Apparently, controversy abounded when Contact won the Tony for best musical in the year 2000. The show has no original tunes (the music ranges from Robert Palmer’s “Simply Irresistible” to Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin”), and though the cast dances itself dizzy, it never bursts into song. Critics, however, were rapturous. They…
The setting is the home of a wealthy Jewish family in Atlanta in 1939. A brightly decorated Christmas tree stands in a corner. Though Adolph, the breadwinner and de facto paterfamilias (he’s actually brother, brother-in-law and uncle to the numerous family members who occupy the premises), has read in the…
Almost everyone has some idea what Edmond Rostand’s famed play Cyrano de Bergerac is about: a man with an enormous nose who, sure he can never win the woman he loves, selflessly woos her on behalf of a handsome, equally lovestruck compadre. The plot is so resonant, so filled with…
I suspect I’m in trouble when I’m told at the door that The Vow runs an hour and forty-five minutes without intermission. Is someone intending to put me through a transformational experience? I’m not very good at those. They tend to leave me helpless with laughter. Or are the creators…
George Bernard Shaw was an iconoclast and troublemaker. In his plays, moral and intellectual combat tend to replace action, but the dialogue is so brilliant that the results are engaging rather than static. Plot isn’t central, nor is strict continuity. In Mrs. Warren¹s Profession, a gun makes an appearance but…
Theater is an art form capable of providing an astonishing variety of experiences. There are directors throughout the metro area transforming cramped, unlikely spaces and making magic with nothing more than a few dollars, a handful of actors, a decent script and some imagination. And then there’s Disney’s Beauty and…
The Everyman Theatre Company’s production of Paula Vogel’s The Baltimore Waltz reminds us that theater isn’t necessarily about expensive sets and whizbang lighting, lavish costumes, a full orchestra or a plush auditorium. All it takes is ingenuity, talented actors and the right words. Everyman has colonized what must once have…
The Curious Theatre Company’s Coyote on a Fence is an artful, high-minded attempt to address the issue of the death penalty. As I watched the play last Saturday, at the end of a week filled with fear and confusion, sodden with grief, it was comforting to be in a place…
Glengarry Glen Ross has been hailed as a blistering critique of American business practice, but in fact, it explores a very small segment of the business world, and its principals’ maneuvering takes place far below the sightlines of the genuine corporate fat cats. In contrast to the genial, glossy executives…
The Galleria at the Denver Center is a cabaret space; audience members sip or snack while, on a small stage, charming and energetic young people sing and dance for them. It’s rather like being at an Irish party, where, amid general merriment, one guest after another stands up and performs…
In the beginning, there’s a sawdust ring, surrounded by what seems to be a low concrete wall. A group of people in peasant dress enter, walking beside a horse-drawn cart. To measured music, they release a bundle from the cart. It rises slowly toward the ceiling; you see that it’s…
Carousel is so familiar to most of us that we tend to forget the musical’s true genius. First produced on Broadway in 1945, it represents the melding of two very different sensibilities — that of Ferenc Molnár, the Hungarian novelist and playwright who wrote Liliom, which Carousel is based on,…
The plot of Shakespeare’s As You Like It resembles that of a summer romance movie. Unfortunately, the Disneyfied version being presented by the Colorado Shakespeare Festival cheapens the play’s gentle beauty and robs the dialogue of its richness. As directed by Lynn Nichols, the show is riddled with drawn-out special…
When the Central City Opera revived Douglas Moore’s The Ballad of Baby Doe a few seasons back, thunderous applause and full-voiced cheers filled the tiny theater for a full five minutes as a steady barrage of flower bouquets, many hurled from the far reaches of the balcony, showered the stage…
Shakespearean companies have tried various approaches to producing the three parts of Henry VI, plays that are believed to have been written with the help of at least one collaborator. In 1963, Tantalus co-creators John Barton and Peter Hall combined the unwieldy trilogy with Richard III to make The Wars…
What a difference no-nonsense direction makes. Elizabeth Huddle heeds the clues in Shakespeare’s text instead of making her own mystery of them — as have many Colorado Shakespeare Festival directors before her — and the performers in her version of King Lear, led by guest artist Raye Birk’s virtuoso turn…
Looking for a Broadway musical that lets the brainwaves relax and the funnybone roam? Have a thing for exuberant dance numbers, exquisite costumes and an old-fashioned love story? Don’t mind overamplified voices, stand-and-sing ballads and a steady barrage of groaners? Then hie thee hither to the Arvada Center’s outdoor amphitheater,…
Operatic versions of famous novels and plays are much like their cinematic cousins: Some lend new insight and dimension to the original, others stress one aspect of the story at the expense of others, and a few reaffirm predictions that nothing could beat the book. Mark Adamo’s Little Women, playing…
Forsooth, here we go again. The Colorado Shakespeare Festival opened last weekend with The Two Gentlemen of Verona, one of the Bard’s earliest, and more problematic, comedies. Like most of the CSF’s efforts over the last five seasons, the play quickly falls victim to directorial caprice and, at times, sheer…
As the after-dinner crowd files back in to Heritage Square Music Hall, a three-piece band plays several bouncy tunes. Strains of “All of Me” segue into an instrumental hoedown that sounds like it’s from Smokey and the Bandit. The down-home, carnival-like atmosphere, which is part South Dakota Corn Palace, part…
There’s not much reason for the two characters in The Zoo Story to talk to each other for nearly an hour when one of them behaves like a raving lunatic from the very start. Not even the saintliest among us would listen, calmly, to a complete stranger — who looks…
Opera lovers who trek up Clear Creek Canyon every summer share something other than a yen for great music and a tolerance for winding mountain roads. They make the yearly pilgrimage because the Central City Opera has earned a reputation for producing high-quality shows free of highbrow pretension. Even with…
