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…
Bob Stocker of El Regalo Ranch — just ten miles northwest of Salida — is busy these days, so busy that he won’t be able to attend the Boulder County Farmers’ Market, where he’s been a fixture for the past year, until the first Saturday in May. He and his…
A clothesline on which tops and bras are hung spans the stage. Other than that, the set consists of four shrouded forms that are eventually unshrouded to reveal four middle-aged people sitting in boxes — if you consider Buntport Theater Company’s Brian Colonna, Erin Rollman, Hannah Duggan and Erik Edborg…
A rock musical with a biblical theme? It’s been done, of course. But The 12, a world premiere at the Denver Center Theatre, takes a very different approach from that of Jesus Christ Superstar or Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. It explores the emotional reactions of the disciples who…
There is nothing like the feeling of driving home with rock music blasting and the car trunk full of delicious things to eat. That’s how I returned from the Boulder County Farmers’ Market Saturday — the second of the yeart — with a bunch of slim carrots from Plowshare Farms…
The opening of the Boulder County Farmers’ Market is my favorite herald of spring—even on years when it falls on a wet, icy day. This Saturday, however, was bright and cool, slowly warming hour by hour. And hour by hour the crowd, sparse at first, swelled. For a few weeks,…
Who taught you to hate the color of your skin? Who taught you to hate the texture of your hair? … Who taught you to hate yourself from the top of your head to the soles of your feet? … Who taught you to hate being what God gave you?…
In the ten years since I first saw a Denver production of Lee Blessing’s Two Rooms, the political shadows have deepened and the play’s meanings multiplied: Ripple Effect Theatre, a relatively new company, shows courage, insight and ambition in reviving this play. The two rooms of the title are the…
When you think about Chekhov, the usual image is a stage filled with unhappy people, all yearning for something unattainable. That’s also what you get with Aaron Posner’s Stupid Fucking Bird, a take-off on Chekhov’s The Seagull — but this is a hybrid, a parody with a certain amount of…
Mike Bartlett’s play is titled Cock, and, yes — to get the snickers out of the way up front — the title does refer to the male organ, and it feels pretty odd to call the Edge Theater Company’s box office for two tickets or tell your friends you’re off…
The Catamounts are the wittiest theater troupe around — and, in many ways, the most charmingly inventive. When artistic director Amanda Berg Wilson learned that space at Boulder’s Dairy Center for the Arts, their usual venue, would eventually be unavailable because of construction, she put the current production, A Public…
On local stages this weekend, you can catch everything from songs of the Harlem Renaissance to the wit of the late Molly Ivins in the final performances of Red Hot Patriot revival. Here are capsule reviews of five productions this weekend. Ain’t Misbehavin’. “The Reefer Song,” performed by Leonard E…
Playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney grew up in a Miami housing project, attended graduate school at Yale, where he worked as August Wilson’s assistant, and went on to fame and acclamation as an entirely new voice in theater while still in his twenties. Curious Theatre Company staged McCraney’s The Brothers Size…
Talk about a reefer of five feet long Not too fat and not too strong You get high, but not for long If you’re a viper. Or — as sung by Leonard E. Barrett, on a luxuriously long exhale in Ain’t Misbehavin’ — a vipah. This number, performed with languid,…
Get out of the cold and into a warm theater! Here are capsule reviews of recently reviewed productions — including four that close this weekend, and are all worth seeing. 5 Lesbians Eating a Quiche “At the center, it’s a really sweet love story — and the funniest show of…
A wealth of talent and ingenuity has gone into the Aurora Fox production of Big Fish — too bad the musical itself is no big deal. Based on Daniel Wallace’s novel, which became a 2003 film directed by Tim Burton, Big Fish is a story about tall tales. Edward Bloom,…
Martin McDonagh’s plays have inevitably been compared with those of his literary forebears. In the early twentieth century, John Millington Synge wrote of the bitterness and loneliness of rural Irish life, exacerbated by drunkenness and the grim, hypocritical strictures of the Irish Catholic Church. Synge didn’t shy away from the…
5 Lesbians Eating a Quiche “At the center, it’s a really sweet love story — and the funniest show of the year. I actually think that’s true. People who think women can’t be funny? Well, they should come and take a look at this.” That’s director Edith Weiss’s description of…
The musical Next to Normal garnered a Pulitzer Prize for composer Tom Kitt and writer Brian Yorkey and high praise from critics — in part because it dealt with the ugly realities of mental illness, an unusual and courageous focus for a generally upbeat and unrealistic medium. At the center…
I had high hopes for The Aliens. The Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company has been doing terrific work lately, and The Aliens had received rapturous reviews all over the country, reviews that floated the names Beckett and Chekhov. Playwright Annie Baker won a Pulitzer for…
Benediction Denver Center Theatre Company A world premiere, a tribute and a deeply affecting evening of theater: This is the Denver Center Theatre Company’s production of Benediction, Eric Schmiedl’s dramatization of Kent Haruf’s novel of the same name. A much-loved and lauded Colorado author, Haruf saw two of his earlier…
Beets. A thoughtful historical play by local writer Rick Padden,Beets is set in Berthoud, Colorado, during World War II, when German prisoners were sent to this country and many ended up working in American fields. On first hearing that prisoners will be sent into the beet fields, Fred Hunt, a…
