If talent, poise and charisma were the only qualities needed to triumph in theaters of war or pleasure, then the sparkling quintet in Swingtime Canteen could claim absolute victory after crooning and hoofing their way though an Act One medley of brassy Andrews Sisters tunes. But even though the heroic…
Snugged away in a remote fishing shack in northern Minnesota, a burly loudmouth named Junior laments to his fellow ice-anglers that citified “income poops” have made a mess of the frozen lake that he and his Woolrich-clad pals consider their sacred refuge. In addition to spawning schools of cappuccino-sipping, tofu-nibbling…
In his best plays, Tennessee Williams uses vivid imagery and poetic dialogue to evoke feeling — instead of explaining it to death, which is the preferred method used by many of today’s psychodramatists. In fact, as illustrated by Germinal Stage Denver’s Noh theater-style production of Suddenly Last Summer, Williams’s powers…
Like the union of the two main characters in The Marriage of Bette and Boo, the Bug Theatre Company’s production is a hauntingly sad, absurdly comic look at domestic strife that lasts a little too long for its own good. Pacing and structural problems notwithstanding, director Donna Morrison’s version sometimes…
Throw a couple of polarized misfits on stage and let them rail about society’s refusal to accept them, and most theatergoers will likely say with a shrug, “That’s a shame. Welcome to the world.” If a playwright couches those same issues in the all-embracing language of family discord, though, audience…
Fifty-two years and a couple hundred pounds ago, Marlon Brando electrified Broadway audiences with his snarling, animalistic portrayal of the bellowing lout in Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire. In fact, Brando’s riveting turn as Stanley Kowalski spawned generations of imitators who wrongly believed that mumbling, scratching and raw emoting…
Talk-show blather and gossip-column imbecility notwithstanding, professional performers aren’t all celebrified brats who uniformly indulge in angst-filled tantrums, global bed-hopping and public displays of megalomania. Like athletes whose passion for the game extends well beyond the final whistle, most stage actors are more devoted to studying and perfecting the nuances…
Braving theatrical waters that have proved treacherous to the hardiest of companies, the Upstart Crow Theatre has produced nineteen consecutive seasons of uncut classic plays. Even more remarkable, on a recent opening night, the Boulder group drew a full house of spectators who seemed perfectly willing to fork over fifteen…
If you’re tired of being bombarded by wall-to-wall news coverage of heinous crimes, tragic accidents and inane controversies, or of slogging through the nightly prime-time lineup of hospital dramas (in which half of the characters die), crime movies (in which the characters commit the acts that send their victims to…
Larry Kramer is perhaps best known as a pugnacious sort who regularly vilifies the editors of the New York Times and intimidates genteel talk-show hosts like Charlie Rose. In 1985, though, the gay activist and co-founder of ACT-UP (the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) became famous for writing The Normal…
The rising tide of William Shakespeare’s popularity reached its high-water mark recently with the hit movie Shakespeare in Love, a delightful tale that reshaped the Bard’s image from that of a paunchy though brilliant literary lion to one of a hot-blooded, if bumbling, dramatic poet. As refreshing as it was,…
Although it’s been more than forty years since West Side Story opened on Broadway, the landmark musical still has the power to transport theatergoers to unparalleled heights. Its combination of soaring melodies and frenetic dance sequences makes Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim’s 1957 show spellbinding in a way that often…
The ever-malleable topics of love, artistic creation and the end of the world are tempered by various forms of poetic justice in Summerplay, The Changing Scene’s annual festival of new works written and performed by artists with a Colorado connection. Although the trio of one-act plays varies considerably in quality…
These days, musical blockbusters are marked by their star-studded casts, syrupy storylines and truckloads of extravagant scenery. That’s why a fifty-year-old ensemble piece like Kurt Weill’s Street Scene seems destined to remain mothballed under layers of critical and scholarly acclaim. But in Central City Opera’s version, director Michael Ehrman’s character-driven…
Unlike their previous efforts, which have blurred the boundaries between the disabled and the rest of society, the Physically Handicapped Amateur Musical Actors League’s latest endeavor emphasizes those differences to the point of utterly transcending them. In what proves to be a magnificent theatrical achievement, PHAMALy’s regional-premiere production of the…
Consistently mixing amateur fervor with professional polish, the Central City Opera has long championed traditions that are as practical as they are sentimental. This summer marks the return of a trio of former apprentices, who have since performed with such respected companies as the Metropolitan Opera, Washington Opera and Opera…
There’s not much point in staging a stodgily reverential, doublet-and-hose version of William Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors. The slapstick piece about two sets of twins separated at birth is patterned after a Roman-comedy model that was hackneyed when Shakespeare borrowed it and has been beaten to death ever since…
A college professor turned full-time party host purses his lips to mitigate his simpering enthusiasm. He declares that in Denver, throwing the bash of the season requires more than just careful planning, flawless execution and a politically correct guest list. In order for his suburban soiree to be a resounding…
Brimming with the ingratiating sentiment of a John Ford movie and radiating with the honeyed elegance of an Albert Bierstadt painting, The Girl of the Golden West works its charms gradually, culminating in a touching finale that lends a heartwarming glow to Giacomo Puccini’s rough-and-tumble romance. Softly crooning “We’ll never…
Alcoholism, journalism, communism, racism, Christian fundamentalism, tell-all autobiographies and the uses and abuses of plant food all surface as topics of debate in Sarah Fisher Lowe’s When the Wood Is Green, a world-premiere play that comprises Program Two of the Colorado Women Playwrights’ Festival. As if all of those subjects…
A few years before the entertainment business became the state religion, off-Broadway playwright Sam Shepard wrote Angel City, a surreal satire about Hollywood’s gangrenous grip on the American national character. A wicked and prescient take on the same industry that would eventually make Shepard into a bit of a celluloid…
Although this year’s Colorado Women Playwrights’ Festival explores unsettling and disturbing subjects, the first of two festival programs marks a significant improvement over last season’s feeble offerings. Despite a few logistical headaches (like starting a performance twenty minutes late, needlessly allowing a fifteen-minute intermission to run to half an hour…
