3 out of 4 stars

There’s a wily conceit running through “Coyote. Badger. Rattlesnake”– Buntport Theater’s entertaining original production. Cecily the coyote — one third of a museum diorama’s fauna trio — has been sent out for a makeover. Some pests scavenged her and her return, while vital, is not clearly imminent.

Glenn and Carroll work side by side in the diorama, which is also getting a revamp. They craft fake grasses, create a protruding rock formation that adds dimension to the museum display, and arrange the aforementioned badger and rattler in their ersatz habitat.

Theirs is not the most collegial of partnerships. Hannah Duggan and Brian Colonna portray the bickering coworkers. Carroll’s wound a bit tight. She’s prone to anxious huffing (“Cecily is missing a good portion of her face!”) and loud disquisitions on taxidermy, for instance. Glenn’s genial if a little lax on details. Was his snack the invitation nibbling vermin needed to enter the diorama?

Created in collaboration with local playwright Ellen K. Graham, “Coyote. Badger. Rattlesnake” is composed of 14 seriocomic vignettes separated by 14 pauses, a dimming of the lights and minuscule set changes. The turning down of the lights is part of the show’s genius. It adds emphasis to Glenn’s or Carroll’s final word or gesture — be it absurd, ruminative or both. If you are gleaning a “Godot” vibe in the set-up, that’s likely OK.

During those breaks, two workers arrive in the not-quite-darkness to add tile-size chunks of set to the floor in front of the diorama’s beckoning backdrop of mountains and sky, prairie grasses and scrub. (Company member Erik Edborg is responsible for the lovely canvas that hangs from the rafters.)

Played by Erin Rollman and Edborg, the duo appear in the show’s credits as “Stagehands.” Consider this further evidence of Buntport’s rather meta-antics. Yes, they’re stagehands. They’re also characters in a play about the staging of the “fake-real.” Stealthily, they add props, rearrange them or accidentally tip something over and rush off. Like Glenn and Carroll, they chat and disagree. Over the course of the play (there is no intermission), their interstitial philosophizing demands more and more of the audience’s attention.

Wit, deft timing and twists — physical and linguistic — are signature stuff at Buntport. “Coyote. Badger. Rattlesnake” has an abundance. It also has a few choice things to say  — or at least I was vaguely aware it did — about “real fakeness” and “fake realness” as the show’s program teasingly puts it.

So, a word about the audience. The ensemble composed of the four performers and company mainstay SamAnTha Schmitz is in its 19th year and has garnered a deserved and appreciative following. Almost as soon as Colonna and Duggan arrived on stage opening night, they were met with titters and guffaws, which continued to punctuate not only the amusing riffs but at times the more thoughtful interludes. I’m not one to judge people for their pleasures, but I couldn’t help but wonder if this made newcomers to Buntport feel like they weren’t quite in on a joke. The ensemble’s agile wit is often outright funny. Just as often, there’s something more nuanced at play in their askew vision of things. The balance in “Coyote. Badger. Rattlesnake” proved slightly elusive.

It would be churlish to complain about Buntport’s steadfast craft and reliable cleverness. Their work is oh-so-canny — with the occasional burst of brilliance. And this show is swift and entertaining. I’d just hate to see the company trapped in a lovely diorama of its own making.

Lisa Kennedy, December 6, 2018 The Denver Post