Man of La Mancha, based on Miquel de Cervantes’s seventeenth-century masterpiece Don Quixote, was an award-gobbling sensation when it was first staged in 1965. The musical has less impact now that it’s been through decades of professional and community productions. Still, the Arvada Center has mounted a big, sumptuous show,…

At the beginning of The Other Place, Sharr White’s absorbing study of a mind unraveling, a woman is standing at a podium giving a lecture on a new drug intended as a cure for dementia. She is poised, intelligent, witty, self-aware. This is Juliana, a neuroscientist originally involved in developing…

Sharr White’s plays have been workshopped and mounted around the country over the years, and he has received several awards — but it was The Other Place, his piece about a brilliant woman scientist’s battle with dementia, that brought him to Broadway last year. Laurie Metcalf played the scientist, Juliana;…

“This is an old-boy event in which women do not appear unless to provide some kind of illicit service. And when we do appear, we do not wear heels. And when we do wear heels, if we do not immediately prove we are the smartest person in the room we…

Based on historical events, The Pitmen Painters tells the story of a group of miners in a small town near Northumberland who sign up for an art-appreciation class taught by art historian Robert Lyon. When the men show no interest in his slides, Lyon realizes that having them create their…

When Herbert Siguenza was seven years old, he saw a book by photojournalist David Douglas Duncan called The Private World of Pablo Picasso. Although today Siguenza is perhaps best-known as a founding member of the Latino troupe Culture Clash — the company’s American Night was shown at the Denver Center…

The story of Bat Boy originated in the now-defunct Weekly World News tabloid, which announced that a scientist had found a creature that was half boy, half bat in a West Virginia cave. Many adventures followed: Bat Boy was captured for science experiments and escaped, captured by the FBI and…

With the regional premiere of The Brothers Size, Curious Theatre has given Denverites their first chance to experience the work of Tarell Alvin McCraney, an African-American writer barely out of his twenties who’s been hailed on both sides of the Atlantic as an important new voice in theater. McCraney grew…

The opening weekend of Equinox Theatre’s Bat Boy: The Musical last month was a smash — sold-out houses on both nights, and standing ovations for the cast. But a few days later came the horrifying news that Adam Perkes, the intense actor who played Bat Boy, had been found dead…

On the opening night for Jon, the Catamounts served vodka before the show. The drinks — courtesy of Boulder’s 303 Vodka — came in glasses rimmed with blue Kool-Aid, and with ice cubes made of frozen cherry juice. This offering — along with a food wagon decorated with lights that…

With its just-announced 2013-’14 season, the Denver Center Theatre Company remains true to its mission of promoting interesting and exciting new playwrights. Four of the playwrights whose work received readings at the New Play Summit last month are included in the next lineup. See also: – Marcus Gardley debuts Black…

The stage is set up for a cozy Halloween party: autumn-leaf ornaments, joke skeletons on the walls, a red paper lantern. Six people are sitting around a table for a seance. But the table is situated over a graveyard, and pretty soon the participants’ bodies are taken over by ghosts…

Musician and multi-media artist Adam Stone has worked with Buntport Theater Company on four pieces over the last three years. He composed songs for three musicals, all of them among the company’s most exciting works: Seal. Stamp. Send. Bang, which gave hilarious new meaning to the term going postal; Jugged…

Motherhood Out Loud. This play is performed by six actors — five women and a man — and consists of little playlets compiled by Susan Rose and Joan Stein on many aspects of motherhood: a new mother dealing with her own hovering mother, a woman raising an autistic son, and…

The set for the Denver Center’s Romeo and Juliet is austere. The play opens on a stage that is almost bare save for two coffins, the first on the thrust part of the stage, the second behind a transparent dividing curtain. Through the evening, most of the action will take…

Despite the deceptively fine weather, it isn’t spring yet. But somehow, leaving the theater after seeing The Seafarer, I couldn’t help feeling that it was. This had something to do with having seen four soul-stirring — and completely different — plays in a little over a month. There was James…

The word “robot” first appeared in the play Rossum’s Universal Robotsor R.U.R, written in the 1920s by Czech author Karel Capek. In it, a group of scientists create human-like creatures that ultimately rise against their makers. In the ensuing battle, human beings are wiped out and the formula for creating…