What started as a somewhat edgy film by the raunchy and iconoclastic John Waters morphed into a sugar-sweet, much-loved, Tony-winning musical about self-acceptance and the need for all of us to also accept others. Now Hairspray has taken over the stage at the Arvada Center, where the year is 1962,…
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince has been an integral part of my thinking for a long, long time. It seems at first so simply written, so straightforwardly sentimental, that you hardly notice how deep and wise it is, but then scene after scene lingers in the imagination. For example,…
Man, our heads are really in the toilet these days. Wait. Are jokes about boobs considered “toilet humor”? Whatever, this photo probably qualifies as a dirty joke, just because its funny to say the word “booby.” Technically, on this sign we saw outside the Vine Street Pub yesterday said “Boobby,”…
Cats. There’s not much of a plot to Cats. You meet the Jellicles, with their cheerful faces and bright black eyes, who dance “under the light of the Jellicle moon”; the Ming-vase-smashing cat burglars, Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer; fat, elegant, gentleman’s club-haunting Bustopher Jones; and contrary-minded Rum Tum Tugger. The show’s…
The Divine Sister features some of Denver’s most talented actors, reliable creators of deep and memorable characters in artistically ambitious venues — and all of them having the time of their lives here, hamming, capering and slamming home the cheesiest jokes imaginable. The insanely over-the-top script by Charles Busch is…
When the Arvada Center’s new production of Hairspray officially opens tomorrow night, Everyone, but everyone, will be checking out the costumes. That’s because Denver hero Mondo Guerra designed them, putting his way with fresh and professional looks to the test. And besides, if Mondo wasn’t meant to design costumes for…
What do Walt Whitman and Broadway theater have in common? Both contain multitudes. Bad jokes aside, Denver Center Attractions’ 2012 lineup is filled with contrariety. It kicks off this January with a production of Bring It On: The Musical, a high-octane comedy about cheerleading, and ends in October with the…
Marc Maron’s comedy style is honest, often unforgiving and occasionally enlightening. He might be best known by many for his podcast, “WTF With Marc Maron,” but first and foremost he’s a standup comedian. Marc Maron will appearing at Comedy Works Downtown starting tonight and running through Sunday for seven different…
Cats. There’s not much of a plot to Cats. You meet the Jellicles, with their cheerful faces and bright black eyes, who dance “under the light of the Jellicle moon”; the Ming-vase-smashing cat burglars, Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer; fat, elegant, gentleman’s club-haunting Bustopher Jones; and contrary-minded Rum Tum Tugger. The show’s…
The usual crew was on stage for A Musical: In Perfect Harmony: impresario T.J. Mullin, Rory Pierce, Annie Dwyer, Johnette Toye, Alex Crawford, Eric Weinstein and Randy Johnson, whose nimble piano playing is always a large part of the pleasure of going to Heritage Square Music Hall. Their energy was…
Local boys Trey Parker and Matt Stone made good — very, very good — last night when the former University of Colorado students won nine Tony awards, including Best Musical, for The Book of Mormon. But while they were embraced by the traditional theater community, they showed some of the…
Cats. There’s not much of a plot to Cats. You meet the Jellicles, with their cheerful faces and bright black eyes, who dance “under the light of the Jellicle moon”; the Ming-vase-smashing cat burglars, Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer; fat, elegant, gentleman’s club-haunting Bustopher Jones; and contrary-minded Rum Tum Tugger. The show’s…
At the start of Grey Gardens, we’re in Noel Coward territory. The setting is an opulent East Hampton mansion, and everyone is elegant, well-spoken, witty and beautifully dressed. This is the home of Edith Bouvier Beale, her ever-absent husband and her father, J.V. “Major” Bouvier, whose wealth keeps the family…
Now that the Buntport Theater Company is winding up its tenth season — filled with remounts of several past shows — it’s time to stop thinking of this troupe as talented kids who got together at Colorado College to create a theater style all their own, and instead consider them…
The Positive Project — tagline: “HIV+ stories for the greater good” — is a Denver-based nonprofit that’s home to the world’s largest collection of videos of people infected with and affected by HIV. Reliant on grants and donations for funding, The Positive Project will host its first-ever Sunshine Tomorrow Cabaret…
The biggest reason to make it out for Drag Nation last Friday at Tracks wasn’t to see Amanda Lepore perform — it was to see Amanda Lepore in real life. And while the transgender icon and David LaChapelle muse was definitely worth viewing, her sort-of sing-along performance was very much…
A couple weeks ago, ZetaKaye House released This Ain’t No Cowtown, a compilation of Colorado bands, and this week we’ve got a collection in a similar vein with some of Denver’s best comedians and poets. If you’re the type of person who’s scared to go to comedy shows or poetry…
Billy Elliot the Musical.The story of Billy Elliot is deeply appealing: During the 1980s, as Maggie Thatcher wars with the powerful coal-mining union as part of her campaign to destroy British labor, an eleven-year-old miner’s son stumbles into a ballet class and discovers an unlikely love of dance. Naturally, this…
How unpleasant to meet Mr. Eliot!/With his features of clerical cut/And his brow so grim/And his mouth so prim/And his conversation so nicely/Restricted to What Precisely/And If and Perhaps and But./How unpleasant to meet Mr. Eliot!/With a bobtail cur/In a coat of fur/And a porpentine cat/And a wopsical hat/How unpleasant…
There’s a new gay theater in town, created by Steve Paulding and Preston Britton. We haven’t had one since Theatre Group, which at its height served a lively mix of raunchy, campy spoofs and serious gay-themed plays, so this new entry is welcome. But the first show indicates the Presteve…
Billy Elliot the Musical. The story of Billy Elliot is deeply appealing: During the 1980s, as Maggie Thatcher wars with the powerful coal-mining union as part of her campaign to destroy British labor, an eleven-year-old miner’s son stumbles into a ballet class and discovers an unlikely love of dance. Naturally,…
The best thing about British playwright Alexi Kaye Campbell’s The Pride, which is receiving its local premiere at Paragon Theatre, is the central conceit. The action plays out in alternating scenes that take the same three people — well, essentially and symbolically the same, since they don’t ever age —…
