Impulse Theater. Basements and comedy go together like beer and nuts or toddlers and sandboxes. The basement of the Wynkoop Brewery where Impulse Theater performs is crowded, loud and energetic. Impulse does no prepared skits, nothing but pure improv — which means that what you see changes every night, and…
What is there to say abou The Wizard of Oz at this point in time? The film — if not the original book — is etched in every American mind: Judy Garland’s solid little Dorothy with her child’s innocence and full, womanly voice; Bert Lahr’s Cowardly Lion; Margaret Hamilton epitomizing…
Parallel Lives, at the Avenue Theater, begins promisingly, with two heavenly beings designing the human race. They discuss skin color — red, tan, yellow — and worry that those humans with ordinary white skin may feel left out or inferior. They decide that procreation will occur through sex and that…
Death of a Salesman. Written in 1949, Death of a Salesman electrified the theatrical world for several reasons. It tossed aside the conventions of the well-made, three-act play years before they were finally laid to rest in the rebellious mid-’50s. It criticized the post-war myth of the American dream –…
The few U.S. commentators who bothered to note the recent election in England marveled at the level of attack sustained in the run-up weeks by Prime Minister Tony Blair — and not just in print. While George Bush’s handlers make sure that anyone who disagrees with the president in the…
I found Shaking the Dew From the Lilies, now at the Playwright Theatre, enjoyable in the same way I found nights with girlfriends enjoyable in my twenties. Clad in pajamas or our underwear, we’d dissect each other’s relationships amid peals of satirical laughter at the general obtuseness of men, assure…
Death of a Salesman. Written in 1949, Death of a Salesman electrified the theatrical world for several reasons. It tossed aside the conventions of the well-made, three-act play years before they were finally laid to rest in the rebellious mid-’50s. It criticized the post-war myth of the American dream –…
Kimberly Akimbo, currently being staged at Nomad Theatre, begins with an elderly woman seated on a bench, huddled in her jacket against a surprising April snowstorm. (The first mention of the unseasonable weather got a big laugh on the snowy 30th of April in Boulder.) A younger man comes by…
Opening nights are a strange phenomenon, paper houses filled with critics and theater people. The latter are warmly supportive of their friends in the play, and many of them express their support by responding so passionately — empathetic gasps, howls of slightly drunken laughter — that the rest of us…
Over the past few years, some of the most reliably interesting theater performances in this area have taken place on the small, square stage above the galleries at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, under the aegis of artistic director Brandi Mathis. Mathis, who worked at the museum for five…
The Crimson Thread. The first scene of this play is well-acted and somewhat promising, though it does have a bit of that golden-sunlight, Hallmark-card feeling about it. The year is 1869. Two sisters, Eilis and Bridget, are talking on the porch of a stone cottage in a small, poor Irish…
The first scene of The Crimson Thread, currently showing at the Arvada Center, is somewhat promising, though it does have a bit of that golden-sunlight, Hallmark-card feeling about it. Mary Hanes’s writing is lyrical but rarely revelatory. The year is 1869. Two sisters, Eilis and Bridget, are talking on the…
In the last few years, Bas Bleu has become a beacon of theatrical inventiveness and energy in Fort Collins. Play selection is always intelligent and sometimes daring, and execution is usually exemplary. The company began this season with an ambitious endeavor: In conjunction with Openstage, they presented Angels in America…
Cyrano. The trouble with Heritage Square’s Cyrano is that the company has abandoned the hybrid style that’s all its own — one that involves wild improvisation and lots of audience participation — and decided instead to play the story of the long-nosed wit and fighter who’s afraid to reveal his…
I think of Alan Bennett as a chronicler of the lives of those inhabiting a certain stratum of British society: lonely, middle-class people, conventional, self-conscious and always slightly embarrassed at themselves, like the monologuists of Talking Heads or Bennett’s self-depiction as the unwilling host of The Lady in the Van…
In a culture where popular definitions of manhood are as rigid and narrow as they are in the United States (real men chop down trees, play sports and don’t drink lattes), the age-old ideal of the warrior-poet seems a contradiction in terms. Without question, however, this mythic figure was in…
Cats. This company does as good a job with Cats as one can imagine. The dancing, choreographed by Stephen Bertles, who also directed, is seamless. The cast is lithe and graceful. They slither like snakes. They leap high and land without a sound. They’re wonderfully into character, batting at each…
Pigeons on the grass, alas. — Gertrude Stein It is neither just nor accurate to connect the word alas with pigeons. Pigeons are definitely not alas. They have nothing to do with alas and they have nothing to do with hooray (not even when you tie red, white, and blue…
Normally, I would trek through broken glass — well, okay, walk several city blocks in new high heels — to see Nicholas Sugar perform. It’s not just his humor and intense stage presence; it’s the fact that in the past he’s added interesting colors to roles that could easily be…
Cats. This company does as good a job with Cats as one can imagine. The dancing, choreographed by Stephen Bertles, who also directed, is seamless. The cast is lithe and graceful. They slither like snakes. They leap high and land without a sound. They’re wonderfully into character, batting at each…
Edmond, currently being staged by the Denver Repertory Theatre Company, is about as nasty a play as I can imagine. When I see something that angers me this much, I usually try to figure out some interpretation I may be missing, something that justifies the enterprise. But for the life…
Fire on the Mountain is an evocation of the lives of Appalachian coal miners in the first few decades of the twentieth century. Created for the Denver Center by Dan Wheetman and Randal Myler, who also directs, it is told primarily through song, with snatches of dialogue and narrative taken…
