Upstart Crow puts on a Wilde thing
As a longtime fan of Oscar Wilde, the corners of my mouth go instantly north whenever I hear that some industrious theatre company is mounting one of his plays. Though he is principally known as a poet...
View ArticleLet it snow
For many people, a white Christmas is the be-all and end-all of holiday cheer. Going to bed on Christmas Eve with flakes filling the air and waking up on Christmas morning to a world softened by a...
View ArticleHip hooray and ballyhoo for 42nd Street
Pedigree. It’s not just a dog food. It’s heritage, tradition and history. It’s the icing on the cherry. It’s the sherry on the Sheri. It’s the ever-so-tenuous thread connecting Bing Crosby to My...
View ArticleJesus, Mary and Rudy
Going to the theatre comes with a certain level of risk, and no, I’m not referring to the extremely off chance of being steered into a life of flying rodent-themed superherodom due to the untimely...
View ArticleDictation from oblivion
Over the past 10-and-a-half years, I have seen numerous theater companies rise and fall in Boulder. While perennial favorites like Boulder’s Dinner Theatre have triumphed year in and year out, other...
View ArticleWherever you go, there you are
Into every theater company, a little failure must fall. Now in its 15th season, the Curious Theatre Company has consistently impressed me and thousands of other theater-goers with its choices of plays...
View ArticleA clockwork beige for Boulder’s Catamounts
If you’ve seen even a small handful of movie commercials over the past decade or so, your mind’s ear will immediately recall the intense, slightly gravelly voice I’m referring to when I ask you to...
View ArticleWalking in the whimsy wonderland of ‘Almost, Maine’
Love. It’s life’s sweetest reward. If you let it flow, it floats back to you. Love can be exciting. It can be new. And if you get on board with love, it might even be expecting you. You could be the...
View ArticleA drama in thriller drag
To quote Public Enemy, “Don’t believe the hype.” To paraphrase the Dead Milkmen, I’m not saying that The Other Place isn’t a good play. It’s a fine play, an all-American play full of good, upstanding...
View ArticlePraise the Lord and pass the lefse
Even if you are a Dawkins-lovin’, God-mockin’, card-carryin’ atheist, the odds are that during your youth you spent some time in and around a church or synagogue. Be you current or lapsed Catholic,...
View ArticleBoulder Ensemble’s latest is ‘Survivor: Leipzig’
After the rather lackluster The Other Place, the usually metronomically reliable Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company (BETC) comes back strong with Bach at Leipzig. If you enjoyed the movie Amadeus — and...
View ArticleIt was the cat rapist in the solarium with the enema nozzle
In the “About the Show” section for Delirium Tremens on the Bump in the Night Entertainment website, the production company — presumably via playwright Rhett Jonke — admits that the classic murder...
View ArticleLovers and madmen
The Colorado Shakespeare Festival (CSF) opened its 56th season last weekend with one of the Bard’s most beloved plays, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in addition to The Complete Works of William...
View ArticleReview: Colorado Shakespeare Festival’s ‘Macbeth’
Setting one of Shakespeare’s plays in a relatively modern time and place is more the rule than the exception these days. Of the dozens of performances of the Bard’s works I’ve seen, only a small...
View Article‘The Wizard of Oz’ at Boulder’s Dinner Theatre: A girl and her dog
Life is pain. It is also beautiful and awe-inspiring, to be sure, but it’s full of sharp corners and people who would just as soon spit on you as shake your hand. A random act of attempted kindness —...
View ArticleThe king’s speeches
The plays of William Shakespeare (not to be confused with the plays of Paco “Shaky” Shakespeare of Walla Walla) fall into four categories: comedies, tragedies, histories and problem plays — and yes,...
View ArticleA starcatcher is born at Denver Center for the Performing Arts
Every child yearns to grow up and throw off the seemingly unbearable yoke of parents, teachers, priests and other bullies. Invariably, they realize too late that while the adult world is a place in...
View ArticleBus Stop: Princeton, Topeka and points beyond
Einstein stated it most elegantly with his explications of the theretofore ineffable mysteries of the space-time continuum, “Everything is relative.” Despite the human yearning for black-and-white...
View ArticleFear and self-loathing in New York
Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company (BETC) is one of Boulder’s best, bar none. From its first production, Antigone, BETC began raising the bar for Front Range theater. With Seminar, BETC gets its eighth...
View ArticleA dirge for the American dream
If Willy Loman were an ice cream flavor, he’d be American Raspberry. If he were a car, he’d be a Ford Edsel. If he were a song, he’d be Sinatra’s “Here’s to the Losers.” Willy is one of Americana’s...
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