A Streetcar Named Desire opened this past weekend at Germinal Stage Denver. Juliet Wittman’s complete review will run in our November 17 issue; in the meantime, here’s a capsule critique:…

American Night: The Ballad of Juan Jose. Written by Richard Montoya, of the San Francisco performance group Culture Clash, American Night: The Ballad of Juan Jose tells the story of immigrants in America through a crazed mix of skits, historical references, inspired parody and moments of pathos and insight. But…

Comedy doesn’t usually get the respect accorded tragedy, but if you analyze the way that playwright Allison Moore has put together Collapse — the varying rhythms of the dialogue (everything from a touching monologue to a hyper-rapid patch of stichomythia); the surprises that seem inevitable once they’ve occurred; the easiness…

Rebecca Northan, a Canadian actress, walks a highwire in her almost-one-woman show Blind Date — almost, because two zealous men periodically pop in and out to check on her, facilitate the action or plough into the audience impersonating waiters. The evening begins as Northan sits forlornly at a cafe table,…

Certain moments from the past decade of reviewing remain indelible. I can still conjure Mare Trevathan’s riddling phrases in The Skriker; Nick Sugar’s bravura-filled but crumbling Hedvig; Randy Moore as A Christmas Carol’s Scrooge, knocked out by the sheer joyous wonder of a household chair; William Hahn’s protracted suffering in…

American Night: The Ballad of Juan Jose. Written by Richard Montoya, of the San Francisco performance group Culture Clash, American Night: The Ballad of Juan Josetells the story of immigrants in America through a crazed mix of skits, historical references, inspired parody and moments of pathos and insight. But the…

There’s something about the work of Athol Fugard — or at least about this particular work, The Road to Mecca — that reminds me of the plays of August Wilson. It has the same rich sense of place and culture, the same emotional complexity and the same kind of humanism,…

American Night: The Ballad of Juan Jose. Written by Richard Montoya, of the San Francisco performance group Culture Clash, American Night: The Ballad of Juan Josetells the story of immigrants in America through a crazed mix of skits, historical references, inspired parody and moments of pathos and insight. But the…

Although rare, there were once American musicals that talked about politics and even acknowledged that poor people existed. Bertolt Brecht was their father. Marc Blitzstein’s The Cradle Will Rock, written in 1937, was a fable about workers and corporate greed so outspoken that the House Un-American Activities Committee tried to…

Immigrants and those who support them often talk about the richness and vitality that newcomers bring to this country, from the original settlers to the slaves dragged here in chains to the lonely and much-reviled Chinese men who built the railroads (Chinese women being legally excluded at the time). They…

My Hideous Progeny. When Mary Shelley — poet, essayist, novelist and, most famously, the creator of Frankenstein — lost one of the four babies she conceived with poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (only one child ultimately survived), he placed her in a tub of ice water to stop the hemorrhaging that…

To Kill a Mockingbird is an institution, a revered American novel that’s a must for every high-school curriculum, the inspiration for a well-loved film starring Gregory Peck and scripted by Horton Foote. Mockingbird has influenced discussions of race ever since Harper Lee’s novel first appeared in 1960; idealistic lawyers like…

One of the main things that differentiated America’s hippies from their counterparts around the world — France, Mexico, Poland, Germany and Ireland were all seething with protest at the time, and the Soviet Union drove its tanks into Czechoslovakia in 1968 to quell the Czech spring — was a zany…

Clybourne Park. Racism persists, but the ways in which we feel and express racism change with the times. Bruce Norris’s brilliant Clybourne Park was inspired by Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, at the end of which the Youngers, a struggling black family, are about to move into a…

At the beginning of Parlour Song, demolitions expert Ned is showing videos of his work to his neighbor, Dale, owner of a car wash. Dale is polite but uninterested — he’s seen these many times before, though Ned seems to have forgotten showing them to him — but for the…

When Mary Shelley — poet, essayist, novelist and, most famously, the creator of Frankenstein — lost one of the four babies she conceived with poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (only one child ultimately survived), he placed her in a tub of ice water to stop the hemorrhaging that threatened her life…

Clybourne Park. Racism persists, but the ways in which we feel and express racism change with the times. Bruce Norris’s brilliant Clybourne Park was inspired by Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, at the end of which the Youngers, a struggling black family, are about to move into a…

As a musical, Ragtime inevitably lacks the complexity — as well as the violence and darkness — of E.L. Doctorow’s wonderful novel, but it still has a thousand times more intelligence, charm and integrity than the average musical. As written by Terrence McNally, with music by Stephen Flaherty and lyrics…

Clybourne Park. Racism persists, but the ways in which we feel and express racism change with the times. Bruce Norris’s brilliant Clybourne Park was inspired by Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, at the end of which the Youngers, a struggling black family, are about to move into a…