionally, it’s really nice not to have to think too much, to just settle back and watch a couple of frenetically energetic guys working really hard to earn your good will — and your dollars. Oh, and to make you laugh. The Big Bang, now at the Playwright Theatre, posits…
Amadeus. The Denver Center Theatre Company’s glittering, sumptuous version of Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus focuses more on a clean, elegant delivery of the text than on the passion at the play’s core. The central figure, Antonio Salieri, was the best-known composer of eighteenth-century Vienna, an upright man dedicated to serving his…
Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, first published in 1890, is a play about the havoc wrought by an out-of-control woman, a woman who’s torn and driven by impulses she herself cannot understand or control. Hedda combines a certain romantic magnificence — think Shelley and Byron, think Emily Bront’s wild, wild Cathy…
The Denver Center Theatre Company has staged a glittering, sumptuous version of Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus that focuses more on a clean, elegant delivery of the play’s text than on the passion at its core. The central figure, Antonio Salieri, was the best-known composer in eighteenth-century Vienna, an upright man dedicated…
Cabaret. This musical follows a very young English chanteuse by the name of Sally Bowles, who sings in a seedy Berlin nightclub called the Kit Kat Klub in the early 1930s and meets up with an aspiring American novelist — the usual innocent abroad — named Clifford Bradshaw. She’s a…
The Dresser. The year is 1942, and England is at war. A revered but aging actor, identified only as Sir, is traveling the country, bringing Shakespeare to the provinces. To complicate things further, the actor is moving swiftly into dementia. The action begins an hour or two before the curtain…
An animated cartoon by German humorist Walter Moers that’s causing a fair amount of international controversy shows Hitler sitting on the toilet in his bunker as the Allies move in, grumbling that the war isn’t fun anymore, no one’s listening to him, and it’s all Churchill’s fault. Later, wherever he…
Everything that playwright Lisa Loomer says in Living Out about the blindness of the middle class — even the kindest and most liberal-minded among them — to the problems of the people who work for them is true, and desperately needs saying. This is a cruel culture for poor people…
The year is 1942, and England is at war. A revered but aging actor, identified only as Sir, is traveling the country, bringing Shakespeare to the provinces. Given the chaos of the times and the fact that most able-bodied Englishmen are fighting overseas, his is a depleted and ragtag company,…
Shadow Theatre Company’s latest offering, Plenty of Time, is sweet, smart and a lot of fun. Like Bernard Slade’s Same Time Next Year — which author John She’vin Foster admits as an influence — it chronicles a love affair in which the partners meet every year over an extended period…
I Am My Own Wife. The subject of I Am My Own Wife is German transvestite Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, born Lothar Berfelde in 1928 Berlin, a collector of antiques who survived both World War II and the Communist years in East Germany. But the play is as much about author…
When Freyda Thomas’s adaptation of Molire’s Tartuffe was shown at Circle in the Square a decade ago, it received a dismissive review from the New York Times. The seventeenth-century classic is about a religious con man whose false piety ensnares a prominent householder, almost destroying his home and family; translating…
Charity Hope Valentine is a loving and trusting soul, perpetually betrayed by the men she loves but always willing to give her heart again. She works at a dance hall, flirting and dancing for money. Sweet Charity, with a book by Neil Simon and songs by Cy Coleman and Dorothy…
I Am My Own Wife. The subject of I Am My Own Wife is German transvestite Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, born Lothar Berfelde in 1928 Berlin, a collector of antiques who survived both World War II and the Communist years in East Germany. But the play is as much about author…
The action of Hamlet all hinges on an injunction by the ghost of Hamlet’s father, who appears on a bitter cold night to tell the prince he must kill his murderous and usurping uncle. Everything that happens in Something Is Rotten is also set in motion by a ghost –…
There’s quite a bit wrong with Next Stage’s production of The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow, but what’s wildly — and exactly — right is the group’s choice of a play to open its season, as well as the casting of the protagonist. Author Rolin Jones is now a writer…
