Braving theatrical waters that have proved treacherous to the hardiest of companies, the Upstart Crow Theatre has produced nineteen consecutive seasons of uncut classic plays. Even more remarkable, on a recent opening night, the Boulder group drew a full house of spectators who seemed perfectly willing to fork over fifteen…
If you’re tired of being bombarded by wall-to-wall news coverage of heinous crimes, tragic accidents and inane controversies, or of slogging through the nightly prime-time lineup of hospital dramas (in which half of the characters die), crime movies (in which the characters commit the acts that send their victims to…
Larry Kramer is perhaps best known as a pugnacious sort who regularly vilifies the editors of the New York Times and intimidates genteel talk-show hosts like Charlie Rose. In 1985, though, the gay activist and co-founder of ACT-UP (the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) became famous for writing The Normal…
The rising tide of William Shakespeare’s popularity reached its high-water mark recently with the hit movie Shakespeare in Love, a delightful tale that reshaped the Bard’s image from that of a paunchy though brilliant literary lion to one of a hot-blooded, if bumbling, dramatic poet. As refreshing as it was,…
Although it’s been more than forty years since West Side Story opened on Broadway, the landmark musical still has the power to transport theatergoers to unparalleled heights. Its combination of soaring melodies and frenetic dance sequences makes Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim’s 1957 show spellbinding in a way that often…
The ever-malleable topics of love, artistic creation and the end of the world are tempered by various forms of poetic justice in Summerplay, The Changing Scene’s annual festival of new works written and performed by artists with a Colorado connection. Although the trio of one-act plays varies considerably in quality…
These days, musical blockbusters are marked by their star-studded casts, syrupy storylines and truckloads of extravagant scenery. That’s why a fifty-year-old ensemble piece like Kurt Weill’s Street Scene seems destined to remain mothballed under layers of critical and scholarly acclaim. But in Central City Opera’s version, director Michael Ehrman’s character-driven…
Unlike their previous efforts, which have blurred the boundaries between the disabled and the rest of society, the Physically Handicapped Amateur Musical Actors League’s latest endeavor emphasizes those differences to the point of utterly transcending them. In what proves to be a magnificent theatrical achievement, PHAMALy’s regional-premiere production of the…
Consistently mixing amateur fervor with professional polish, the Central City Opera has long championed traditions that are as practical as they are sentimental. This summer marks the return of a trio of former apprentices, who have since performed with such respected companies as the Metropolitan Opera, Washington Opera and Opera…
There’s not much point in staging a stodgily reverential, doublet-and-hose version of William Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors. The slapstick piece about two sets of twins separated at birth is patterned after a Roman-comedy model that was hackneyed when Shakespeare borrowed it and has been beaten to death ever since…
A college professor turned full-time party host purses his lips to mitigate his simpering enthusiasm. He declares that in Denver, throwing the bash of the season requires more than just careful planning, flawless execution and a politically correct guest list. In order for his suburban soiree to be a resounding…
Brimming with the ingratiating sentiment of a John Ford movie and radiating with the honeyed elegance of an Albert Bierstadt painting, The Girl of the Golden West works its charms gradually, culminating in a touching finale that lends a heartwarming glow to Giacomo Puccini’s rough-and-tumble romance. Softly crooning “We’ll never…
Alcoholism, journalism, communism, racism, Christian fundamentalism, tell-all autobiographies and the uses and abuses of plant food all surface as topics of debate in Sarah Fisher Lowe’s When the Wood Is Green, a world-premiere play that comprises Program Two of the Colorado Women Playwrights’ Festival. As if all of those subjects…
A few years before the entertainment business became the state religion, off-Broadway playwright Sam Shepard wrote Angel City, a surreal satire about Hollywood’s gangrenous grip on the American national character. A wicked and prescient take on the same industry that would eventually make Shepard into a bit of a celluloid…
Although this year’s Colorado Women Playwrights’ Festival explores unsettling and disturbing subjects, the first of two festival programs marks a significant improvement over last season’s feeble offerings. Despite a few logistical headaches (like starting a performance twenty minutes late, needlessly allowing a fifteen-minute intermission to run to half an hour…
The Morrison Theatre’s unflinching production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest starts the minute theatergoers enter the cozy town hall that serves as the community group’s performing space. As Lawrence Welk-like tunes play in the background, the patients and staff of a state mental institution mill about in the…
Much of the public discussion concerning the Columbine High School massacre has swirled about in a cauldron of controversy. The memorial service was too secular, too religious or too political. Howard Stern’s incendiary (and stupid) remarks were seen as emblematic of the media’s willingness to champion the right of free…
Midway through Act One of Kingdom, it becomes clear that Richard Hellensen’s play about a corrupt theme-park company is as much an indictment of popular taste as it is a rebuke of the soulless purveyors of mass-merchandised shlock. Bringing to mind the retrofitted, ultra-functional environment of the movie Brazil, the…
Guido Contini’s inability to separate his art from his personal life is what both tortures and inspires him–at least that’s what he maintains throughout the musical Nine. The brilliant Italian filmmaker freely admits that his insatiable appetite for women sometimes gives him more problems than a modern-day Casanova should be…
Oozing with oily arrogance, a cutthroat movie executive explains to a budding screenwriter that his script about two gay men dying of AIDS isn’t likely to play well in middle America. Like Tootsie and Terms of Endearment, he says, such fare can be difficult to sell even when it stars…
Despite an ominous, foreboding prologue, a powerful final scene and several impressive performances, Opera Colorado’s production of Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet is plagued by the same sort of clumsy staging, static crowd scenes and uninspired acting that was so pervasive in the revamped organization’s recent, ham-handed production of Verdi’s Macbeth…
Many contemporary adaptations of Greek tragedies, such as Jean Anouilh’s Antigone, effectively use ancient myths to address modern problems. In fact, when it was first produced in 1944, the French dramatist’s modern-dress tale about a woman who defies her uncle’s edict outlawing the burial of her dead brother managed to…
