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After the Revolution. Playwright Amy Herzog enters a very specific world in After the Revolution: the passionate, close-knit, hyper-idealistic world of Jewish Communism in New York City during the early decades of the twentieth century. For these activists, Soviet Russia was a model. But when Khrushchev denounced Stalin during the…

Vigil brings comic relief to Cherry Creek

Vigil opens with an old woman in a bed and a looming figure in the shadows of the doorway behind her. It looks like a true Halloween scenario — the big bad wolf approaching the helpless grandmother — and this impression isn’t altogether off, because the intruder is indeed a…

Eve Ensler comes to Boulder for LOCAL Theater benefit Friday

Eve Ensler — who will be in Boulder for a benefit for LOCAL Theater Company on Friday, October 11, is known to Coloradans primarily as the author of that raucous, liberating and unflinching theater piece, The Vagina Monologues, which has been performed several times in the Denver area — as…

Seminar has the write stuff

Anyone who has ever attended a writers’ workshop (guilty!) will recognize the characters in Theresa Rebeck’s Seminar, and also the dynamics among them. There’s Douglas, the apparently confident son of a somewhat well-known writer, who’s a few steps ahead of the other students in terms of his literary career: He…

No sale on DCTC’s Death of a Salesman

I’ve never liked Death of a Salesman, but I figured that maybe I’d just never seen a really first-rate production. With their current production, the Denver Center Theatre Company and director Anthony Powell have fielded the perfect cast: Mike Hartman — whose performance as the ethically compromised protagonist of All…

Encore

After the Revolution. Playwright Amy Herzog enters a very specific world in After the Revolution: the passionate, close-knit, hyper-idealistic world of Jewish Communism in New York City during the early decades of the twentieth century. For these activists, Soviet Russia was a model. But when Khrushchev denounced Stalin during the…

Now Playing

After the Revolution. Playwright Amy Herzog enters a very specific world in After the Revolution: the passionate, close-knit, hyper-idealistic world of Jewish Communism in New York City during the early decades of the twentieth century. For these activists, Soviet Russia was a model. But when Khrushchev denounced Stalin during the…

Defending the Caveman explains the male of the species

Defending the Caveman is a low-key, low-budget one-man show, part standup comedy, part nightclub act. Written by Rob Becker, the piece has been appearing in intimate venues around the country for several years, promoted as a fun way to pass an evening with a drink in your hand and your…

With The Full Monty, BDT shows it has skin in the game

You wouldn’t expect this production of The Full Monty at a dinner theater — not so much because of the script, but because of the daring with which it’s staged. Places like Boulder’s Dinner Theater are kept alive in large part by church groups and Rotary-type clubs, and they need…

Now Playing

After the Revolution. Playwright Amy Herzog enters a very specific world in After the Revolution: the passionate, close-knit, hyper-idealistic world of Jewish Communism in New York City during the early decades of the twentieth century. For these activists, Soviet Russia was a model. But when Khrushchev denounced Stalin during the…

The Knights of the Round Table fall flat in Camelot

Throughout all three hours of Camelot, I was entertaining a single question: Why would anyone decide to stage this thing? I’d been pleased when I first read the show’s title on the Arvada Center’s season announcement: I had never seen Camelot before, and was anxious to make up for it…

After the Revolution: The Party’s over, but family dynamics roll on

Playwright Amy Herzog enters a very specific world in After the Revolution, now receiving its regional premiere at Curious Theatre: the passionate, close-knit, hyper-idealistic world of Jewish Communism in New York City during the early decades of the twentieth century. In The Romance of American Communism, Vivian Gornick showed this…

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Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo. There are so many levels to Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo and such a mix of clarity and evocative ambiguity in the way these levels are presented. The play talks about the ugliness and irrationality of war and the dividing lines between cultures…

Screw Tooth’s Some Kind of Fun isn’t much fun

Multimedia artist Adam Stone has collaborated on four of Buntport’s most interesting shows, making music for three and contributing a soundscape and his own haunting presence to Wake, the company’s take on Shakespeare’s The Tempest. So a fair amount of excitement greeted the recent announcement that he had created a…

With Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, Edge has uncaged a hit

Zoos tend to fare badly during wartime, with the plight of captive animals mirroring that of besieged populations. Diane Ackerman’s beautiful book The Zoo Keeper’s Wife tells the story of the Zabinskis, who ran a zoo in Warsaw that was devastated by German bombers: “The moaning of lions and yowling…

Boulder Farmers’ Market: Goodbye, peaches — hello, apples!

T.S. Eliot’s Prufrock famously measured out his life in coffee spoons. For the last several weeks, I’ve been measuring mine out in peaches. Stands at the Boulder Farmers’ Market are overflowing with blushing fruit, so I’ve had peaches for breakfast, a peach with a piece of blue cheese for an…

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50 Shades of Loud. Heritage Square Music Hall will close down at the end of the year after more than two decades of hilarity in its Golden home, where a unique small company evolved an equally unique performing style. The shows are simultaneously bumbling and brilliantly staged, professional and apparently…

Peter and the Starcatcher just doesn’t fly

About half an hour into Peter and the Starcatcher, I started wondering: What is it with the New York critics? They were so excited by this show — exhilarated, ecstatic. They loved that the tech wasn’t grindingly, massively hyper-expensive, but rather low-key, using ordinary objects in the way that experimental…

Now Playing

50 Shades of Loud. Heritage Square Music Hall will close down at the end of the year after more than two decades of hilarity in its Golden home, where a unique small company evolved an equally unique performing style. The shows are simultaneously bumbling and brilliantly staged, professional and apparently…