Sometimes the simplest things give us the most pleasure. Tomfoolery isn’t a big, complicated show: just four charming performers with a few props and costume changes, accompanied by a pianist and singing the brilliantly savage songs of Tom Lehrer. Written in the 1950s and ’60s by the Harvard-educated mathematician, many…
Watching the king on parade, Louise Maske reached up to get a better view and accidentally dropped her drawers. As The Underpants opens, her husband, Theo, a stuffy conventional German bureaucrat, is deeply worried. He fears the incident will lose him both his job and his reputation. But what he…
Garage Sale Loud: This Is It. Almost every summer, the folks at Heritage Square stage what is essentially a musical review with a thin sustaining plot line and the word “loud” in the title. The conceit is that T.J. Mullin and Annie Dwyer are siblings, and they’re reliving their youth:…
There’s nothing unlucky about this thirteenth season: The always-adventurous Curious Theatre Company, led by artistic director Chip Walton, will follow in its own footsteps by producing another vanguard season of newer works and premieres…
Over the last nine years, Buntport Theater has produced 29 different original plays in Denver that are simply like no other we’ve every actually seen anywhere. They’ve all sprung from a miasmic six-headed Gestalt monster called Brian Colonna, Hannah Duggan, Erik Edborg, Erin Rollman, Samantha Schmitz and Evan Weissman, and…
Two worthwhile local theater productions end their runs this weekend: Paragon Theatre’s The Real Thing and Picasso at the Lapin Agile, presented as a benefit for Senior Housing Options in the lobby of the Barth Hotel in LoDo. Paragon’s version of Tom Stoppard’s comedy begins at 7:30 p.m. nightly through…
To date, Reyna Von Vett — whose alter ego, Cora Vette, emcees burlesque shows under the Burlycute umbrella — has put together more ass-and-titty-shaking shows than you can shake a … well, you know … at. The woman knows her burlesque. So take it from her: You should be excited…
Beauty and the Beast. Though it’s backed by expert musicians and technicians, the real miracle is the Phamaly company itself. The leads are as good as — and often better than — anyone you’ll see anywhere. Jenna Bainbridge is the sweetest Belle imaginable, with a clear, strong soprano and, paradoxically,…
The toughest thing about fringing — attending a fringe festival, that is — is choosing what to see. It all happens so fast — wham bam, six performances in six days — and there’s no real chance for a buzz to really form about a particular performance until it’s already…
And we thought Bob Saget goofing on molesting Kimmy Gibler from Full House was troubling. That’s nothing, apparently. In a bizarre email addressed to “Tracy Morgan ticket buyers,” Comedy Works went so far as to warn show-goers that the performance is “the most extreme in nature that we can possibly…
When most of us think of The Wizard of Oz, we generally think about Victor Fleming’s iconic 1939 film. Or maybe we think of L. Frank Baum’s original book, or, if we’re theater buffs, we might think of Tim Kelly’s popular stage adaptation. That last one was the one the…
Nancy Smith founded her aerial dance school Frequent Flyers Productions in 1988, expanded to a new studio in January, and now brings the 12th annual Aerial Dance Festival to The Dairy in Boulder this weekend, August 6-8. She’s been hanging around (as it were) in the aerial dance community for…
Beauty and the Beast. Though it’s backed by expert musicians and technicians, the real miracle is the Phamaly company itself. The leads are as good as — and often better than — anyone you’ll see anywhere. Jenna Bainbridge is the sweetest Belle imaginable, with a clear, strong soprano and, paradoxically,…
The first scene in Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing is between a husband and the wife he suspects of adultery. She has just returned from a purported business trip to Switzerland, which he believes she never took. The dialogue is swift and urbane, with wry ruminations on digital watches, the…
Debreceni can speak with authority about the differences between the look of a zombie and the aesthetics of a werewolf. Debreceni, who runs Back Porch FX out of Aurora, has spent the past three decades developing his ability to create illusion on stage and on film. A makeup artist and…
Denver theater audiences are famous for the ease with which they award standing ovations — a few friends of the cast rising, then a handful more, finally a largish section center front — while folks further back pick up their belongings and head furtively for the door. That’s not how…
Photographer Kate Levy brings these photos from Drama Drag Fridays, hosted by Nina Flowers. Writes Levy of the party on Friday: “Nina Flowers hosts drama drag at Tracks every last Friday of the month, each month inviting a contestant from Ru Paul’s drag race, in which Nina participated (and did…
He infiltrated the ranks of the Ku Klux Klan and almost single-handedly destroyed the Black Panthers. Using subversive and often illegal methods, he amassed file upon file of potentially embarrassing information on the major politicians and public figures of his day. He was also a secretive figure and a reputed…
It’s a rock-and-roll musical that puts a main character named Jesus in a land where people worship boobs. It’s also a classic hero-myth set to interpretive dance. It’s The Lovinator, and it’s going to be weird — but co-creator Brian Powell says it won’t be so weird as to not…
Beauty and the Beast. Though it’s backed by expert musicians and technicians, the real miracle is the Phamaly company itself. The leads are as good as — and often better than — anyone you’ll see anywhere. Jenna Bainbridge is the sweetest Belle imaginable, with a clear, strong soprano and, paradoxically,…
There are times when I want to scream at a director doing Shakespeare: For God’s sake, if you don’t like the damn play, don’t stage it. For this Colorado Shakespeare Festival production, Scott Williams has tarted up Measure for Measure with all kinds of extraneous trickery: red umbrellas and vinyl…
The songs from South Pacific are part of our daily diet. We hum them; we pray they don’t turn up in TV commercials; we endure bad renditions in a thousand amateur productions; and we occasionally stop to marvel that these melodies — “Some Enchanted Evening,” “Younger Than Springtime,” “This Nearly…
