Blithe Spirit, now showing at the Arvada Center, doesn’t mean anything. It’s not a critique of upper-class society or an evocative exploration of the border between the living and the dead — despite all the ghostly goings-on. Even though Noel Coward wrote the play in 1941 when bombs were dropping…
Everyone loves a contest, and it’s no different in the world of comedy. The Comedy Works’ Funny Final Four, which has four teams compete for top honors over a period of weeks, is a case in point: It’s so popular it keeps coming back, year after year. See also: -…
Tonight, Cherry Creek’s 7dancers, a nonprofit professional dance company, will perform its newest performance piece, “Celebrate 7,” at the Denver Performing Arts Complex’s Studio Loft. The ambitious choreography makes for a diverse show, with elements of seven styles of dance: jazz, tap, ballet, hip-hop, lyrical, modern and musical theater. As…
With Denver’s local comedy scene finally beginning to catch up with Comedy Work’s national acts — in terms of both talent and swelling audience numbers — we figured it was time to assemble some of our favorite standup shows for the coming month. As we salivate over the smorgasbord of…
Laura Norman is one of the more talented actors around, subtle and intelligent, capable of deep emotion but never sentimental or hackneyed. She can rescue a mediocre play and add a very specific kind of shine to an excellent one. In 2005, she received a Best of Denver award for…
Ed, Downloaded. Michael Mitnick’s Ed, Downloaded, which was commissioned by the Denver Center Theatre Company, had a reading at last year’s New Play Summit and is currently receiving its world premiere. It tells the story of a young man with a terminal illness who is engaged to an intellectual Englishwoman,…
Sometimes the small, unpretentious shows provide the happiest evenings of theater. Motherhood Out Loud is a compendium of short pieces by several well-known playwrights — including Michele Lowe, Lisa Loomer and Theresa Rebeck, all of whom have had work shown at the Denver Center — compiled by Susan Rose and…
Early in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, there’s a longish scene of almost pure exposition as Prospero, a powerful scholar and magician, explains to his daughter Miranda why they are stranded on an enchanted island. Prospero had been the Duke of Milan until his brother stole his dukedom and sent them both…
The double race for the pinnacle of dragdom is on again: As Season 5 of RuPaul’s Drag Race commences tonight, so does the Ultimate Queen Contest 2013 at Tracks, and it all comes packaged up together in one long, entertaining sashay through a Monday night. See also: – Queens Nina…
Motherhood Out Loud, which opened at the Avenue Theater last week, is a collection of short plays on motherhood by several well-known playwrights. You meet bored mothers, elderly mothers, stepmothers, adoring mothers, a mother accompanying her tween-age autistic son on his first date, another trying to protect a seven-year-old son…
It’s safe to say Vintage Theatre’s RFK is a smash. A one-man exploration of the life and times of Robert Kennedy by Jack Holmes, it garnered excellent reviews (including mine) and a huge amount of Facebook chatter, with dozens of people who had seen the performance sharing information, congratulating the…
Michael Mitnick’s Ed, Downloaded, which was commissioned by the Denver Center Theatre Company, had a reading at last year’s New Play Summit and is currently receiving its world premiere. It tells the story of a young man with a terminal illness who is engaged to an intellectual Englishwoman, Selene, but…
The NBA is teeming with actors. Yes, actors. Maybe not the kind you’re used to in films and plays, but they still act. These “actors” can often be found over-dramatizing physical contact by flamboyantly diving into the air or covering their eyes while pretending to get clocked with an invisible…
Despite all the buzz to the contrary, you never really forget that the horses in War Horse are puppets — at least I never did. They suggest living creatures, but they don’t embody them. You know that Joey, the magnificent chestnut that dominates the action, isn’t flesh and blood: You…
Now in a regional premiere at Curious Theatre Company, Maple and Vine contrasts life in modern America with life in 1955 — the changes in mores and culture, the differences in eating habits between now and a time when lattes were unknown (as were whole-wheat bread and any herb other…
Running two nights only — tonight and tomorrow at the Newman Center for the Performing Arts — A Journey of the Human Spirit is an incredible three-part look at life before, during and after the Holocaust. Based on composer Viktor Ullmann and librettist Peter Kien’s fifty-minute opera The Emperor of…
Like pine beetles, Boulder artist Jill Powers does some of her best work in bark. Her mixed media fiber sculptures and installations draw on exotic natural materials, from seed pods to a tough inner bark called Kozo that happens to be “sustainably grown” — and that’s good news, since Powers’s…
Brooklyn-based playwright Michael Mitnick is a young phenom in the theater world whose play-in-progress, Ed, Downloaded was featured as a reading as part of the Denver Center Theatre Company’s Colorado New Play Summit in 2012. A year later, the fully produced play — utilizing sophisticated, cutting-edge visuals to tell the…
Whether she’s posting hilarious observations on Twitter, accepting calls from random strangers on her podcast, or performing her delightfully judgmental standup, comedian Chelsea Peretti does it all with sharp wit and magnetic observational humor. Peretti, also a former writer for the Emmy-nominated Parks and Recreation, will be in town starting…
The Denver Center Theatre Company has long been a pioneer in the creative use of multi-media, and four years ago artistic director Kent Thompson commissioned a work from playwright Michael Mitnick. The intention was to have multi-media considered from the earliest conceptual stages rather than being “layered into a script…
What I like about Jack Holmes’s one-man play RFK: A Portrait of Robert Kennedy is that although it is in some ways hagiographic, it also humanizes its subject, showing his vulnerabilities and flaws. The Kennedys are generally seen through a haze of nostalgia: Jack as the charismatic leader who presided…
Although Show and Tell contributors didn’t quite have the skills (or nerve) to try out ourselves, photographer Brandon Marshall stopped by Fusion Factory’s open auditions for go-go dancers and hula-hoopers over the weekend. The tryouts came just in time to prepare for Fusion’s Mardi Gras celebration, at which those who…
