We’ve all heard of the concept of paying it forward, but Erin Rollman, one of the creators and mainstays of Buntport Theater, is taking it several steps further than most of us could ever have imagined: She’s donating a kidney to someone she’s never met. Evan Weissman, longtime Buntport collaborator…
Full fathom five thy father lies. Of his bones are coral made, These are pearls that were his eyes. Nothing of him that doth change But doth suffer a sea change Into something rich and strange. — Shakespeare, The Tempest This summer, Geoffrey Kent directed one of the best Colorado…
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…
A lot goes on in three days in Washington Heights, Manhattan — at least as portrayed in In the Heights. Graffiti Pete gets driven away from Usnavi’s bodega — where everyone stops for light, sweet coffee in the morning — before he can make his mark on the door; Usnavi…
Steel Magnolias was inspired by the death of playwright Robert Harling’s diabetic sister, and I’ve tended to think of it as a pale-pink, Hallmark-card production — which is appropriate, since the ailing Shelby is obsessed with pink and is busily planning a sugar-pink wedding while ensconced in the home salon…
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged). The Colorado Shakespeare Festival staged a pretty good version of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) five years ago, so we’re not sure why the CSF decided to bring it back this season. The show, written in 1987 by Adam Long, Daniel…
Early this year, it looked as if the Colorado Shakespeare Festival might be on its last legs. But after some re-organization, a strong marketing push and a tightening of the festival’s focus, the New York Times named the CSF one of the summer’s hot tickets — and A Midsummer Night’s…
The Phamaly production of Fiddler on the Roof did something miraculous: It made me forget all the hackneyed productions I’ve seen over the years and reminded me of how great the music is, how evocative the story. “Sabbath Prayer” brought an image of my mother — now long gone —…
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged). The Colorado Shakespeare Festival staged a pretty good version of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged)five years ago, so we’re not sure why the CSF decided to bring it back this season. The show, written in 1987 by Adam Long, Daniel Singer…
Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate (we know) that someone close to us could die, but we do not look beyond the few days or weeks that immediately follow such an imagined death. We misconstrue the nature of even…
John Guare’s The House of Blue Leaves, first produced in 1971, is satiric, poignant, farcical, highly metaphorical and filled with poetic flights of language, strange juxtapositions and dream descriptions; it’s smart but falls apart in the second act; and it’s theatrical-realistic and original, but very much in line with the…
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged). The Colorado Shakespeare Festival staged a pretty good version of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged)five years ago, so we’re not sure why the CSF decided to bring it back this season. The show, written in 1987 by Adam Long, Daniel Singer…
Jim Hunt is one of the most respected, well-reviewed and best-loved actors in the Denver area. He has given memorable performances as a wheedling tramp in Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker; a foppish musician in Bach at Leipzig; the loving, baffled father of Eurydice, who has passed into the land of…
There’s no real hero in Richard II. In fact, everyone in the play is pretty wicked. Watching the Colorado Shakespeare Festival production, I remembered a historian’s comment after a corpse assumed to be Richard III was found under a parking lot in Leicester. Richard’s indefatigable defenders had hoped this corpse…
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged). The Colorado Shakespeare Festival staged a pretty good version of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged)five years ago, so we’re not sure why the CSF decided to bring it back this season. The show, written in 1987 by Adam Long, Daniel Singer…
Fans of Thaddeus Phillips — who brings his extraordinary Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental theater pieces to Denver far too rarely — will remember that travel is a predominant theme for him. In Lost Soles, he played a tap dancer who took refuge in Cuba after a disastrous performance and got trapped…
Named for theater impresario Henry Lowenstein, the Henry Awards honor the best work of the year: They are Denver’s version of the Tonys. The Colorado Theatre Guild organizes the voting process, while actors Jim Hunt and Josh Hartwell put the evening together, including the musical interludes — this year will…
Near the beginning of Curtains, Jessica Cranshaw, the untalented and unpleasant star of Robbin’ Hood — a musical within the musical — collapses during a rehearsal, clearly the victim of foul play. A young cop is called in to solve the murder, and the mystery unfolds in a manner familiar…
The plight of Edward Snowden — still holed up at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport on Monday — illustrates the Kafkaesque nature of national borders. He is in a transit area, which represents neutral territory. He’s not in Russia, so Vladimir Putin has no obligation either to consider granting him asylum or…
Closer. Dan is an obituary writer at a newspaper, and he encounters Alice, a part-time stripper, when she steps in front of a cab and gets knocked down. He escorts her to the hospital. There Larry, a dermatologist, looks her over briefly. Some time later, Dan — now happily married…
It’s clear when I arrive at the Boulder Farmers’ Market Saturday that summer has finally and emphatically arrived. Fronds of dill have given way to long seed stalks. The peaches are profoundly welcome, but no longer the brilliant surprise they were last week. Not many field tomatoes yet — though…
Heritage Square Music Hall will close down at the end of the year, after more than two decades of hilarity in its eccentric Golden home. The building is an Old West opera house, authentic except for the fact that it’s two-thirds the normal size of one and was built in…
