The Denver Victorian Playhouse (4201 Hooker) is currently tickling the daylights out of its audience with a rollicking evening of joyously irreverent pandemonium. You may either hop skip or jump to see it, but see it you must!
    Tomfoolery is proving that nostalgia is not only fashionable but also good old-fashioned hilarious fun as well. The show has been so well-received that the run has been extended two more weekends.
    Who knew Wade P. Wood, who had never before directed a musical revue, would have succeeded so well on his first attempt?

      I just saw Murderer at The John Hand Theatre on Lowry. It’s a pretty slick piece of theatre and by far the best Firehouse Theatre production to have been seen by this reviewer so far.

      The play was written by Anthony Shaffer, who, having penned such plays as Sleuth and Whodunit, went on to write such screenplays as Murder on the Orient Express, Hitchcock’s Frenzy, and Death on the Nile.

   This past weekend I had the pleasure of attending the second New Play Festival at The Bug Theatre, 3654 Navajo. “The Play’s the Thing” is an annual event, which showcases new work by Denver area playwrights.
    The three playwrights featured this year were Coleen Hubbard, Melissa Lucero McCarl and Judy GeBauer.
    Friday evening McCarl’s play Lost Creatures was read. Directed by Patrick Elkins-Zeglarski, it featured a cast of local stars to die for. Billie McBride played aging silent film star Louise Brooks. Paul Borrillo gave voice to theatre critic and fan of Ms. Brooks’ silent films, Kenneth Tynan. Erica Sarzin-Borrillo portrayed Lulu, Louise Brooks’ youthful characterization of the seductive temptress in Pabst’s Pandora’s Box. (She also read the stage directions.)

     Recently I had the pleasure of seeing Terry Dodd’s version of Sam Shepard’s True West at The Denver Victorian Playhouse, 42nd & Hooker.

     At first glance one might think this play is just one more work about the battle between the red-bloods and the mollycoddles. On the surface it’s the sibling rivalry of two brothers named Austin and Lee.

     The younger of the two, Austin, is a buttoned-down, image-conscious screenwriter whose somewhat successful Hollywood artistry amounts to coloring within the lines of mainstream conservatism. Lee, the older brother, has the appearance of the prodigal rough and tumble scruffy loser.

   Stop the presses! Guess who I just had beers with over at the Vine Street Pub? Andy Anderson and Bernie Cardell!
    They had just finished rehearsal next door at the Vintage Theatre and were higher than a couple of hippies at Woodstock about their gender-bending roles in Leading Ladies.
    Well, once they had gotten their pitcher of ale and I had settled back with my snifter of Lost Virtue, the stories just began to flood out of these cross-dressing comics.

            The other day I got to see an Arthur Miller play I wasn’t sure I would ever get to see, The Creation of the World and Other Business.

            Nobody has done this play locally in recent memory and I was glad to get a chance to fill that niche on my shelf of unseen classics at the Denver Victorian Playhouse. God knows when anyone will do it again!

            The Colorado Ballet will present Beauty and the Beast at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House, 14th & Curtis, Feb. 19-28.

            Choreographer Domy Reiter-Soffer was commissioned by the Hong Kong Ballet to create the work based on the beloved fairy tale penned by Charles Perrault.

            Reiter-Sofer is the artist whose ballets of such well-known plays as The Lady of the Camellias and Equus have received top honors in Holland, Ireland and Australia.

            The mostly original score for Beauty and the Beast, composed by Seen Yee Lam, has been described as “very much in the vein of Sibelius.”

            Opera Colorado’s The Barber of Seville, which closed Feb. 14 was a thoroughly enjoyable evening of opera buffo.

            What is opera buffo? you may ask. It’s comic opera, light and frothy from beginning to end!

            However, this production at the Ellie Caulkins took things a little farther than one might have expected.

            My guest for the evening was prompted, between chortles, chuckles and guffaws, to say that it was just like “The Three Stooges.”

            The point in the opera where the two of us were unable to hold back the laughter was the riotous finale to Act One. To his everlasting credit, director David Gately put the entire cast in a battle with the local gendarmes, as well as each other. The scene was impeccably choreographed, with hilarious clashes popping up first on one side of the stage and then on the other.

            It was Mack Sennett’s “Keystone Kops,” only not at nine frames a second fast-mo but 40 frames a second slow-mo.

            At any rate it was not just the ear and the eye that feasted upon Rossini’s classic. This time one had to include the funny bone.

            Besides the broad strokes of visual humor in the big scenes, there were moments of intimate silliness as the characters completed the journey inspired by Pierre Beaumarchais’ 18th Century plays.

            There was a fantastic Figaro, Lucas Meachem, whose snapped fingers froze the action and even turned out the lights. Vocally, Meachem was outstanding.

            So was the lovely and utterly charming Isabel Leonard as Rosina. And although Leonard and Meachem were truly fine vocal stars of the production, it was the raucous good time director Gately created that I will remember. I am laughing even as I type this.

    Friday night I saw the most riveting onstage thriller I have ever seen in Denver.
    Theatre director El Armstrong is the new Hitchcock.
    Suspense beyond belief and nerve-wracking pay-offs are a couple of things one can expect to find in his Voices in the Dark, the current knockout at the Denver Victorian Playhouse.
    Written by John Pielmeier of Agnes of God fame, the show is a scorcher!

    The Colorado Ballet opened its 2009-10 season with a sensational production of Don Quixote based on episodes from the novel by Miguel Cervantes.
    You may recall that Petipa’s libretto for the work... which premiered in 1969 in Moscow... dealt more with an innkeeper’s daughter and her lover than with the gallant knight and his sidekick.
    Nevertheless, Kevin Ayedelotte and Joey Wishnia delivered humorously endearing portraits of the aging knight and Sancho Panza as they observe the budding romance while battling the occasional windmill.
    On opening night the innkeeper’s daughter, Kitri, was danced by the exquisite Maria Mosina while Mosina’s real-life husband, Igor Vassin, danced her lover, Basilio. Both are stars of the first magnitude, and we are fortunate indeed to experience their artistry.
    It had been this reviewer’s hope to see this astounding pairing performing the famous pas de deux in this lush romantic work. However, viewers got to see other great duos later in the run, including Sharon Wehner & Dmitry Trubchanov and Sayaka Karasugi & Alexei Tyukov.