Buntport Theater

Reviews

A man in dark glasses and a patterned suit stands in the foreground. Behind him, a man in a winter coat and hat stares furiously at the him, while writing in a notebook.

Westword- With Anywhere But Rome, Buntport is really going somewhere

Ovid, otherwise known as Publius, has been banished from Rome and is traveling with Tiresias, standing at a crossroads, sticking out his thumb. Actually, he’s packed Tiresias in his bag, which the blind seer fiercely resents. In a fit of fury, Ovid burned the single copy of his epic poem Metamorphoses, and he’s desperately trying to remember the words. Pretty soon, he’s recaptured the first four lines, leaving a mere 12,000 or so to go. Ovid and Tiresias are joined by Io, the woman transformed into a cow by Zeus to avert the jealousy of his wife, Hera. A car pulls to a halt; seated inside is a contemporary couple: schoolteacher Louis and his wife, Carol – neither of whom seems surprised to learn they’re transporting an ancient Roman poet and two mythical characters, but both of whom have problems of their own. For example, Carol is slowly but surely transforming into a chicken. Naturally, before the play’s over, she and Io will bond.

Louis and Carol comment on their own names, and references to Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland follow. This befuddles Ovid and his companions, who’ve never heard of the guy, but we in the audience recognize the allusion to another narrative heavily reliant on the theme of transformation. Between spurts of laughter – because the dialogue is very funny – we muse on just how potent the idea remains and how eternal questions continue to tease the imagination about the difference between illusion and reality, the connections between humans and animals, and our puzzlement about just what we are and what we may become. We’re not surprised when Kafka’s Metamorphosis is mentioned, and many of us remember how beautifully Buntport translated that haunting text into theater some time ago.

And, of course, transformational magic is exactly what Buntport is about. This theater is a place where objects become people and an ingénue becomes a goldfish. If mythological and realistic figures are to mingle and writers to meet their own works of fiction, this is where it should happen.

Still, there’s nothing heavy or pretentious about Anywhere But Rome. The play, an original Buntport creation, is lighthearted and good-humored. Like Ovid’s original work, it deals primarily with love. At one point, Carol attempts to teach Io to play badminton, and though the poor hoofed creature simply can’t swing her racquet, she loves the vocabulary of the game: “let” signifying a do-over; the repetition of the word “love.” As she proclaims later in the car, “Let love all.” And Ovid does love her. There’s no need for a counter-transformation scene, no need for her to become woman again; he loves her as she is. But then again, she is his creation. Louis can’t seem to muster the same feelings for his increasingly chicken-y wife, though her concern for him is so strong that she lays egg beaters rather than eggs to protect his heart.

Five actors – Erik Edborg, Brian Colonna, Erin Rollman, Evan Weissman, Hannah Duggan (SamAnTha Schmitz is the non-performing member of the troupe) – effortlessly hold our attention through the hour and a half of playing time. The dialogue is fast, clever, very human and sometimes wonderfully petty in the face of the great mysteries being evoked. There’s none of Buntport’s usual low-cost, high-concept technical wizardry in the set, but much care has gone into the costumes. The cow outfit is amazing, and whoever found the sweet, blond-plaited, too-small mask with which Io attempts to cover her bovinity should get a medal. As for the acting, these actors are at the pinnacle. They’re relaxed and full-throated and funny; their timing is perfect. Erik Edborg is riveting as irritable, slightly out-of-it and sometimes profound Ovid. Brian Colonna, who can tear up the stage with cartoonish squeaky-voiced antics when he wants to, makes Tiresias the wise, if kvetchy, center of the action. You never see Rollman’s face, but her stumbling body as Io attempts to balance on her hooves speaks volumes, as do her low moos and moans. Hannah Duggan is perfect as loud, sad, loving Carol, and the monologue in which Evan Weissman explores Louis’s shortcomings as a teacher and his possible role in his wife’s transformation is nothing less than inspired.

The Victorians used the word “transported” to indicate that someone was filled with emotion; they wrote of transports of grief and characters being “transported by joy.” I’d like to suggest a variation: When you’re seized again and again by helpless, fizzy giggles, consider yourself Buntported.

-Juliet Wittman, November 19, 2008, Westword

Close-up of a man in dark glasses and a woman dressed as a white cow. She has her hoof resting on his shoulder.

Rocky Mountain News- Anywhere but Rome is off the deep end

Other absurdist fare went swimmingly, but this one’s off the deep end

Denver’s Buntport Theater has a well-earned reputation for embracing the absurd, whether it be a satire of space serials (Starship Troy: A Live Sitcom) or live-action comic books.

The company’s penchant for crafting comedy from the unusual continues with Anywhere but Rome, a spoof of Ovid’s epic poem, Metamorphoses.

Yes, that Metamorphoses, a 16,000-line ode to Greek mythology and the human ability to transform.

Ambition is to be applauded in the arts, but this is one case where too much ambition can be thematically oppressive.

The play opens with us meeting the Roman poet Publius Ovidius Naso (Erik Edborg) hitchhiking in the modern-day world. (The play takes place in Minnehaha County.) While sticking his thumb out for a ride, he’s trying to remember his poem Metamorphoses, the manuscript of which he burned in a snit after being banned from Rome for offending the emperor.

He carries a large duffle bag from which he extracts his traveling companion, the blind prophet (and a character in his poem) Tiresias (Brian Colonna). Tiresias is more or less the voice of reason, chiding Ovid for his petulance and rash behavior. The duo’s destination is uncertain; it appears to be anywhere but Rome.

Joining them on their journey is Io (Erin Rollman), the mistress that Zeus turned into a cow to thwart the suspicions of his wife, Hera.

Io clumsily staggers about on two legs and fights the itchiness of the “human” dress she’s forced to wear. Her hooves make it hard to physically grasp things. There’s also the child’s Halloween mask she dons to hide her bovine features.

Bizarre? Absolutely, but it gets stranger still.

The trio is eventually picked up by a married couple on their own journey of exile.

Louis (Evan Weissman) is an English teacher. His wife, Carol (Hannah Duggan), is a jovial sort with a big problem: She’s turning into a chicken.

Yep, every day new feathers appear on her legs, and when excited her speech sometimes turns into a squawk.

As the quintet motors down the road, conflicts arise.

Why won’t Ovid admit his love for Io? Why does Louis blame Carol for her poultrification?

And why is it that blind prophet Tiresias can’t see the irony of his fellow travelers, or help Ovid remember the large chunks of the poem in which he appears?

Anywhere but Rome is too clever for its own good by half. If you’ve not read Metamorphoses (and how many of us have?), some of the jokes fall flat.

Its repeated references to mythology can be confusing, and the characters are by design caricatures. A moo-dy cow? A chicken lady who lays eggs? A poet who can’t remember his own lengthy ode to transformation?

The Buntport cast strives to be outrageous, yet the humor is mostly found in the performances, not the material. Edborg’s Ovid is a bundle of creative neuroses.

Rollman valiantly emotes through all that cow makeup. Weissman’s Louis is an excitable cad torn between his love for his wife and his disdain for what she’s become. And Duggan’s Carol is the scene stealer here, as one of those corn-fed Midwesterners who tries to put the best face on all problems.

What to do when things get tense in the car? Pull over and play a game of badminton.

Buntport is a six-person collective that excels at improvisation. Parts of this show hit the mark. More often, though, it’s like sitting through a dissertation with highbrow punch lines

-Mike Person, December 11, 2008, Rocky Mountain News

A man sits in a carriage that is shaped like a coffin. Surrounding him are three people dressed as musketeers.

Denver Post- Inventive Buntport swashbuckles time and space

Truth, it is said, is often stranger than fiction, and this is never truer than when the inventive and irreverent minds of the Buntport Theater collaborative begin to riff on a few choice facts.

In the world premiere of “Musketeer,” these facts revolve around Alexandre Dumas, père, and his research and writing of the ever popular adventure novel, “The Three Musketeers.”

As with many great storytellers, Dumas based his work on someone else’s less effective but potentially compelling material, in this case “The Memoirs of Mister d’Artagnan,” which he borrowed from the Castellane Branch of the Marseilles Public Library. The trouble is, Dumas never returned the book.

More than 150 years later, Charlotte, a librarian at Castellane, reads that Dumas is to be disinterred from his local burial monument and tourist attraction, and hand towed to the Pantheon in Paris, where he is to be enshrined with other French luminaries.

Erin Rollman inhabits Charlotte as a compulsive-obsessive bureaucratic rules enforcer whose unyielding devotion to the library’s policies, and lack of allegiance to the laws of space- time, lead her to a confrontation with the famous author.

Like the proverbial gun on stage that must be used, Dumas’ casket is fully pimped out by the irrepressible ensemble, replete with wheels, trap doors and a fringe-trimmed awning.

All it takes is a little knock on the wooden box to wake up the dead and send us on a mercurial, back-and- forth journey between the present and 1844. It’s nice to see that after all these years in such a confining space, Dumas (Evan Weissman) is still in good spirits. We’re drawn in by Weissman’s jovial manner and urbane wit, which lend Dumas gravity and intelligence. After all, this guy’s books have outsold Victor Hugo and Voltaire.

To attempt to collect an overdue book fine of 5,784 euros from Dumas, Charlotte must get past his honor guard, three contemporary French citizens, each dressed as one of the Three Musketeers, with a personality suited to the role. One of them, Edgard (Erik Edborg), who plays Athos, is Charlotte’s former husband.

As prescribed by the novel, Edborg’s Athos is an upright, principled, even chivalrous fellow. Hanna Duggan is thoughtful, devout and serene as Simone, who stands in for Aramis. Brian Colonna is outrageous as the hot-headed, hard-drinking, womanizing Porthos.

As loyal Buntport patrons know, the ensemble’s imaginative story lines are only one facet of the creativity that regularly erupts on this stage. The entire story of “Musketeer” is enacted in front of panels that serve as projection screens for video and cinematic scenery, narrative and documentary evidence, as well as for shadow boxes employed to display a series of stunning pantomimes and some nifty sleight-of-hand.

Andrew Horwitz’s live score seamlessly enhances the action.

“Musketeer” is an impressive kickoff to the company’s eighth year, exhibiting a hard-won sophistication born from dedication to their collaborative regime. The genuine hilarity, the poignancy of Dumas’ aesthetic argument for his transgression, and the special effects make for a compelling evening.

-Bob Bows, August 16, 2008, Denver Post

A modern woman and a man from the 1800s sit in a carriage shaped like a coffin. Behind them, an image of the sky is projected on a giant screen.

Parker Chronicle- One for all and all for one

Buntport Theater Company is a smart, funny sextet of young theater folks, Colorado College graduates, who write all their own material, dream up ingenious staging and sets and handle all the technical aspects of a production: sound, lights, special effects, costumes. With tongue firmly in cheek, the group takes on the classics, short stories, film genre and creating productions unlike any others in Denver’s rich selection of theater listings.

“Musketeer” promises, in Buntport Theater Company’s words, “to mix true life events and Alexander Dumas’ classic novel ‘The Three Musketeers’ with a lot of imagination and improbable nonsense.” Indeed, it does.

The premise, according to Buntport’s program: Dumas, despite claiming otherwise, based “Three Musketeers” on a book called “The Memoirs of Mister d’Artagnan.” He checked the book out from the Marseilles Public Library. He kept the book. In 2002, Dumas’ body was exhumed from a grave site in his home town to be moved to the Pantheon in Paris, a more suitable burial site for an illustrious French writer. The Castellane Branch of the Marseilles Public Library is in an underground metro station.

These items provide a jumping off point for a flight of fancy, the writers say. “And if we were you, we wouldn’t let little things like ‘how things really are’ get in the way.”

Lights go up on a silhouette of a librarian searching her shelves for a book. It’s Charlotte (Erin Rollman) who realizes that Dumas never returned the above book and, since she knows his body is being moved to Paris, decides to go ask him for it.

Abandon any preconceived ideas about the tale and join her in her journey as, throwing in a spoof of the detective genre, she meets a trio of characters attired in 19th century clothing appropriate for swashbucklers, and eventually the late, lamented writer himself. “I’ll just knock on the coffin.”

These three inept Musketeers plan to push the casket on wheels to Paris. We meet sword-swishing Porthois (Brian Colonna), who owns his fancy costume and is a 19th century re-enactor when he can get a gig. In less grand, on-backwards, government-provided costume is, lanky, bewigged Edgard/Athos (Erik Edborg). Hannah Duggan, as Aramis, is the third member of this goofy crew, who all have big hats, swords and boots.

Evan Weissman plays the writer who created “Three Musketeers,” and is a bit annoyed at being disturbed from his rest. As the casket becomes a carriage, he cheers up and invites her to ride with him. He does produce the somewhat musty-looking volume in question for the persistent Charlotte.

A real strength of Buntport, in addition to dreaming up the story in the first place, is the ingenious way they present a play with multiuse props – a casket morphs into a carriage, sound effects, and in this case, projections and shadowy figures behind a floor-to-ceiling screen on a low budget.

-Sonya Ellingboe, September 2, 2008, Parker Chronicle

A man dressed as a musketeer happily embraces a woman in a red shirt. She pushes him away.

North Denver Tribune- Buntport’s Musketeer creative, funny, and almost deep

Many theatre companies occasionally develop spoofs of classic theatre and come up with very funny productions. Buntport Theater never makes it that easy on themselves. All their productions are original creations, and to call them take-offs or spoofs sells them short. Musketeer, the latest Buntport creation, is (of course) very funny, includes some clever plot twists and time warping devices, and has, dare I say it, an almost deep message about art and creativity.

A word about Buntport: six people collaboratively develop all aspects of each show, including writing, directing, designing, and acting. While my reviews normally mention each role and discuss that person’s contribution, that makes no sense with Buntport. Suffice to say, when I talk about each component of the production, credit goes to all six œ Erin Rollman, Hannah Duggan, Erik Edborg, Brian Colonna, Evan Weissman, and SamAnTha Schmitz.

Musketeer starts with the (presumably) factual exhumation in 2002 of the body of Alexander Dumas, author of The Three Musketeers, in order to be reburied in the Pantheon in Paris. The twist comes from the accusation that Dumas based his most famous story on an obscure book entitled The Memoirs of Mister D’Artagnan, which he allegedly borrowed from the Marseilles Public Library and never returned. In Buntport’s story, a present-day librarian hears that Dumas’ body is being moved, and decides to get the long overdue book back (and collect a huge fine). The challenge of getting a book from a man dead for 132 years doesn’t seem to daunt her in any way, and the fun begins. The story bounces back and forth between the past and the present, and between reality and imagination, drawing the audience along at every step.

The staging of Musketeer is clever and effective. The actors use the small space and interact with the few scenic elements well. I particularly like the staging of Charlotte and Dumas jammed into the casket together, part live and part projected onto a screen. The pacing is quick and the comic timing strong.

The acting ensemble is well balanced, with all actors contributing. Erin Rollman is Charlotte, the librarian, with many wonderful small character bits that really establish her personality clearly. Opposite her and in contrast is Evan Weissman as the writer Dumas. Charlotte and Dumas represent the two extremes of rationality and expression, and they battle delightfully throughout the show. As the three musketeers, both present and past, real and imagined, Hannah Duggan, Erik Edborg, and Brian Colonna all capture the essence of their characters’ personalities. In the present, they show flashes of their parallel selves from the past, giving the intertwined stories a strong connection.

The set is creative and effective. The two main elements are a set of three rear projection screens, and a casket on wheels that transforms into a carriage. I’ve seen projections used in live theatre every once in a while, but rarely are they integrated into the action of the play as completely as they are in Musketeer. The projections are sometimes just background, sometimes informational, but occasionally move into the foreground and become an integral part of the action. The transformation of the casket into a carriage and back again helps change the setting from real to imaginary each time it happens. The costumes also help reinforce the parallels between the two worlds, functioning both as anachronistic costumes in the present, and as appropriate attire in the past. The lighting is unremarkable but mostly all right. Occasionally it is a bit difficult to see into the carriage, but that does not detract much from the scene.

The message of Musketeer is that there is more to life than simple facts. Charlotte starts as a completely rational and sensible person, focused on facts. But Dumas convinces her of “the importance of disregarding the facts,” and that there is so much more œ art is what adds meaning and substance to life. At the risk of getting too deep, Buntport is really presenting the case for their very existence. Creativity and artistic expression can enhance reality and move it beyond the mundane. Perhaps at its best, art can confound and transcend reality. Okay, so that is probably way too deep. Let’s go with this: Musketeer is hilarious, clever, intriguing, and well worth seeing.

-Craig Williamson, September 1, 2008 , North Denver Tribune

Two people dressed as musketeers lean on a coffin draped in a blue and white cloth. The musketeer in the foreground has a mustache drawn on her face.

Colorado BackStage- Musketeer

A library book? A library book never returned? Who would have thought such a small premise could turn upside down and sideways keeping the majority of a full house Opening Night at Buntport doubled over in laughter?

A brilliant premise, based on historical fact, knocking down walls of time and space, flying on fantasized wings definitely excites the gears in the Buntport people.

Erin Rollman transforms herself into an uptight, over achieving, conscientious librarian, Charlotte, with a staccato twitch. Taking her librarian duty seriously at the Marseilles Public Library, Charlotte answers the phone with sharp, clipped words while making absolutely certain records remain up to date.

Oh, oh! Major problem. Charlotte discovers a library book over due. To her horror, the book is 187 years and 22 days late. Alexandre Dumas checked out The Memoirs of Mister d’Artagnan June 7, 1844, and never returned it. Something must be done. Dumas based his famous Three Musketeer personalities on characterizations detailed in the missing book. He never got around to returning it. Why should 187 years and 22 days hinder Charlotte from living up to her efficient library training? Fantasies know no boundaries.

Charlotte just happened to read in a local paper, Dumas’ body was being exhumed for the second time to be moved to the Pantheon in Paris.

Of course, she was going to get this book back. Time and space mean nothing when it comes to the imagination.

Buntport set the comedic world a blaze with its collaborative spirit in writing, directing, set design, and costuming. The ingenious set for Musketeer allows the fantasy defying time and space to move easily however, wherever it wants to go with ease. Interestingly enough, there is never any question where the characters are in the clever process.

Hannah Duggan plays Simone who works for her local Chamber of Commerce who also has been chosen to play Aramis. A girl as Aramis? That’s what the other two Musketeers want to know. Duggan plays Simone and Aramis with strong understanding and knowledge, and proves her worth as Simone and Aramis.

Erik Edborg takes on Edgard, an actor chosen to play Athos. Edborg happily and funnily plays Edgard who funnily plays Athos. Brian Colonna takes on Gilbert, also an actor, chosen to play Porthois. While taking his double role seriously, he does so on a merry gallop in carefree abandon.

The three Musketeers have been chosen to walk the wagon carrying Dumas’s coffin to Paris. What a sight for sore eyes this must have been to people living in 2002. In a fantasy nothing appears to be unrealistic. Of course, Charlotte finds the wagon. On her own, she creates an ingenious opportunity be alone with the coffin. By hook or by crook she will get her hands on that library book. There’s only one person to ask, and that’s Dumas himself. With no one is sight she crawls into the coffin. Evan Weissman covers himself in the persona of Dumas creating some very funny scenes.

Buntport adopted the use of video to expand the set to move far beyond the small stage. It works wondrously, especially reflecting scenes inside the small coffin with Charlotte and Dumas in an exclusively tight conversation. Sword fights dance with hilarious Musketeer bouncing moves keeping eyes alert and wide open.

Musketeer should not be missed under any circumstances for its comedic bent, its creativity, and its delicious quality of acting, its video, and its humored laughability. If I had the power, I would insist every creative writing teacher and professor in the Denver Metropolitan arena schedule time for his or her classes to attend a performance keyed to ignite imagination into a flight of fantasy.

An over due library book? Who else but Buntport would have zeroed in on such a tiny thought expanding it to a delectable, delicious, fun-filled production? Your sense of humor calls. Can you hear it? Respond now before the sold out sign flashes into eyesight.

-Holly Bartges, August 21, 2008 , Colorado BackStage

Two men dressed as musketeers pose in front of a giant screen that has video of musketeers fighting projected onto it.

Daily Camera- Musketeer

DENVER — Put six talented, educated people in a room to brainstorm a play, and eventually they may get to thinking about the book 19th-century writer Alexandre Dumas checked out of the library but failed to return.

Then, within the space of six weeks, they come up with a full-length production: “Musketeer,” which opens Buntport Theater’s eighth season.

The six-person Denver theater ensemble is known for its original, quirky and intelligent plays. Truly, the company gets an “A” for inventiveness and attempts at highbrow humor. For six people to write, direct, perform in and stage a show like this in six weeks is impressive enough that even if every bit doesn’t quite work, you’re willing to forgive. In the case of “Musketeer,” some exchanges between characters are mundane and too long, and a running gag or catchphrase may become repetitive. One wonders what the result would have been if the writers/actors had had more time to tighten and hone the material.

The show’s premise is simple enough. Dumas based some of his popular book “The Three Musketeers” on “Les Memoires de M. d’Artagnan,” by Sandraz de Courtils. According to records kept by the Marseille library, Dumas checked out that book in the 1800s and never returned it. In 2002, an avenging librarian named Charlotte (Erin Rollman) discovers this discrepancy and decides she wants the book back — and she’ll stop at nothing to get it.

The year 2002 is significant because that’s when then-French president Jacques Chirac had Dumas’ body exhumed from his hometown of Villers-Cotterets and moved to the Pantheon in Paris, the resting place of the nation’s heroes. This sets the stage for our three contemporaries, Simone (Hannah Duggan), Edgard (Erik Edborg) and Gilbert (Brian Colonna), who, dressed in musketeer garb, are charged with the task of walking Dumas’ casket along the countryside to Paris.

The librarian tracks them down and presents the laid-to-rest Dumas with a way-overdue fine. It all borders on the absurd, farcical and oftentimes nonsensical, as the action shifts between 2002 and 1844 (the year “The Three Musketeers” was published), at which time our 21st-century librarian meets the same actors, this time as the fictional musketeers Aramis (Duggan), Athos (Edborg) and Porthos (Colonna). Dumas is played by Evan Weissman. Buntport regular SamAnTha Schmitz is offstage for this production.

To say the set is spare is an overstatement: Its centerpiece is a casket on wheels. But we follow the story by the ingenious use of scrim — a flat, translucent panel onto which both scenery and narration are projected. Suddenly our heroes are in rural France, or at a cafe, and audience members never get mixed up about time sequences because they are reminded about which year it is on the screen.

The show is crafted around components of 19th-century “swashbuckling novels” — intrigue, adventure, romance, plots and subplots — combined with a generous dose of histrionics, duels and desperate situations. Even the act of moving the casket through the countryside is a nod to swashbucklers, whose adventures and enemy encounters most commonly occurred along the high roads.

You’d think a librarian would be more enamored of a legendary author from another century, but this one is dogged in her determination to retrieve the book, like a pit bull that won’t let go. One scene is even reminiscent of Glenn Close’s character in “Fatal Attraction.” Still, we don’t really know if the librarian has a deep, enduring love for the book or if she is just the most anal-retentive, rule-abiding librarian the world has ever known, literally willing to risk her neck for her principles. It’s a one-note concept mixed with swashbuckling swagger, banter and bravado, a peppering of literary high-jinks and a dash of slapstick.

Buntport Theater has a corner on intelligent, irreverent and experimental original pieces. Clearly, the actors have a lot of fun doing it, and the audience has a great deal of fun watching.

-Karen Goodwin , August 14, 2008 , Daily Camera

Two people dressed as musketeers lean on a coffin draped in a blue and white cloth. The musketeer in the foreground has a mustache drawn on her face.

Rocky Mountain News- Buntport’s ‘Musketeer’ a multifaceted work

The word multimedia is overused, basically meaningless and usually a letdown.

So let’s just call Buntport Theater’s new play, Musketeer, multifaceted. Or to streamline things: creative.

The ensemble company, which creates original work, adds to its usual Transformer sets and spot-on costumes a complement of expertly presented, thematically useful video.

As the company has frequently done, it started with a classic work, Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers. And if you know the title, you know enough to get by in this time-traveling oddity that takes a few facts and spins them with credulity-defying fiction.

The show opens to the tension-filled instrumentals of Marian the Librarian, and a video of rapid leafings through a book. We’re under a Metro station in Marseilles, where librarian Charlotte (a dogged Erin Rollman) has just discovered that a book has been overdue for 162 years. The book is The Memoirs of Mister d’Artagnan, from which Dumas is said to have cribbed the idea for The Three Musketeers. Charlotte doesn’t care about plagiarism or inspiration. She just doesn’t like scofflaws.

At the same time (and this indeed happened in 2002), the French government has exhumed Dumas’ body to reinter him in the Pantheon in Paris. Three pallbearers dressed as Musketeers accompany the casket through the rolling countryside (portrayed in perfectly timed rolling video): a cheerful tourism official (Hannah Duggan as Aramis, a slightly dour volunteer) and Charlotte’s ex-boyfriend as Athos (Erik Edborg) and an overly confident professional Porthos interpreter (amusingly self-aggrandizing Brian Colonna).

Getting the book back requires a bit of time travel on Charlotte’s part, and she ends up both in the present crawling into Dumas’ coffin (they have a tete-a-tete on screen and stage) and riding with him in the coffin-turned-carriage back in 1844. (Evan Weissman is dapper and flirtatious as the author.)

There are playful bits of comedy tucked in throughout the story, from Colonna routinely unable to replace sword in scabbard to the silent-movie style title cards that remind us “Time and space being of little consequence on an adventure such as this.” Three Stooges swordfighting entertains, and Weissman is given a bit that artfully explains an author’s motivation.

The end, though, fits loosely. It feels as though the company wasn’t quite sure how it wanted to wrap up the tale and was looking for an escape hatch. The gruesome last effect is well done, but doesn’t make much sense, even within the absurd world of the play.

-Lisa Bornstein, August 14, 2008, Rocky Mountain News

A man from the 1800s smiles while reading a book. Over his shoulder there is an annoyed woman in a red shirt and glasses holding a knife.

Westword- Buntport Theater Company skewers other swashbucklers with Musketeer

One of the things I love about Buntport is how the company comes at a subject from a genuinely original, sideways angle. Dramas based on Alexandre Dumas’s The Three Musketeers are usually romantic swashbucklers. But the Buntporters, who create their scripts through a collaborative process, were more intrigued by news stories from a few years back that told the kitschy yet oddly touching tale of Dumas’s body being exhumed and transported from the cemetery of his native village, Villers-Cotterêts, to Paris for burial at the Pantheon. The coffin was accompanied by actors dressed as Dumas’s characters and greeted in Paris by a white-robed woman on horseback representing Marianne, the spirit of France. President Jacques Chirac then read a solemn tribute to the author, who some critics considered too popular to be truly literary. And for this production, the troupe also fixed on a second fact, which they admit they found in Wikipedia: Dumas based his famous novel on a book he’d checked out of the Marseilles Public Library and never returned.

From this juxtaposition, we get a contemporary librarian named Charlotte (like all librarians who aren’t named Marian), who has noted the overdue book and is determined to get it back from Mr. Dumas — a feat that involves waylaying the coffin, confronting the three faux musketeers escorting it, and eventually engaging in a very lively duel of wits with the deceased author himself. In the course of all this, Charlotte is transported back in time to the carriage ride during which Dumas first read his library book, pondered its shortcomings and began to conceive of his own deathless characters. These scenes, in which the author transmutes tendentious dross into fictive gold while arguing with Charlotte about the virtues of logic and order versus those of romance and invention, are among the most delightful of an altogether delightful evening.

As regulars know (the company is starting its eighth season), Buntport achieves its effects in large part with low-budget but highly ingenious staging. A large wooden box serves as both Dumas’s coffin and his carriage. Borrowing the technique from former college classmate Thaddeus Phillips, Buntport also makes brilliant use of video — and the borrowing is particularly appropriate, since Musketeer explores issues of originality and the debt all artists owe their peers and predecessors. Three large screens in the center of the playing area show us the shelves of Charlotte’s library; placid green scenery moving past Dumas’s carriage; Charlotte and Dumas squished together inside the coffin, arguing. Many of the onscreen images are very beautiful: tall, waving grasses, radiant skies. Through a trick of light and perspective, characters leave the playing area, cross behind the screens and seem to enter a magic zone, becoming elegant silhouettes.

There are terrific bits of dialogue as well, as when the three people walking the coffin to Paris discuss their lives and why they’ve taken on this job. Gilbert tells the others he plays Porthos for children’s birthday parties, where he duels with balloon animals. Simone wants to go to cooking school, and comes up with a wistful description of the process of making fish quenelles. (Dumas himself was a well-known gourmet.) And Edgard was once in love with Charlotte and isn’t yet over it.

All of the actors — Hannah Duggan, Erik Edborg, Brian Colonna, Erin Rollman and Evan Weissman — are versatile, funny and expressive. Weissman makes Dumas preternaturally good-natured and unflappable, while Rollman brings schoolmarmish precision to the role of Charlotte. And Andrew Horwitz’s music adds zing to the event.

Despite the production’s many strengths, the plot isn’t entirely satisfying. There’s a jolting contrivance toward the end. And although Charlotte’s onetime affair is intriguing, it never becomes a significant part of the story, and neither she nor Edgard changes or develops as a character. Still, Musketeer is enjoyably nutty and farcical, with duels erupting at the drop of a hat, slapstick humor and absurd running jokes. And there are serious ideas here as well: questions about the artistic process (one of Dumas’s own characters asks him to slow down and put more thought into the writing), as well as a growing understanding that poor Charlotte may be the guardian of these texts, but she can never understand the life throbbing inside them, a life that continues to enthrall readers more than a century after their creation. Watching this daring, imaginative work, we’re reminded that the process of transmutation from fact to fiction and fiction to art is one that the Buntporters explore every working day of their lives.

-Juliet Wittman, August 14, 2008, Westword

Closeup of two people dressed in 1940s garb scrunch their faces at the camera.

Rocky Mountain News- Buntport knows its gumshoe comedy

Buntport Theater has returned to its giddy but thoroughly committed roots with a remount of its 2004 comedy noir McGuinn & Murry.


Fun and games turn serious – that is to say, funny – when Joan Murry (Rollman) starts a mystery in motion by sending a suggestive letter to McGuinn’s house, where his wife reads it. Certain that he’s having an affair and will kill her, the wife, Budge, begins to plot with her own lover, Pauly.Formerly played by Brian Colonna and Hannah Duggan, the show’s tough but underemployed gumshoes are played on this outing by Erik Edborg and Erin Rollman. Whiling their days away in an office where no dame ever knocks on the door, they entertain themselves by making up cases to solve.

The plot thickens as sundry characters get in on the action, all of them played by Edborg and Rollman. Edborg’s McGuinn lacks some of that Bogart panache but gets laughs with his lightweight alcoholism (he drinks whiskey through a straw), and Pauly is even funnier, an eyepatch-wearing Englishman with that country’s particular strain of nebulous sexuality.

Rollman calls up her particular affinity for this period, expressed in the James Thurber collection of Buntport’s show 2 in 1. Her hair has fine ’40s rolls, but it’s her speech and stance that so perfectly connote the era. Her Murry is a tough- talking dame, interested in nothing but getting the job done, while Budge is a high-pitched flit of a wife. Esther’s the lonely, guarded bartender, while the Fat Man is a gender-eliminating parody of a Mafia kingpin.

Joining them onstage is the sign of Buntport’s special magic, its dexterity with set design. A massive partner’s desk that serves the two detectives converts over the course of the play into a bar (front and back), a diorama for a car- chase scene and, most magically, a fully appointed apartment with bedroom, kitchen and clothesline. It’s like a magic show built into a comedy.

Giggles are sprinkled throughout the play, and they never abandon the central conceit. When you hear flimflam, doll and chickie coming from their mouths, you know the artists at Buntport have gotten it right again.

Grade: A-

-Lisa Bornstein, May 22, 2008, Rocky Mountain News