Last Chance: Over the River and Through the Woods

ALL IN THE QUASI-ITALIAN FAMILY: The cast of Over the River and Through the Woods includes, left to right: Wendy Moore, Sue Leiser, Roger Simon, Bob Moore (standing) Chris Bleau and Emily Norman. Photo credit: Richard H. Pegg

You don't need to be Italian to fall in love with the two sets of eccentric grandparents in Joe Dipietro's family comedy Over the River and Through the Woods. You don't even need to be Italian to be IN the show!

What does it matter whether it's pasta sauce, hummus or some other culture-specific comfort food on the apron strings? Sooner or later, a young man needs to detach from the previous generation(s) and find his own way in order to become adult.

In this case, it's two sets of eccentric New York Italian grandparents whose good intentions and smotherly love are holding their itchy-footed grandson back from finding his destiny. They tempt him with food, guilt, and even try to set him up with an eligible non-Italian (and vegetarian!) girl--anything to keep the 29-year-old man from leaving hearth and home to start a new life, even as theirs nears the end.

These are universal themes with dramatic connections to all cultures with strong family ties and traditions. Director Rick Bernstein has assembled a "dream team cast," several of which did pretty much the same thing playing wild and crazy but lovable Jews in Beau Jest last season. These pros can do this kind of thing in their sleep, but to their credit they give it all they've got and the payoff is delightful.

What does it matter when the accents are a bit off, if the Italian food (and it's a non-stop pasta parade) seems authentic? These are archetypal (some might say "stock") characters doing an ancient dance, and the seasoned, veteran character actors do it nimbly. The audience, as much a melting pot as the cast, eagerly follows along, because it's OUR story too.

Check out one of the few remaining performances left at Miner's Alley Playhouse in downtown Golden and see for yourself. The fun-filled and touching show closes July 19.

Call 303-935-3044 or visit www.minersalley.com for information and reservations.

Upstart Crow offers season ticket discount

(Click on image to see full size.)

Dear Friends:
I'm a big fan of a lot of theatre companies in the Denver area. One of these, that I have a special affinity for and have been attending off and on for about 15 years, is The Upstart Crow in Boulder. They are what I lovingly refer to as a "classical community theatre," doing smart productions of great works with dedicated, amateur casts. They're offering a fantastic discount on season tickets, and an outstanding season coming up. I just thought you might like to consider supporting them. Check out their web site at www.theupstartcrow.org for specifics.
Blessings,
Patrick Dorn

CCU to present 'Fruit'

Dear friends of Christian theatre:

Here's the perfect summer show for the entire family, a light, child-friendly musical about the Fruits of the Spirit, produced by Colorado Christian University.
Hope to see you there.
Blessings,
Patrick Dorn
The Troupe


Colorado Christian University
Presents:

Fruit!
A new musical for children and families
Books & Lyrics by Sanne McCarthy, Music and additional lyrics by Ryan McCarthy

June 25-26
7:30 pm

June 27
11:00 am
3:00 pm
7:30 pm

Colorado Christian University Music Center
9200 W Ellsworth, Lakewood, CO 80226
(Near Garrison St & 1st Ave)

$5/person (all ages)
$15/family

For reservations and more info please call 303-963-3333

Review: A Bronx Tale

Chazz Palminteri is a formidable talent, not just as a writer and actor, but as a self-promoter. His well-deserved success is the result of hard work and determination. And it all started 20 years ago with A Bronx Tale, Palminteri's one-man semi-autobiographical show about growing up amongst neighborhood hoods.

Three cheers (but not the Bronx kind) for Palminteri: the writer, actor and self-promoter. A Bronx Tale, now playing at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House, has aged well because it taps into universal themes, is presented in a unique style, and stars the guy who lived it. It has qualities of both a morality tale and a memory play.

Palminteri narrates and plays himself at age nine and as a teenager, but also plays a variety of neighborhood friends and felons. Most of the gangsters are Runyonesque, with distinctive and frequently hilarious disabilities and mannerisms.

After witnessing a murder and lying to police about the culprit, young "C" finds himself with two dads: his strict, hard-working and essentially moral biological father, and a loyal, affectionate, wise yet ruthless and violent neighborhood don. Torn between these two opposites, the impressionable youth walks a tightrope of moral ambiguity until circumstances force him to make a decision on how he'll live his life.

There are some really great ideas here, about what happens when you do a good thing for a bad person, about whether the working man is a chump or a champion, and how through love, a bad person can bring out the best in another.

Palminteri commands the stage for 90 minutes with no intermission, making smooth transitions between characters, maintaining the narrative thread, and building suspense to an explosive conclusion. This is a great story, told by a terrific storyteller.

And he knows it! In all of the advertising and promotional materials, Palminteri makes it clear that this is his project through and through. He's got a good thing going and he makes the most of it. After seeing A Bronx Tale, it's easy to see where this quality came from. He's got a bit of both father figures in him. There's both attraction and revulsion, heroism and villainy in all of this, but most of all it's dramatic, and that's what makes for an outstanding evening of theatre.

A Bronx Tale plays at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House in the Denver Performing Arts Complex through June 21. Call 893-4100 or visit. www.denvercenter.org for information and reservations.

Review: The Seagull

Hannah Hines as Nina and Joseph Illingworth as Treplev in Boulder's Upstart Crow's production of The Seagull by Anton Chekhov. Photo by Dan Sutherland.

Russian playwright Anton Chekhov's first major play, the one that helped launch the Moscow Art Theatre and provided a showcase for Stanislavsky's new "Method" is, simply, exquisite.


Set on an oppressively idyllic provincial farm before the Revolution, the The Seagull is psychologically insightful, philosophically deep, chock full of fascinating, eccentric characters, and has heartbreakingly lyrical dialogue, including several showcase monologues and profound, unspoken subtext. True to its Russian character, the subject consists of variations on the theme of disappointment.


The young and rather unstable Treplev's (Joseph Illingworth) aspirations as a writer are stifled by his tyrannical and vain actress mother Arkadina (Mary Herndon Bell), who keeps the boy penniless and powerless on the plantation so that no one might guess she's now middle aged. Treplev is in love with the aspiring actress/girl-across-the-lake Nina (Hannah Marie Hines), who is enamored of Arkadina's novelist plaything Trigorin (Greg Christopher). There are several minor characters also suffering from unrequited love.

The tragic aspects of the play emerge as the older generation exploits or hinders the younger generation, which eventually self-destructs. All are emotionally crippled and responsible for both all and none of the suffering of others. The play presents a microcosm of an entire culture in decline.

Boulder's Upstart Crow theatre company has mounted a splended, carefully wrought production. Director/designer Richard Bell appreciates and communicates the finer, delicate aspects of the play, but isn't afraid to embrace the play's humor as well. Chekhov did, after all, call this poignant play a comedy.

Hines stands out in the demanding role of Nina, Illingworth is a perfectly pathetic Treplev, and Christopher is splendid as the morally weak Trigorin, a compulsive and clever writer doomed to be compared unfavorably with Russian literary giants.

There's plenty of doom and gloom to go around, and yet the theatrical experience is more than satisfying. Moments of the play are achingly tender and actually luminous. There's a lesson here about what happens when the young aren't nurtured, fostered and encouraged to grow. Love has seldom been more fickle. But The Seagull fulfills every promise it makes.

The Upstart Crow's production of The Seagull plays at the Dairy Center for the Arts in Boulder through May 30. Call 303-442-1415 or visit http://www.theupstartcrow.org/ for information and reservations.

Dear friends and supporters of THE TROUPE and Colorado ACTS:

This is opening week for our "double header" productions of "Be Careful What You Wish For" and "Philemon," playing in repertory for three weeks only. Both shows are family friendly, though "Wish" is particularly kid-friendly! Please join us in our new Arvada location and support Christian theatre in Denver.

Colorado ACTS and THE TROUPE present

Be Careful What You Wish For
Written and Directed by Patrick Rainville Dorn

Receiving your heart’s desire can sometimes have unexpected, comical results! In this delightful collection of folk tales, four magical wish givers teach apprentices about instances of wishes gone amiss, where the recipients of the wishes ended up preferring things as they were before the wish was ever granted. Suitable for the entire family.

Thurs. 5/28, 7 p.m. & Sat. 5/30, 2 p.m. Fri. & Sat. 6/5 & 6/6, 7 p.m. Thurs. 6/11, 7 p.m. and Sat. 6/13, 2 p.m.

At Colorado ACTS’ new theatre in the “garden level” of Early College High School 4905 W. 60th Avenue, Arvada (1 block east of Sheridan, 1 block north of the I-76 underpass)

$6 adults, $5 children under 12 and seniors over 60

Call 303-456-6772 for info and reservations e-mail coloradoacts@yahoo.com or thetroupe@gmail.com

Philemon
Book & Lyrics by Tom Jones , Music by Harvey Schmidt

With their distinctive blend of poetry, humor and theatrical flair, the authors of “The Fantasticks” and “I Do! I Do!” serve up an engaging, inspiring morality play in this, their more adventurous Broadway venture.In the third-century Roman Empire, Cockian the clown finds himself face-to-face with a rigid Commander who feels Cockian should be sent to his death. But because the Commander likes him, Cockian is granted life on one condition: that he impersonate a missing Christian leader, Philemon, to enable the Roman Empire to catch and execute more Christians. With no choice, Cockian does the Commander's bidding, but in doing so begins to feel for the persecuted. Cockian "becomes" Philemon, overflowing with love and the hope for a more humane world, thus earning his redemption… and his death.

May 29, 30, June 4, 12, 13 @7:00 p.m. June 6 @2:00 p.m.

$7.50 General Admission $6.00 Students (18 yrs old & younger) $6.00 Seniors (60 +) Children 4 years old and under Always FREE

Reservations Strongly Recommended Call, Text, or Email number of people, name, phone & email. Tickets not picked up 10 minutes before Curtain will be released.

Colorado ACTS Actors Company and Theatre School located at 4905 W. 60th Ave, Arvada CO 80003

303 456-6772 coloradoacts@yahoo.com or http://www.coloradoacts.org/

Review: Spamalot

James Beaman as Sir Robin with his Minstrels in the National Touring Production of Monty Python’s Spamalot. Photo by Joan Marcus

Only five days of Spamalot in Denver? Oh, come on!

The Broadway musical version of the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail is the show everybody loves to love.

The legends of King Arthur are shamelessly spoofed, with frequent 20th century pseudo-intellectual political and economic absurdities, Marxist arguments over classes and masses, tongue in cheek jabs at medieval mind sets, mud, plagues, violence, cruelty, sexual deviation and all things scatological. Oh, and the enormous, jet-powered feet of God Himself make an appearance, accompanied by the voice of John Cleese.

Fans of the film, and now fans of the musical, regularly cheer as each new character, bit, sketch or sight gag presents itself. The quarrelsome quadruple amputee Black Knight? He's there. The Trojan Rabbit? Oh, yes. The Knights Who Say Nee? Oui. The French taunters? Absolutely! Most, but not all of the beloved original gags are present.

I've decided that the musical is actually a stronger, more unified and coherent work of art than the original film, whose end was haphazardly thrown together when finances ran out. The musical, an homage to the glory of the Broadway musical, feels much more complete and satisfying, a gaudy celebration of self-glorification that crowns the very thing it mocks.

The cast is superb, including amiable television personality John O'Hurley as a rather inept King Arthur, who is hilariously ill-equipped on his three-fold quest to locate the Holy Grail (the all-knowing God misplaced a cup?), search a forest for a bit of shrubbery, and finally to put on a Broadway show, with or without the requisite Jews (you'll understand this joke if you see the show).

Arthur is aided and abetted by an ironic serf (Jeff Dumas), a cowardly knight with unreliable bladder and bowel control (James Beaman), the homicidal homosexual Lancelot (Matthew Greer) and the stunningly gorgeous but quickly forgotten Galahad (Ben Davis). With such a motley crew, any success achieved is due entirely to the Lady of the Lake (Merle Dandridge), whose spectacular diva voice and sense of the "big picture" holds the variously wandering plots together.

The show isn't so much immoral as amoral. Humanity is presented as so depraved and debased, an argument can be made that God may actually have known what he was doing by commanding the relatively best and brightest to seek something beyond their reach, resulting in some level of glory and elevation for all.

Audiences resonate with Spamalot at every level. Seldom have I heard so many show-stopping cheers, so much raucous laughter or witnessed so many spontaneous ovations.

So what's the big idea of shipping the show out after less than a week? Make it your own personal quest to get to Spamalot before it's gone. Just leave your shrubbery at home.

Spamalot plays at Denver's Buell Theatre through Sunday, May 16 only. Call 303-893-4100 or visit www.denvercenter.org. for information and reservations.