A Round-Heeled Woman. Jane Juska’s memoir, A Round-Heeled Woman: My Late Life Adventures in Sex and Romance, an account of her search for no-strings-attached sex, was a brave gamble — as was Edge Theatre’s decision to produce the play based on the book. But Juska’s gamble paid off, and so…
The setting is the kind of rehearsal room every performer is familiar with: dusty and relatively bare, the windows grimy and patched over, an ancient rotating fan. Slap-bang in the middle, though, there’s a red velvet divan. Subtle shifts of light periodically change the feel of the place; it goes…
The Lucha Libre & Laughs showcase is clearly a labor of love from producer Nick Gossert. Gossert, a filmmaker, comedian, and bumbling referee, is responsible for not only booking the funniest comics in Denver, but also juggling the schedules of all the wrestlers involved, renting the ring itself, and doing the lion’s share of promotion. Despite the challenge of putting it together, and a few minor setbacks, Lucha Libre & Laughs reaches it’s one-year anniversary this month with Laughmania! This month’s event features comedians Deacon Gray, Kevin O’Brien, Kristin Rand, and Chuck Roy, with wrestlers Delta Jr., El Tecolote, Matt Classing, and International Superstar Colt Cabana and running color commentary from Jordan Doll and Nate Balding. In honor of sunday’s special evening of gutbusters and backbreakers, Westword caught up with Gossert to look back on a year of shows, discuss his love of cheesy Lucha movies, and the similarities between comedy and wrestling.
The show is on sunday, May 11th at the Oriental Theater. Doors open at 6:00pm; tickets cost $10 and are available from the Oriental Theater’s website.
Periodically, I ask my daughter — who has requested I tell her my last wishes for health care, disposal of belongings, funeral, etc., in case I’m unable to express them when the time comes — what she wants done with my body. Does she need it buried, so she’ll have…
The Arvada Center tends to do costume drama very well, and The Great Gatsby, based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel, is no exception. The costumes, by Clare Henkel, are lovely, and the production is filled with beautiful, stylized people, posing and languidly interacting. Central is charming Daisy, who —…
Animal Crackers. Animal Crackers is a romp, a trifle — full of puns, malapropisms and visual jokes, and utterly, unabashedly silly. The plot is just an excuse for the crazy brothers, nominally playing actual characters, to visit a Long Island mansion and pull off a series of stunts. There are…
James O’Hagan Murphy didn’t set out to specialize in playing members of the Kennedy family. But he’s currently portraying Robert F. Kennedy in the one-man show RFK at the Avenue Theater, a role for which he won our Best Actor in a Drama in the Best of Denver 2013. He…
We love Dixie — have since she invited us to Dixie’s Tupperware Party a couple of years back (the show returned last month), calling people up from the audience, improvising seamlessly, indulging in bawdy humor and sharing with us everything about her trailer-trash life. And we still love her now…
Historically, the arrival of Mayday signaled a call for celebration, for dancing around maypoles and leaving fresh flowers on strangers’ doorsteps. This month in Denver, comedy fans find themselves presented with a May Basket full of sun-ripened giggle blossoms to choose from all month long.
The Queen May of the month is easily Comedy Works, with top-notch headliners at both clubs all through the month, including an ongoing visit from an increasingly less reclusive icon. Readers may in fact notice a suspicious absence of Dave Chapelle on this list, but those shows sold out mere hours after they were announced. As such, listing them here would be little more than a unnecessary reminder to all the Johnny-come-lately comedy fans missing out. By all accounts, his few late April shows have been fantastic and smug ticket-holders are in for a treat.
Fortunately, the calendar is packed with choice choices every week. Opportunities to see award-winning screen stars and living legends take the stage abound, along with conceptually novel local showcases– everything from improv jams to body slams, and even something for the moms (who deserve it).
The idea of geriatric sex is one of those things that makes people — especially young people — squirm. Old people who are lucky enough to have active sex lives know enough to keep it to themselves. So Jane Juska’s memoir, A Round-Heeled Woman: My Late Life Adventures in Sex…
Animal Crackers. Animal Crackers is a romp, a trifle — full of puns, malapropisms and visual jokes, and utterly, unabashedly silly. The plot is just an excuse for the crazy brothers, nominally playing actual characters, to visit a Long Island mansion and pull off a series of stunts. There are…
Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Presented by Lone Tree Arts Center through May 4 Huck Finn, a wild-haired urchin, wants to be free of the constraints of civilization, represented by the Widow Douglas, who has adopted him and is determined to get him properly Christianized, and her steel-spined…
Adam Cayton Holland got his start in standup ten years ago, when he decided to try a few jokes at an open-mike night and wound up on stage at Comedy Works; he described his experiences in “Get Up, Stand Up,” a July 2004 Westword cover story. Since then, Cayton-Holland has…
Kevin McDonald is an actor, improviser, and comedian best known for his work with Canada’s Kids in the Hall sketch comedy troupe. McDonald will be at Denver’s Voodoo Comedy Playhouse all weekend, which kicks off at 9:00pm on Friday, May 2nd with a special edition of The Couch, Denver’s only improvised therapy session. McDonald is also scheduled to perform on his own Improvised sketch show at 8:00pm on Saturday, May 3rd.Tickets for both shows cost $15 in advance and $20 at the door. The 2 day sketch-writing workshop runs from 10:00am-5:00pm on Saturday, May 3rd and Sunday, May 4th. The fee is $300. Westword caught up with McDonald in advance of his trip to Denver to discuss bad sketch writing, getting into standup, and the new Kids in the Hall tour.
After thirteen years with Buntport Theater, actor Brian Colonna knows his fellow collaborators and they know him. They write together. They perform together. They even share directorial responsibilities. As a result, they have built one of the funniest theater troupes in Colorado. But sometimes, they know each other so well…
Spamalot is a terrific musical, a hilarious romp through English myth and history — and a fine Aurora Fox production underlines its strengths. The fabled King Arthur sets forth accompanied by his faithful squire, Patsy, who serves as an overworked and underappreciated beast of burden. After a while, God himself…
Animal Crackers. Animal Crackers is a romp, a trifle — full of puns, malapropisms and visual jokes, and utterly, unabashedly silly. The plot is just an excuse for the crazy brothers, nominally playing actual characters, to visit a Long Island mansion and pull off a series of stunts. There are…
And the Sun Stood Still. The shining strength of Dava Sobel’s And the Sun Stood Still is that, at a time when the sciences have been so muddied by sloppy thinking, willful ignorance and financial pressure, it provides insight into the scientific process and eloquently communicates the sheer beauty of…
The musical Animal Crackers, starring the Marx Brothers, debuted on Broadway in 1928 and was filmed a couple of years later. It’s a romp, a trifle — full of puns, malapropisms and visual jokes, and utterly, unabashedly silly. The plot is just an excuse for the crazy brothers, nominally playing…
Winnie Wenglewick was introduced to the threater through the Orlando International Fringe Theatre Festival, where she volunteered for ten years. That experience so inspired her that in 2006 she opened Denver’s Dangerous Theatre, and started not just producing and directing, but acting. She’ll do all three with Dangerous Theatre’s production…
Andy Haynes is a veteran of several standup scenes, moving from Washington D.C. to Seattle, then from New York to Los Angeles, cultivating his sharp joke-telling style and putting in strong appearances on Conan and the Comedy Central Half Hour. Haynes is also known for his Midnight Run comedy showcase, which enlists comedians, gets them unreasonably stoned, and let them sort through the weirdness onstage. A natural fit for the Sex Pot Comedy brand, Haynes is in town to bring his Midnight Run showcase to an appreciative and equally stoned Denver audience. Featuring Billy Wayne Davis, Noah Gardenswartz, Ian Douglas Terry, local chieftains Nathan Lund and Brent Gill, and as always, ably hosted by Sex Pot’s go-to emcee, Jordan Doll, this comedy show is the perfect way to kick off your 4/20 holiday three days early.
I walked into the Arvada Center for the Judy Garland bio-play-musical End of the Rainbow thinking about the intense gay identification with such icons as Judy Garland, Edith Piaf and Maria Callas in the mid-twentieth century, the sheer awfulness of being gay in those days, and how it created a…
