Many of George Bernard Shaw’s plays are extended arguments — moral, sociological, political — but the argumentation in Heartbreak House, while familiar, is diffuse. The play explores the decadence of the English upper classes in September 1916, just before the German zeppelins began their bombing sorties, with the extended family…

Did you understand it? I couldn’t hear the words. They just kept yelling and yelling. — Overheard in the women’s bathroom after the play The semi-operatic Chess doesn’t have a lot of dialogue, and the music ebbs and surges continually like the sea — sometimes lyrical, witty or moving, and…

There’s a reason I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change — a gently musical that we dubbed “pure peach souffle” over a decade ago — returned to the Garner Galleria Theatre earlier this year for a several-month run. It’s the perfect show for dating couples, professionals looking for after-work relaxation,…

The National Theatre Conservatory — a training ground for young actors, and one of the jewels of the Denver Performing Arts Complex — is closing its doors after more than 25 years. As a parting gift, the last crop of graduating students will offer showcase performances of Fahrenheit 451, which…

There aren’t many actors around who can claim to have met Laurence Olivier, David Frost and Noel Coward — however briefly — or who still refer to Macbeth as Mackers, to ward off the curse associated with the play. But then, there aren’t many who bring to the stage the…

The Slater family in Gina Gionfriddo’s Becky Shaw comprises three odd, bitter and unhappy people who nonetheless live in uneasy equilibrium until Becky Shaw enters their lives through the always-dangerous mechanism of a blind date. Suzanna is relatively sane but obsessed with horror movies; as the play opens, she’s mourning…

Buntport Theater Company has always had a creative way with music: The ensemble’s choices for openings, accompaniment and intermissions are spot-on, and some of its shows have included fruitful collaborations with local musicians. So when two Buntporters spotted tough-guy movie star Tommy Lee Jones standing in line at the Santa…

Becky Shaw, the new production that Chip Walton is directing at Curious Theatre Company, opened the weekend before the Best of Denver issue — in which we published no reviews. (We did, however, give several awards to Curious in the Best of Denver 2012.) So here’s a preview of Juliet…

The Drowsy Chaperone. The role of the Man in the Chair is the spine for The Drowsy Chaperone, and the primary reason that this lighthearted, inconsequential and very silly show is so much fun to watch: Without him, it would just float off into the ether. But with him, we’re…

The role of the Man in the Chair is the spine for The Drowsy Chaperone, and it’s the primary reason that this lighthearted, inconsequential and very silly show is so much fun to watch: Without him, it would just float off into the ether. But with him, we’re invited in…

The root of theater is storytelling, and Stories on Stage has made a practice of matching expressive words with talented actors for many years. The March 11 offering, Distant Voices, features Sherman Alexie’s short story “War Dances,” about a young man afflicted with a mysterious partial deafness who’s visiting his…

Denver Center Theatre Company Artistic Director Kent Thompson has chosen his 2012-13 lineup. It contains some safe choices, some doubtless designed to appeal to high schoolers, the requisite Christmas show (not A Christmas Carol this time, but White Christmas), two scripts selected from this year’s New Play Summit — and…

As Southern Baptist Sissies begins, a preacher is delivering a sermon while a young man comments on it: “What a crock of shit,” Mark exclaims. Having silenced the preacher, who exists only in his memory, he tells the story of four choir members — himself included — who grew up…

Curious Theatre Company just announced its fifteenth season, which includes five regional premieres as well as Yasmina Reza’s Tony award-winning God of Carnage. Artistic director Chip Walton says he uses two criteria in making his selections: “I need to be moved intellectually and not just emotionally, provoked as well as…

Hot Lunch Apostles, a play by Boulder poet and playwright Sidney Goldfarb, will open at New York’s La MaMa Ellen Stewart Theatre on March 1 as part of the fabled Off-off-Broadway theater’s fifty-year celebration. Produced by the Talking Band, a collaborative group that spins evocative tapestries of words, imagery and…

The words “diva” and “legendary” could have been coined to describe Maria Callas, one of those fiery, imperial, larger-than-life talents who defines her art form for a generation — though critics have been divided on whether her voice was a gift from God or an essentially flawed instrument. Callas’s life…

When lovely woman stoops to folly, And finds too late that men betray, What charm can soothe her melancholy, What art can wash her guilt away? The only art her guilt to cover, To hide her shame from every eye, To give repentance to her lover And wring his bosom…

There will be a memorial for longtime Denver critic Holly Bartges at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, March 6 at Boulder’s Dinner Theatre, 5501 Arapahoe Street in Boulder. “We will sing, hoist a glass and talk of all things Holly,” promises Colorado Theatre Guild director Gloria Shanstrom, who notes that there…

The Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company is presenting Shipwrecked! An Entertainment. The Amazing Adventures of Louis de Rougemont (as Told by Himself) through February 25 at the Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company. Juliet Wittman caught the production last weekend; here’s her review: We’re all fascinated by talented fakers. I once foolishly allowed…

The heartbreaking thing about the Denver Center Theatre Company’s production of The Taming of the Shrew is just how close it comes to brilliance — and the banal reasons it falls short. This is a hard play to do well: As everyone knows, the pith of the story is the…