The Catch. Ken Weitzman’s play explores the well-worn concept of baseball as a metaphor for America itself, but in new and interesting ways. In the hands of Darryl Love, the boastful, charismatic player at the center of the story, the ball itself becomes a symbol, its seams stitching over the…
It’s hard to get enthusiastic about another production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I’ve seen so many oafishly boring and over-the-top Bottoms; puppet-like Hermias and Helenas; Demetriuses and Lysanders so generic you can’t tell them apart; annoying Pucks. And just what in hell is a director supposed to do with…
This weekend’s New Play Summit at the Denver Center Theatre Company made it clear that after decades of sometimes sputtering movement, Denver has finally become a serious force in American theater. A large crowd — local and national playwrights, press folk, tech people, poor actors and rich benefactors, along with…
Though he’s almost universally known for his children’s books — the lineup of which included one of the best children’s books of all time — Shel Silverstein was, in the truest sense of the term, a renaissance man. Aside from his poetry, he was a prolific songwriter (you know Johnny…
After a seven year run at its home in Fort Collins, the Nonesuch Theater — currently in the midst of its run of The Art of Murder, by Joe DiPietro (the same guy who wrote I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change) — is gearing up to draw the red…
The Catch. Ken Weitzman’s play explores the well-worn concept of baseball as a metaphor for America itself, but in new and interesting ways. In the hands of Darryl Love, the boastful, charismatic player at the center of the story, the ball itself becomes a symbol, its seams stitching over the…
Having created a full-out exploration of women’s relationships to their vaginas in The Vagina Monologues, feminist Eve Ensler has turned her attention to female bodies in general in The Good Body, a compassionate, would-be reassuring look at the near-universal American neurosis on the subject. The show is watchable and empathetic,…
It’s a testament to the selling power of both Ballet Nouveau Colorado and Paper Bird that this past Sunday — the biggest game day in football all year — the matinee performance of Carry On at the Lakewood Cultural Center was almost entirely sold out. And it’s safe to say…
Boulder-based cartoon company Mighty Fudge Studios revels in hijinks and notoriety, whether its producing spots for The Spike & Mike Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation or creating animated attacks on Jay Leno. No wonder the operation seems to be bursting in pride over the fact that their classic animated…
Circle Mirror Transformation. At a small-town community center, four people are participating in an acting workshop run by Marty, who combines a little knowledge of theater with quite a bit of new-agey yearning. The participants are Marty’s husband, one-time hippie James; sexy Theresa, who spent time in New York and…
There’s a lot going on in The Catch, a world premiere that grew out of a reading at last year’s New Play Festival. Ken Weitzman’s script presents a swirl of ideas — some of them fairly obvious, but all explored in interesting ways. Preeminent among them is the well-worn concept…
How perfect that Buntport is reviving Kafka on Ice — first produced in 2004, and one of my favorite of the company’s many inventive works — as part of a citywide celebration of all things Czech. First, because Franz Kafka is the Czech author best known in this country, with…
It’ll be a substantially less gay old time than previously anticipated at the Curious Theatre tomorrow: OUT @ Curious, the theater company’s tribute to the more festive segment of its audience that we told you about in the Night+Day section of this week’s print edition (still on the racks), has…
More than once during the Buntport Theater’s Kafka on Ice, the character of Franz Kafka (played by Josh Hartwell) comments on how stupid it is to stage an ice-capade revolving around his life and work. “It’s inappropriate!” he protests. As justification, toward the end of the play, another character offers…
For the last year, something’s been missing from the Lida Project. Certainly, it hasn’t been creativity or an open mind; under the energetic guidance of stand-in artistic director Julie Rada, the local experimental theater group in fact thrived as well as any small group of its kind can in Denver,…
With a name like the 24rd Triannual Intronational Dance Competition, absurdity was to be expected. And the event did not disappoint in the ridiculous department. The interpretive dance-off at the Mercury Cafe featured a juggling unicyclist, a girl in a bubble-wrap gown and many people unafraid to roll around on…
Comedian Hal Sparks will perform the first of five Denver shows tomorrow at Comedy Works South. Sparks, who has hosted Talk Soup and starred in Queer As Folk, has been focusing more lately on his stand-up career. His comedy special is available now through Showtime, he has a CD coming…
Hello, Dolly!Say hello to Hello, Dolly!, an old warhorse finding new life at Boulder’s Dinner Theatre. The musical tells the story of a meddlesome widow, Dolly Levi, who makes a living connecting people. Ostensibly trying to find a wife for half-millionaire feed-store owner Horace Vandergelder, she’s actually plotting to snare…
What a lark! What a plunge!” thinks Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway as she steps exuberantly into her day, and that’s pretty much what I felt walking out of Curious Theatre after Annie Baker’s Circle Mirror Transformation. The play is just so sweet, smart, honest and touching, such an absolutely delightful…
Playwright Michele Lowe writes well about art, and the central character in her Map of Heaven is an artist, Lena, whose paintings are maps of imaginary places, and who’s about to have her first big show. As the play opens, she consults in her studio with longtime dealer and gallery…
I was surprised to discover that Jim Leonard’s The Diviners was written as recently as 1980. The play feels like a period piece, and not just because it’s set in the Depression. Buddy Layman, the central character, was brain-damaged by an almost-drowning at the age of four, during which his…
Bedroom Farce. Bedroom Farce is the story of four couples and three bedrooms. The oldest pair, Delia and Ernest, are looking forward to a pleasant dinner and a quiet night. But their plans are upended by Susannah, the intensely neurotic wife of their socially obtuse son, Trevor. The depredations of…
