Performing Arts

Chinglish, a play about an American businessman struggling to win a commission in China, has good intentions. So does this Aurora Fox production. But sadly, the show isn’t very good.

Disenchanted, which satirizes the cultural assumptions, historical distortions and masculine obtuseness behind the perfect Disney princess image in a series of tuneful, lively and often very funny songs, is a delightful way to spend an evening.

Comedian Dave Chappelle, who just released two Netflix specials, Deep in The Heart of Texas and The Age of Spin, will be hosting the biggest show of his career, this summer, in Colorado.

Take the Edwardians’ morbid fascination with death, murder and the macabre early in the twentieth century, then add black humor, some woman-to-woman celebration, a bit of mockery and touches of real sorrow, and you have The Drowning Girls, a regional premiere at the Arvada Center’s Black Box Theater.

Nick Payne’s Constellations, now in its Denver premiere at Curious Theatre Company, got raves in New York — but we’re having trouble getting beyond the fake British accents.

The Denver comedy community is still coming to grips with the loss of local comedian, lawyer, father and friend Frank Schuchat, who passed away on Tuesday, February 28. The CU Boulder and Georgetown-educated founder of Schuchat International Law Firm served as a judicial law clerk on the D.C. Court of…

Douglas Carter Beane’s The Nance, now seeing its regional premiere at Edge Theater, is a play about burlesque in 1930s New York; it’s a fascinating slice of history, and an equally fascinating character study.

Once a year, Colorado Ballet gives its dancers an opportunity to choreograph their own works. This Friday, March 10, performances will be held at the Armstrong Center for Dance. Audience members will be treated to works in an intimate setting in the Black Box Theater, right next to where the…

They say March comes in like a lion, and Denver comedy has enough treats in store to keep you roaring with laughter all month long. From home-brewed showcases on local stages to top-notch headliners performing all over the Front Range, this month’s calendar is replete with shows to tickle your…

Bus Stop, currently showing at the Arvada Center, was written in 1955, and it creaks a bit. A group of people are stranded at a bus stop restaurant in a small town west of Kansas City by a howling blizzard. What follows is a character study of this disparate gathering,…

You don’t need to be a Beowulf fan to get swept up in this extraordinary production by the Catamounts, now at the Dairy Arts Center.

Sure, everybody loves dad jokes. But can comedian Jim Gaffigan, the author of Dad Is Fat, pack the 1STBANK Center this summer for his Colorado stop on his Noble Ape Tour? As one of ten comedians to ever sell out Madison Square Garden, possibly. Gaffigan is known for his jokes about…

An Iliad is a version of Homer’s epic poem about the Trojan War, told in ninety minutes in a mixture of exalted language and everyday vernacular by a single lonely figure on a stage that represents somewhere blasted and unnamed — a place with dark, broken windows, bits of crumbling…

The high pitch of the national climate-change debate vibrates throughout the production of Two Degrees, a world premiere at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts after the script was workshopped at last year’s Colorado New Play Summit. No one in the audience can be unaware that all of President Barack Obama’s work on the issue is about to be undone.

Fairytale ballets like Swan Lake and The Nutcracker guarantee sold out houses for Colorado Ballet, which leans on those productions to ensure it makes budget. While coastal cities enjoy more consistent, challenging, modern repertoires, it’s an every two-years treat in Denver. In part, that’s because audiences aren’t supporting innovation. The Little Mermaid, which…

It seems that Buntport had the Trump presidency very much in mind when creating The Zeus Problem, a story about what happens when all power is invested in a single figure, particularly one as mercurial and unaccountable as Zeus. Except that Jim Hunt is a whole lot funnier than Trump.

The Christians has a interesting story, but doesn’t go deep — and the view is caught between heaven and hell.

According to America’s preeminent groundhog meteorologists, we can expect six more weeks of winter and at least four more years of rapidly encroaching fascism. Needless to say, the cathartic release of comedy is in high demand, perhaps now more than ever. Fortunately, February’s post-Super Bowl weeks are stuffed with a…

Taylor Mac’s Hir is a mess — but it’s a seething, evocative, darkly funny mess tangled in a host of issues, with sex and gender at their center. Intelligently directed by Josh Hartwell, Hir represents a daring step for Miners Alley, providing entry into a world that feels somewhat alien and hermetically sealed. It’s fascinating to observe for an evening, though you wouldn’t want to stay too long there.

Steven Burge has had many challenging roles, including serving as Westword’s receptionist. But now he really gets to play God: as the lead in An Act of God, which runs through April 8 at the Garner Galleria.

Making water safety videos in the context of Ophelia, the potential wife of Hamlet who drowns herself toward the end of William Shakespeare’s tragedy, isn’t the most intuitive response to the play. That is, unless you’re Niki Tulk, the United States born, Australian raised performance artist, who will be presenting her immersive installation, Ophelia | Leaves, in Boulder, on Friday, January 27.

The beginning of Brilliant Traces, now playing at Vintage Theatre, is wonderfully evocative: A young woman in a wedding dress stumbles into a remote and dilapidated Alaska cabin. Her car broke down some time ago, and she’s been wandering in a blinding whiteout — the kind that disorients and kills…