In these uncertain times, the programatic cheeriness of the holiday season can become oppressive. Fortunately for local sad sacks, nothing cuts through the happy humbuggery better than standup comedy. In addition to fine selections at clubs and theaters across the state, Coloradans can enjoy a bevy of brewery shows, gut-busting…
The Aurora Fox’s production of The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess left me with a head swimming with music, ideas and feelings inspired by the sweep and majesty of the chorus’s offerings, the sheer beauty of the songs, and questions about changes to the original 1935 folk opera, titled simply Porgy…
Terry Dodd, a fixture on Denver’s theater scene for decades, passed away in October; he will be remembered with a celebration of his life at 6 p.m. Monday, November 29, at the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities. Juliet Wittman, Westword’s longtime theater critic, not only wrote about his…
While the Arvada Center production of I’ll Be Home for Christmas is a lump of coal in the holiday-show stocking (read the review of I’ll Be Home here), other offerings around town look much more promising. Here are four to explore: 1. A Christmas Carol is essentially the same production…
Usually a show having its world premiere in Denver is something to celebrate, but every now and then you wonder if you’re witnessing a premiere only because no other theater in the country wanted to stage the thing. I’ll Be Home for Christmas, a musical written by Kenn McLaughlin with…
Many Coloradans are still reeling from last week’s election results. In the hours following the final tallies, social media was essentially one nationwide primal scream of despair. Friendships ended in an acrimonious storm of tweets, Thanksgivings were made even more awkward and hope was very nearly lost. But in a heartening…
Both recovering addicts and comedians, Mark Lundholm and Kurt Matthews, aka The Addicts, have built careers of making their respective recovery processes not only relatable, but funny. No, it wasn’t funny when Matthews got in a drunk-driving accident in 1984 and almost killed himself and the girls in the other car. Losing relationships and being arrested wasn’t necessarily funny, either. But both Lundholm and Matthews recognize the humor in their flaws. “The insanity is funny,” says Lundholm.
In Lost Creatures, local playwright Melissa Lucero McCarl imagines a meeting between two highly theatrical figures of the last century. The first is Kenneth Tynan, a theater critic whose brilliant writing brought him early fame. Guardian reviewer Michael Billington recently wrote that reading the book of essays that Tynan released…
Sarah Tallman has been dancing with Wonderbound, the Denver-based contemporary ballet company, since 2004. She’s also doubled as a choreographer, creating work both for Wonderbound and the Oklahoma City Ballet; in 2015, she was selected for the National Choreographers Initiative. Tallman is premiering a thirty-minute ballet, Peering Through Cracks and…
Curious Theatre Company’s Hand to God is loud, herky-jerky, foul-mouthed and funny enough to have you choking with laughter. That’s if a certain malevolent sock puppet hasn’t decided to leap into the audience and choke off your breath altogether. The puppet is Tyrone, and he lives — I use the…
November is upon us and a bountiful joke harvest awaits. In addition to fine showings from our city’s theaters and comedy clubs that have imported the finest and funniest from across the country to stock our larders with laughs, our locally sourced talents are flourishing. Some fans may notice the…
When she was four years old, my friend’s daughter Joy was probing one of the most profound mysteries of the universe. A passionate pursuer of justice and mercy even at that young age, she was sitting on the pot and interrogating her mother about the world. Why, given a caring…
Tom Papa is a comedian and character actor known for his polished, besuited stage presence and wry observations about modern life and his family. After being discovered by Jerry Seinfeld in 1993, Papa traveled the world as the sitcom star’s preferred feature act; Seinfeld then tapped him to host NBC’s The…
I recently read an interview with the brilliant writer and art critic John Berger, now ninety years old, in which Kate Kellaway quotes Berger’s Ways of Seeing: “The secret of reading aloud well, he says…is ‘refusing to look ahead, to be in the moment.’ And he says that a story…
A man in a hospital bed is having a lively conversation with the woman sitting in a chair by his side. Amid all kinds of teasing and laughter, Sander explains how he came to be injured: something about the scent of a certain perfume, taking an elevator he’d been warned…
The Denver arts community loves nothing more than seeing its native sons and daughters succeed in the wider world. This week presents yet another opportunity to catch a veteran Mile High comic crush on a nationally televised stage: Chris Charpentier will make his debut on Fuse TV’s Uproarious on October 21. Hosted by…
When I last saw Jada Suzanne Dixon, it was in White Guy on the Bus at Curious, and she was a single mother, a nursing student traveling by bus to visit her brother in prison, a poor and powerless woman who’s eventually confronted by a wrenching dilemma. Dixon couldn’t be…
Few comedians in Denver (or anywhere, for that matter) are as industrious and self-starting as Zac Maas. Whether toiling away at open mics, snatching up any emcee and feature spots that come along, doing improv, shooting sketches or co-hosting the Whiskey & Cigarettes podcast, Maas always seems to have several…
Denver’s fall arts season is in full swing, bringing ballet and fresh theater to Denver stages, along with a touch of the spooky. Take your pick from these three seasonally friendly diversions. Colorado Ballet, Swan Lake Ellie Caulkins Opera House 7:30 p.m. Thursday, October 20, through Saturday, October 22 2 p.m…
The vampire flies on, and our fascination with him never seems to falter. We find him in television shows, teenage novels and the pulsing hearts of teenage readers, and in films both serious and camp — from F.W. Murnau’s subtle, haunted Nosferatu to Roman Polanski’s The Fearless Vampire Killers, with…
Somewhere in the mid-1970s, when we were both students at the University of Colorado, Terry Dodd worked with a feminist theater group I’d co-founded, playing the unnamed man who absconded with a beautiful store-room dummy in Joanna Russ’ one-act, Window Dressing. My mother was dying of cancer at the time…
We’re so used to camp and comic versions of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein that it’s a bit of a shock to encounter a theatrical experience that takes the story seriously as a statement about scientific hubris and an exploration of love, loneliness, hatred, good and evil — and what it really…
