Performing Arts

This holiday season, the heathen’s tree of Denver comedy is stocked with gifts for every kind of chuckle fan. Denver and its surrounding area are blessed this December with a live paranormal podcast recording, a rare post-90s Bill Bellamy sighting, a visit from High Times 2009 Stoner of the Year, family-friendly entertainment, and Rory Scovel, whose singular comedic flair needs no further adjectives. Fortunately for people on a holiday gift-buying budget, many of these shows are free, and even the most expensive tickets are a comparatively cheap $25.

Brent Podosek wants to make you laugh — but he wants to get you drunk first. The local comedian’s new showcase at The Lobby every Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. aims to not only share some jokes but kick the keg. Podosek is the father and host of Kick the Keg…

Halloween is long gone, but costume fiends don’t care: they’re always on the hunt for the next party. Which is why the Denver mask shop ArtSmyths is presenting Puttin’ On The Ritz at the Mercury Café this Saturday, November 30. ArtSmyth’s owner, Tiffany Smyth, is throwing Jazz-era dead-celebrities funeral party,…

I’m no sports fan, but I am capable of responding to the myth and magic of baseball. A couple of years ago, I was absorbed and delighted by Ken Weitzman’s The Catch, which grew out of the Denver Center’s New Play Summit to receive a full production. This play presented…

Rancho Mirage. The dialogue in Rancho Mirageis swift and clever and the characters are vivid, if not particularly deep or likable. But while the trials and tribulations of the three couples involved are standard-issue — infidelity, money problems — they’re presented in ways that are completely, off-the-map absurd. We start…

Reading is about more than following a narrative or learning facts; it can also be a profound shared experience that culminates in a better understanding of ourselves and each other. In that spirit, welcome to the Westword Book Club, a weekly feature celebrating the books that inspire Denver artists.

We all love Christmas. And we all hate Christmas. For the side of us that bitterly embraces the latter, David Sedaris’s The SantaLand Diaries essay is the ideal method for steeping in your own Scroogeness. Chronicling the true story of Sedaris’s move to New York, where he becomes depressed and…

On the heels of his dual reading with Lena Dunham in New York and a sold-out show in Denver last Monday, David Sedaris lit up the Paramount Theatre yesterday afternoon with his comfort-food storytelling style. Delivering stories from last summer’s’ Lets Explore Diabetes With Owls, as well as his recent…

Rhonda Brown got the kind of reviews actors dream about for her work in last year’s one-woman play Red Hot Patriot: the Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins, and the production won a Best of Denver 2013 award for Best Political Theater. Produced and directed by Brian Freeland, it sold out…

Dance concerts might not be the hottest tickets in town, but the metro area has plenty of companies with stamina, including the long-lived Kim Robards Dance, which is experiencing a growth spurt since relocating to the Aurora Cultural Art District on East Colfax Avenue. And Robards will demonstrate what leaps…

Who knew Jerry Lewis was God? I certainly didn’t. But it’s the unmistakable voice of Jerry Lewis you hear when God appears to King Arthur in Spamalot at Boulder’s Dinner Theatre and instructs him to seek the Holy Grail. Lewis doesn’t actually appear on stage, of course, but it turns…

Rancho Mirage. The dialogue in Rancho Mirageis swift and clever and the characters are vivid, if not particularly deep or likable. But while the trials and tribulations of the three couples involved are standard-issue — infidelity, money problems — they’re presented in ways that are completely, off-the-map absurd. We start…

Literally the biggest comedian working today, Ralphie May has been charming the pants off of comedy fans for the last decade and a half. Playing a slack-jawed wise-ass, May will often twist his audience’s perception by using a Southern accent to deliver an insightful crack about controversial subjects that would…

Trends in comedy come and go, but there’s something classic about Kevin O’Brien’s monthly Arguments and Grievances night. The simple twist of pitting local comics against one another for debates on inconsequential themes — which garnered a Best of Denver award this year from Westword — has been working for…

The best part of Electra Onion Eater, which opens Buntport Theater Company’s thirteenth season, comes at the beginning, when Erin Rollman stages a television show called Cooking With Electra and proves yet again that she’s one of the top comic actresses around. Poor Electra is aiming at Julia Child-style chumminess…

Over the years, there have been dozens of heart-tugging movies featuring a boy — usually lonely and outcast — and his dog. (Lonely little girls are equally attached to their pets, but they don’t get as much cinematic time.) Sylvia, now at the Lone Tree Arts Center, is about the…

99 Histories. In Julia Cho’s 99 Histories, a young woman returns to her Korean mother’s house. She is pregnant, alone, unsure what to do next. A onetime musical prodigy who stopped playing the violin when she was diagnosed with a never-fully-defined mental illness, she has broken up with Joe, the…

Rhonda Brown got the kind of reviews actors dream about for her work in last year’s one-woman play Red Hot Patriot: the Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins, and the production won a Best of Denver 2013 award for Best Political Theater. Produced and directed by Brian Freeland, it sold out…

Last night a Daily Show report by comedian Jason Jones reported on high levels of apathy among Colorado voters. Looking at statistics as well as conducting interviews on Denver’s 16th Street Mall, Jones found that an overwhelming majority of people (80 percent) did not vote in last September’s recall election,…

“Blue collar comedy” is often viewed as synonymous with words like “dumb,” “cheap” and “Republican.” It was largely co-opted by Jeff Foxworthy’s low-brow comedy tour, and since then you really can’t discuss the humor that comes out of labor-work without everyone assuming you have a Support the Troops bumpersticker on…

Lucky 20 Productions is a three-year-old Denver theater company, and tonight, its members will debut The Travesty of Lear, an update to the classic Shakespearean story. Samantha McDermott, originally from New York, has been involved in theater her entire life. Along with her mother Jeri Franco, they started Lucky 20…

Just a scant few years ago, “horror musical” wasn’t a big thing. Sure, you had your Rocky Horror Picture Show and your Little Shop of Horrors, but beyond those campy classics, there wasn’t much love for fans of both murder and singing who wanted to see those two things brought…