When the tall, beautiful dramatic actress Anne Bancroft was asked what had drawn her to Mel Brooks, the short, funny-looking creator of shows and movies filled with broad, cheesy, Borscht Belt-style humor to whom she ended up married, she replied, “Mel had a lethal weapon: He made me laugh to…
For the past two years, the Crom Comedy Festival has drawn comedians from across the country to the frown-furrowed plains of Omaha. The festival’s co-organizers, Zach Reinert and Ian Douglas Terry, have recently upgraded hometowns and decided to expand their annual festival while maintaining its original Nebraska base. Enter this…
During the talkback following a performance of Curious Theatre Company’s Detroit, an audience member asked: “What was the play’s message?” This isn’t a question I normally ask — I’ve never thought that works of art need messages — but in this case, the query was right on the money. There’s…
Spring is almost here, and local productions are blooming on stages across town. We even have two versions of Cock, one at Avenue Theatre and one at Edge, reviewed below. Keep reading for capsule reviews of five current productions, including Big Fish, which closes on Sunday. A Public Reading of…
Sartre reimagines the Greek gods in an existential world, acting students rip through the Tennessee Williams canon and a shocking Jazz-Age murder case is revisited: Here’s what’s new on metro stages this weekend. The Upstart Crow, The Flies The Dairy Center for the Arts May 15 through 30 7:30 p.m…
When it comes to pole dancing, the first image most people have is the seedy arena of a strip club. But that’s not the case with the Pole Theatre USA competition — going down this Friday, May 15 and Saturday, May 16 at the Oriental Theater — where audience members…
The year is 1964 and the setting Dublin for A Man of No Importance, a gentle, high-spirited musical currently showing at the Arvada Center. Inspired by Oscar Wilde, bus conductor Alfie Byrne longs to devote his life to art. His plans for a production of The Importance of Being Earnest…
Most people know Henry Rollins as the former frontman of Black Flag and Rollins Band. His 1994 memoir, Get In the Van, should be required reading for anyone coming up as a musician. A writer, spoken-word performer, actor, world traveler, radio-show host, cultural commentator and activist today, Rollins has kept himself impossibly…
This week on Denver-area stages, secrets come out of the woodwork as a dynasty of Chinese classical musicians gathers in a villa, California’s Proposition 8 trial is re-examined and local improv actors get down to come serious clowning in pirate suits. Ahoy, matey! Here are the details. Theatre Esprit Asia,…
No matter how many dreary events it’s played at, “Jerusalem” — a hymn with lyrics from a poem by William Blake set to music by Sir Hubert Parry — never loses the power to move and astonish, unlike so many jingoistic anthemic songs. “Jerusalem” speaks of a mythic time when…
Between promising upstarts from the local scene and internationally famous headliners dropping in at our clubs and theaters, Denver’s comedy scene will blossom in May — before closing out the month with a new comedy festival. More so than in other months, the list was difficult to narrow down to…
When the curtain rises on Opera Colorado’s new production of Wolfgang Mozart’s The Magic Flute on May 2, General Director Greg Carpenter might be in the wings. Or out front. Or backstage. Or sitting rapt with the rest of the crowd, albeit a tad more nervous than those around him. Since 2007,…
You’re familiar with the term tragi-comedy? Terry Johnson’s Hysteria could be considered a tragi-farce. It’s full of farcical elements: multiple doors, unexpected exits and entrances, mistaken identities, misunderstandings, a naked woman in a closet, silly accents, women’s panties, a man without his trousers who — at least in this Boulder…
Geoffrey Kent is a jokester, a nationally known fight choreographer, a restless, funny and kinetic actor whose most memorable on-stage moment occurred a few years back in the farce Noises Off, when he hopped up a flight of stairs with his shoelaces tied together, tumbled headlong down, somersaulted across furniture…
Sam Tallent has made an art form of non-traditional performance gigs for a standup comedian. Whether traveling on the cheap across unloved American landscapes or hustling for shows in dive bars or house parties, Tallent adapts to whatever stage is beneath his feet — at his best when he’s untethered…
Brent Gill, a boisterous paragon of the Denver comedy scene for close to a decade, has been delighting area stoners and milfs alike with his raunchy jokes. While some of Gill’s efforts, such as the now-defunct Marijuana Radio or the stage name “Brent the Great,” have gone the way of…
As Denver’s scruff-speckled comedy scene prepares itself for something like a changing of the guard, some of the more hysterical corners of the blogosphere have bewailed and bloviated about a “Denver comedy exodus.” Biblical hyperbole aside — a half-dozen comics departing for Los Angeles is about 600,000 Hebrews short of…
No one deserves success more than Paula Poundstone, who’ll be in town for a special solo benefit for Colorado Public Television on Saturday. A genuinely sweet person with more than thirty years of touring as a comedian under her belt, she has diversified into writing, acting, interviewing and commentating —…
This week a pair of respected regional ensembles will present strong work on stages in Boulder and Lakewood, while the Avenue brings back a crowd-pleasing favorite. Hysteria Dairy Center for the Arts April 23 through May 17 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays 4 p.m. Sundays 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, April…
The ghost of Anton Chekhov has been haunting area stages lately, what with last fall’s Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, an absurdist Christopher Durang comedy-parody at the Denver Center, and the Boulder Ensemble’s recent Stupid Fucking Bird, in which playwright Aaron Posner closely follows the plot of The…
Simon Amstell is a comedian and television personality who’s honed his craft over years in the public eye. Stateside, Amstell is mostly recognized for his standup, having performed sets on Conan, The Tonight Show and the Late Show with David Letterman. In his native U.K., however, Amstell is a household name…
For his first endeavor as a playwright, poet, actor and activist, Bobby LeFebre wanted to tackle a sensitive subject that hit close to home: the changing face of the Denver neighborhood in which he grew up. In Northside, LeFebre explores the complex issues facing new and old residents in a…
