Now Playing: The Week’s Theater Options

Ambition Facing West. Anthony Clarvoe’s Ambition Facing West is ostensibly about immigration, since it deals with three generations of an immigrant family — their lives, identities and ambitions in the mythical trek west for safety, opportunity and freedom, however defined. But Clarvoe goes deeper than this. His play isn’t a straightforward narrative or a work with a clean, cut-and-dried theme. It’s an exploration, emotional and intellectual, of the idea of home and away, of cultural shifts, parents and children, movement and stillness, religion, and the great, uncaring tides of history. In other words, just about everything that matters. The story concerns Stipan, who leaves Croatia as a young man before the First World War and ends up working in a Wyoming mine, where he becomes an effective union organizer. He has married an Italian woman, Josephina, herself an escapee from a murky past who, as World War II rages, worries that Italian Americans will be interned like the Japanese Americans. The couple’s daughter, Alma, falls in love with Jim, and he, having come to despise his Italian-born parents, eventually goes off to war. The play is written in brief scenes. We begin with young Stipan in Croatia, being taught to read by a kindly priest, Father Luka, and later see him as an adult with Alma and Josephina in the 1940s. In another continuing thread, Alma is with her own son in 1980s Japan. The sensitive, intellectually curious daughter of a union man has become a sarcastic, hard-nosed management expert, at odds with her restless son, Joey. All this may sound cloudy, but it isn’t. And while knowing a little about twentieth-century European history helps, it’s not necessary in order to understand and savor the narrative. Each scene is self-contained and specific, the characters are richly drawn and full of life, the dialogue intrigues — and all of the acting is first-rate. Presented by Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company through November 2, Dairy Center for the Arts, 2590 Walnut Street, Boulder, 888-512-7469, boulderensembletheatre.org. Reviewed October 16.

Good Television.Rod McLachlan’s Good Television features a show called Rehabilitation, which is based on the actual program Intervention, and its creators have clear-cut rules for their episodes: Find a reasonably appealing and photogenic addict whose addiction appears susceptible to successful intervention, follow him or her around for a while, interview the family, and build to the big “reveal” — the scene where the family tells the protagonist that he or she must go into rehab or be abandoned by them. Like Intervention, this fictional show obtains top-of-the-line care for willing participants, donated by clinics in exchange for airtime. These aims aren’t entirely despicable; it makes sense to select people who probably can be helped, and up until now, producer Connie, a therapist and herself a recovered alcoholic, has chosen her subjects with great care. But her boss, Bernice, has learned that several extra episodes are required, while the budget — always low — remains the same. And this means that 21-year-old tweaker Clemson McAddy, whose sister Brittany has been pleading for help but whose hard-core, five-year addiction would normally put his case off limits, will be featured. Off goes Connie to a trailer park in Aiken, South Carolina, with novice camerawoman Tara and Ethan, the former producer of a show about “strippers rescuing cats.” Here things fall apart in all the predictable ways. Clemson has disappeared. Poor Brittany, who loves her brother but simply can’t cope with his craziness while she’s caring for her two children and dying mother, is at the end of her rope. Their brother Mackson wants the family to profit from the show. And then the siblings’ abusive father shows up, explaining that “Jesus…brought me to sobriety” and insisting that Jesus can do the same for Clemson — who at this point has returned and is huddling on the sofa in a state of near-catatonic breakdown. All this would seem melodramatic and clichéd if not for the intelligent dialogue. McLachlan is an actor, and this is his first play. The script is sometimes a bit talky, but it’s a promising work: interesting, entertaining and sometimes incisive. Presented by Ashton and Abster Productions through November 1, Aurora Fox, 9900 East Colfax Avenue, Aurora. 303-739-1970, aurorafox.org. Reviewed October 23.

Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike.

For Christopher Durang, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spikeis pretty weak tea. While the play is relatively funny and does have some outrageously inventive moments, the black humor, zany surprise, sheer unfettered impudence and break-the-dishes iconoclasm of Durang’s other works is missing. As the title makes clear, the work is (sort of) an homage to Chekhov. Vanya and Sonia, a middle-aged brother and (adopted) sister, stayed home caring for their Alzheimer-ravaged parents while a third sibling, glamorous Masha, became a wealthy movie star. The two wither quietly in their rather luxurious country house while Masha pays the bills. But then she descends with her young lover, Spike, and proceeds to stage a series of monstrous, flamboyant displays that would make a drag queen green with envy. She’s determined to go to a costume party at the home of an influential neighbor dressed as Walt Disney’s Snow White and insists that everyone else attend her as dwarves. But Sonia suddenly displays an unexpected independence. She trots off to the local thrift shop and returns wearing a glittering, sequin-studded gown: She is going to the party as the Wicked Queen as played by Maggie Smith on her way to the Oscars, she explains. You don’t need to know Chekhov to enjoy this play, but the references do add humor as Sonia repeatedly laments, “I am a wild turkey,” and the family bickers about its cherry orchard, which consists of nine or ten trees. And just as Chekhov’s characters resisted modernity, Vanya springs into a fury when Spike starts texting in the middle of Nina’s performance. Only his exasperation — a lament for stamps you need to lick and phones with rotary dials — is diaphragm-shaking funny. And after that, unexpectedly, Durang provides a quietly hopeful and entirely un-Chekhovian ending. Presented by the Denver Center Theatre Company through November 16, Ricketson Theatre, Denver Performing Arts Complex, 303-893-4100, denvercenter.org. Reviewed October 23.