Television’s mutant family of talk shows has effectively bastardized the theater’s long-sacred belief that one person’s emotional odyssey is appropriate subject matter for an audience’s shared catharsis. But not even Jerry Springer’s warped view of the human condition can compare with the shock-value tactics of Canadian playwright Brad Fraser. In…
Contemporary dramatists don’t typically direct their own plays, mostly because of the notion that at some point, all writers lose a sense of objectivity concerning their own ideas. Lately, though, more playwrights have chosen to direct their own transparent confessions. And in the Denver Center Theatre Company’s world premiere of…
There’s no one more qualified to examine the pretensions of theater professionals and their critics than England’s greatest living playwright, Tom Stoppard, who began his illustrious career as an itinerant drama reviewer. The surreal sense of humor Stoppard displays in The Real Inspector Hound is perfect for taking the air…
The conducting style of Richard Strauss stood in marked contrast to the flamboyant antics of other twentieth-century maestros. In fact, violinist Yehudi Menuhin once noted, when Strauss took to the podium, there was very little evidence that the great German musician was actually conducting. Nevertheless, a close look at vintage…
Near the end of Henrik Ibsen’s 1879 play A Doll House, Nora is compelled to choose between living with her patronizing husband or leaving him (and her adoring children) in order to pursue an independent life of self-realization. After a gut-wrenching, twenty-minute battle of wills with her befuddled mate, Nora…
Before you declare once and for all your utter disinterest in the private lives (not to mention the private parts) of public figures, take a gander at British playwright Alan Bennett’s intellectual farce, Kafka’s Dick. Far more than an underhanded jab at a deified writer’s supposed anatomical shortcomings, Bennett’s play…
In the days when radio was king, Americans seemed as united in spirit as at any point in their history. True, much of what was broadcast was merely sweet-sounding, thinly veiled propaganda (FDR’s Fireside Chats, for instance, weren’t much more than feel-good campaign messages). But the big-band music that came…
By virtually every account, the Broadway musical is booming. At last tally, a score of productions were playing to near-record crowds on the Great White Way. Of course, this spate of musical entertainment contains its share of theme-park shtick meant to attract starry-eyed out-of-towners and a fringe group of slumming…
A quick inventory of the Shakespearean actor’s stock-in-trade includes qualities such as an expressive voice and body, a fertile imagination, and a devotion to spiritual truth tempered by a carnival barker’s sense of showmanship. But when it comes to portraying any of the four major Shakespearean tragic roles (Hamlet, Lear,…
At first glance, the Shop’s tiny stage seems a poor choice to house a production of Irish playwright Brian Friel’s Dancing at Lughnasa. In fact, the cramped confines of the storefront theater appear especially ill-suited to the emotional climax of Friel’s masterpiece, which calls for five unmarried Irish sisters to…
Crying at the top of her lungs, “I’m sick of Negro dreams–all they ever do is break your heart!” a middle-aged woman flails away with her fists at the one man who promises he’ll rescue her from her dead-end existence. For one brief, glorious moment, it appears that Angel will…
No single event stamps its imprint more indelibly on the body politic than the taking of a hostage. In fact, hostage situations involving American soldiers, journalists and businessmen have each proved the point that nothing–not internal racial discord, impending economic disaster or even a presidential sex scandal–strikes a more resonant…
Playwright August Wilson was at Dartmouth College the other day, spouting off once again about why America needs a separate theater dedicated to the interests of African-Americans. White artists, Wilson has repeatedly argued, are simply ill-equipped to understand and interpret his Pulitzer- and Tony-award-winning plays about black life. It takes…
President Clinton’s 1993 appointment of actress Jane Alexander to head the National Endowment for the Arts was seen by many as a healthy sign for the embattled agency. After all, Alexander had enjoyed a distinguished career in the theater and was the first actual artist to hold the post. But…
Apart from angst-ridden playwrights, hostile audiences and long periods of unemployment, the greatest challenge faced by a professional actor is the tricky business of sharing the stage with children and small animals. W.C. Fields made hating kids downright stylish, despite the fact that he began his own career by running…
William Shakespeare was, above all else, a practical man. The sheer majesty of his verse notwithstanding, the Bard of Avon became the world’s greatest playwright because he told his versions of borrowed (some would say stolen) stories better than anyone else. Which is why those who would improve upon Shakespeare’s…
If you’ve always thought it takes an advanced college degree to understand and appreciate a play, El Centro Su Teatro’s charming production of When El Cucui Walks is precisely the play to convince you otherwise. Even though this two-hour-plus drama draws on Mexican myths and is performed in a mix…
The garish glow emanating from movies, television shows and interactive media has effectively dimmed the theater’s jewel in America. But rather than abandoning all hope and selling out to Hollywood, some dramatists are choosing to preserve theatrical traditions by writing plays that manipulate the electronic media. It’s an idea that…
When Georges Bizet’s Carmen premiered in 1875, Parisian audiences were outraged that the opera’s title character was a cigarette-smoking, overtly sexual woman who discarded her male lovers like picked flowers. The fact that the story ended with Carmen’s onstage murder only added to patrons’ contempt for the controversial work. Stung…
Environmental-theater designer Jerry Rojo once remarked that he regarded Samuel Beckett’s Endgame as the ultimate personal theatrical experience. Convinced that the play’s two main characters personified the conflicting forces of intellect and emotion, Rojo created a unique design for his production of the play: The maverick designer crafted individual cardboard…
Have you ever regaled a houseful of your friends with an evening’s worth of your special brand of witty banter? And did their approving laughter tempt you to take your “material” on stage as a stand-up comic? After all, that’s how Tim Allen, Bill Cosby and Roseanne headed down the…
Hoping to recruit the audience members of tomorrow, the Denver Center Theatre Company is increasingly on the lookout for plays that appeal to family audiences. In the latest installment of its Generation Series, the DCTC and director Nagle Jackson have combined theatrical spectacle with great literature in a new adaptation…
