Reviews Archives - Page 21 of 23

A woman looks annoyed. She is divided in half. One side of her hair is short, the other is long. One half of her dress has flowers, the other has a large white collar. only half of her mouth has lipstick. She plays both of the stepsisters.

Colorado Daily- Double Delight

Hidden in a warehouse, not too far from the tracks of Denver’s light rail, lies a rare theatrical gem. Wrapped in hundreds of yards of sturdy black velvet, Buntport Theater beckons to patrons seeking something more than pent-up classics and worn-out Broadway rehashes.

Buntport Theater Company has been producing outstanding alternative theater since 1998. Since obtaining their own space in 2001 they have realized great success, due in large part to the originality, intelligence, energy and precision displayed in every one of their productions. Members of the company collaborate to produce elegantly written original works that pertain to modern issues. But what defines Buntport as a rapidly growing cultural force in Denver theater is its penchant for transforming theater into an exotic experiential cocktail composed of one part dizzying roller-coaster ride, one part classical literary relevance and one part wrecking-ball deconstructionism.

For most companies the approach, much less the individual production, would be hard to pull off on a consistent basis, but this team regularly produces work that consumes audiences with its raptorial eye for sleek, swift, resonant theatrics – be they dramatic, comedic, or a little of both.

“Misc.” is Buntport’s season opener, comprised of two one-acts that contrast sharply with one another. “Elevator” is a frieze of motion on stage, employing internal dialogue among four characters as the point of action that drives the play. “Cinderella” is a nearly wordless jaunt into the cellars of surrealism embedded below the ground level of many classic fairy tales.

“Elevator” contrasts the outwardly indifferent behavior prominently displayed in elevators with the internal conflicts and wars we all wage in our heads on a daily basis. The dialogue speeds forth like an express train of stream of consciousness debate, with one character’s thoughts cleverly woven into another’s. The elevator itself is supremely slow, surreptitiously engaging the audience in the foot tapping, eye-rolling, blank-wall-staring behavior of the characters on stage, who painstakingly wait to rise from one floor to the next while all the events of their lives flood through their minds like a cranial tidal wave. The use of the elevator as the vehicle behind the conflict can’t be overlooked, as each of the characters’ dialogue exposes their climb towards one climactic experience or another – except for the character (reminiscent of a segment of society that never really works that hard and never really cares what people think about it) who gets on the elevator to make the short trip up to the next floor “just because she can.”

“Cinderella” is an intricate magical realism piece in which utterances are rarely intelligible, but inflections are well understood. The play revolves around paradoxes and the collaborators successfully carry that theme into the dialogue, which not only leads the audience into the outer world of fairy tale, but also makes them forsake conventional logic in order to listen differently. This piece achieves Buntport’s goal of transformational theater not just on the stage, but in the minds of the audience as well, where the suspension of disbelief effortlessly rises to an all-time high.

“Cinderella” is comical, but it also can claim a monumental achievement in the realm of “fresh” theater. The choreography is outstanding, as are the costumes, and would-be playwrights and directors should take note of the tremendous plot enhancement achieved by use of the background music. In other words, it is everything NOT spoken that drives this play, in utter contrast with the earlier, dialogue-driven “Elevator.”

Although both works are tremendously innovative, “Cinderella” stands out as a true piece of artistry that pushes the boundaries of contemporary theater into a rarely explored dimension. Actress Erin Rollman gives an amazing performance as the wicked stepmother, transforming her character into an obviously wrong-minded maternal icon who takes anything but a forthright approach to parenting. Rollman does double duty as a hypnotic fairy godmother who enchants and invents with every movement she makes, playing the one character who never utters so much as a sound. Hannah Duggan plays the wonderfully duplicitous stepsister – switching from coy debutante to party girl with an effortless change in inflection and movement. Erik Edborg performs the perfect Anti Cinderella with wit and his trademark over-the-top physical comedy. Evan Weissman pulls off enough linguistic gymnastics to keep the audience reeling while he beguiles the stage with an embodiment of magic.

The offstage team of Brian Colonna, Matt Petraglia and SamAnTha Schmitz have to be mentioned not only for their collaboration in the work’s composition, but for the obvious synchronicity they provide in lighting and, most notably, sound. Without the precise execution of all these elements, the facets of this gem of a play would not be buffed to perfect clarity.

Without a doubt, “Misc.” is edgy, surrealistic, experimental theater that endeavors to relay an experiential transformation to the audience. Without a doubt, it succeeds. Amazingly, it is also tremendously fun – so if you’re new to experimental work, this is a great one to start with.

-Cilicia Yakhlef, September 22, 2003, Colorado Daily

A down-shot of a room with several large stacks of paper piled up on the floor. A man in a brown suit, sitting at an awkwardly small desk that is suspended above the floor by wires, is holding a cutting blade. The man in the suit is looking concerned at another man in the foreground in a tan jacket and light green shirt who is speaking.

coloradodrama- The 30th of Baydak

Though it may not seem so to the average American, these are desperate times. 57,000 people are disenfranchised in Florida before the 2000 election, yet the follow-up stories appear only in the European press; fact-finding for the investigation of 9-11 is suppressed by the Bush-Cheney junta, yet the Congress passes the Patriot Act and creates a Homeland Security Department to remedy “terrorism”; finally, our “leaders” manufacture evidence to justify the invasion of two countries vital to our un-checked oil consumption, yet opposing nations cave in to our take-over, as long as we promise them some construction contracts and a share of the booty.

While Americans insist that they are free and continue to believe in the “facts” they are served by the ever-consolidating corporate media, any minimally trained political scientist can see that we are treated as nothing more than another glorified banana republic by the ruling families who control our major corporations and the government that runs interference for them. Such observations are also inescapable in Buntport Theatre Company’s current original collaboration, The 30th of Baydak.

Set in modern Turkmenistan, where the supreme ruler willy-nilly changes the names of the months and anything else that suits him, The 30th of Baydak lays bare a society in which the safe route to survival is to keep your head down and don’t ask any questions. Erik Edborg is Yousef, a bureaucrat who cuts out words from government documents. Not knowing what to do with the banished nomenclature, Yousef takes the slips of paper home and puts them in soon-to-be-forgotten boxes, relegating these once-living thoughts to the dustbin of history, much in the same manner as Winston Smith assigned pieces of the historical record to the terminal obscurity of the memory tubes in 1984. Edborg’s downcast gaze, slumping posture, small steps, and mushy compliance makes Yousef the ubiquitous Orwellian yes-man that is the glue of totalitarian societies.

Yousef’s is a shifting world where everything literally hangs by a thread: the entire set, including desks, chairs, cubicle dividers, beds, dresser, and walkways, is suspended from the ceiling by airline cable.

Yousef’s supervisor, Ogul, long-ago having been stripped of her own keywords, is, in Hannah Duggan’s characterization, an impossible, unending string of clichés and platitudes, who strews a surfeit of paperwork everywhere she walks.

In the cube behind Yousef sits Farzad, the only office worker who turns away from the omnipresent posters and pictures of the supreme ruler. Evan Weissman draws Farzad as pesky, insistent naysayer, who, when no one else is around, raises his fist, questions government policy, and attempts to goad Yousef into joining his revolutionary cell.

Into this bleak existence comes Meret, who takes over the long-abandoned cube next to Yousef and attempts to break through his insularity. Sunny and curious, Erin Rollman’s Meret engages Yousef in a gradually expanding dialogue that briefly seems to offer some hope of expression for his long suppressed feelings.

Yousef’s only friend is his imaginary roommate Ismail, a camel dressed as a man, who appears one evening and begins to question Yousef’s routine. Mixing patient, fatherly advice with subtle mask positionings, Brian Colonna becomes the deus ex machina that provides Yousef with a potential path to redemption. Ismail tells Yousef, “You have a choice how you act.”

In The 30th of Baydak, the noble ensemble of Buntport once again creates a strangely familiar yet magical world that asks difficult questions about our complacent acceptance of business as usual. It runs through June 15th.

-Bob Bows, June 2003, coloradodrama.com

A man in a brown suit stands looking thoughtfully up and to his left. He is standing in front of a large mural of a man’s face with dark hair.

AP- Reloaded Beats Out Baydak

DENVER (AP) – The numbers are in. The opening weekend of Baydak went head to head with The Matrix Reloaded and, as it turns out, The Matrix squeezed by into the lead. The Warner Brothers’ blockbuster boasts that 12.5 million people rushed to the theaters for some action-packed fun. Buntport, however, nearly tipped the scales with a surprising 64 audience members. Actor Brian Colonna explains the slight discrepancy by pointing out that Buntport did not do a Sunday show this week. “I think we may have really limited ourselves from the get-go with our scheduling. You should talk to Erin about that.” Miss Rollman, however, did not wish to discuss the scheduling quite as much as she wanted to point out that “we didn’t really have much hope against The Matrix when you consider that some members of Buntport are traitors and chose to go to the stupid movie themselves right smack in the middle of our weekend run.” At this point, Colonna began wildly gesturing at Rollman and any further comment became unprintable.

A man in a brown suit stands holding his hand together at his waist. He is looking up and to his left solemnly. Behind and to the left of the man is a mural of the face of a man with black hair. He is standing on a narrow metal grated walkway that is suspended above the floor by wires.

Colorado Daily- A Desolate ‘Dramedy’

Given the fact that Denver’s Buntport Theater has a hard time categorizing its newest collaborative creation, it’s a tough show to pigeonhole. But then, maybe that’s the point.

The group, which has created some of the most innovative and vigorous stage works of the past two years, calls “The 30th of Baydak” “a dark comedy…or a light drama…or a medium dramedy.” What transpires is a starkly played but densely layered piece that transcends easy classification, a challenging, pungent essay on fear, control, and human weakness that proves once again that these folks are driving theater into heady new territory.

The play, based equally on real-life events in the former Soviet republic of Turkmenistan, and the writing of Kafka and Czech novelist Bohumil Hrabal (best known as the source for Jiri Menzel’s films “Closely Watched Trains” and “Larks on a String”), deals with an unassuming bureaucratic functionary, Yousef (Erik Edborg). He waddles hesitantly to his office each day, where his task is to excise the “obsolete” names of months from Turkmen documents and pass them down the pipeline. Those who recall “freedom fries” will get the parallel to our own blinkered, unthinking acceptance of the party line.

photo by Sandra H. Elkind

It seems that the country’s dictator, who has renamed himself Turkmenbashi, “the ruler of all Turkmen,” has declared that more patriotic titles are needed for the months of the year, and has set out to systematically change all of them. Yousef works alongside true believer Ogul (Hannah Duggan), putative rebel Farzad (Evan Weissman), and fetching new coworker Meret (Erin Rollman), who he’s too timid to look at but begins to feel longings for.

Portraits of Turkmenbashi dominate the stage space, genuflected to by all (except the sarcastic Farzad, who gripes incessantly but doesn’t seem to have the moxie to stand up for his beliefs). Patriotic poems, slogans, and songs issue from the radio, and everyone seems wise to keep their heads down and conform. This Yousef does, although he feels an inarticulate compulsion to secret the cutout scraps in his pockets and take them home, squirreling them away in boxes under his bed.

The endless round of tedium continues, day after day, as the workers file in and out of the office, moving on platforms that are suspended on wires from Buntport’s ceiling grid. Actually, everything – desks, chairs, decorations, beds – are hanging in midair, a clever and eloquent staging that point to the puppet strings the characters seem to dangle from, and the fear-laden, tentative existence they are forced to endure.

Yousef confides only in his roommate, a talking camel in business suit, Ismail (Brian Colonna), who advocates a pragmatic, complacent approach to life (“Beer and sandwiches” is his mantra). Yousef finally acts, creating out of his collection of paper scraps a sculpture of Meret’s arms that comes hauntingly to life for a few astonishing moments, breaking out of his self-censored state to contemplate his isolated, pointless point of view.

Still, neither this nor any other action a character undertakes accomplishes anything except to create more pain, or endanger an innocent party. The players’ private bouts of arid philosophizing seem as barren as the Big Brother-esque doubletalk that dominates their public lives. Buntport refuses to supply the audience with easy answers or a satisfying conclusion. What’s the point again?

Perhaps it’s that Buntport’s expectations of the audience are higher than those of any other arts group in the area. This is complex, grown-up stuff, and the clever septet (let’s not forget the contributions of the offstage members, Matt Petraglia and SamAnTha Schmitz) is gutsy enough to demand that we forge our own meanings out of the proceedings. The bleak, fragmentary narrative mirrors the mindsets of those caught within in. This is stage poetry, best compared to the work of Cocteau – unexplained images and actions thrown at us, knocking us off balance and into new modes of thought.

It’s frustratingly difficult stuff, easier to “get” if you have made a point of following the group’s development production by production over the years. Still, anyone sick and tired of spoon-fed, cloying entertainments will find the acrid “Baydak” heady fare.

-Brad Weismann, May 27th, 2003, Colorado Daily

Denver Post- Buntport injects Bard’s ‘Titus’ with heads-up (and off) absurdity

Shakespeare certainly wasn’t known for his absurdist wit. He was a funny guy, no doubt, but he left absurdity to be conquered by Ionesco.

But through the creative pathways of others, most of Shakespeare’s plays have been transformed into different beasts from what Shakespeare originally imagined. While many directors and writers think themselves brilliant for taking a play and changing the era and aesthetics (think Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 film “William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet”), more impressive is the Buntport Theater’s “Titus Andronicus! The Musical,” which bends the Bard’s bloodiest play into an irreverent, sometimes-musical journey into the absurd.

“Titus!” is a remount of last year’s production. It takes the familiar story of “Titus” and gives it a smart, “South Park” twist. “Titus!” ingeniously weaves together Shakespeare’s story of tough love and vengeance and the theater company’s penchant for the high- and low-brow laugh line. Amazingly, “Titus” was adapted locally by Buntport, and the inventive adaptation proves that the theater company’s age is illusory – they have talent far beyond their years.

Since “Titus” is no “Hamlet,” a recap of the story is a must. Buntport smartly handles this in a (somewhat) succinct wrapup on the back of its program. Titus, the great Roman general, returns from war where he lost 22 of his sons. Titus’ daughter, Lavinia, is promised to the new Roman emperor, Saturninus, but is in love with his brother, Bassianus. Saturninus rejects her and then takes on a seductive, Andronicus-hating prisoner, Tamora, as his bride.

Tamora’s two sons and her secret boyfriend, Aaron, set out for revenge against Titus and start by killing Bassianus, framing Titus’ sons for the deed, and then cutting off Lavinia’s hands and tongue. Saturninus tells Titus he can have his sons back in exchange for one of the Andronicus’ hands. Titus cuts off his hand, and, in return, receives only the decapitated heads of his sons – an exchange that brings on his insanity.

One of Titus’ few living sons, Lucius, is sent off to gather an army to help the Andronicuses claim Rome’s throne, but before he returns, Tamora comes to Titus with her two sons – disguised – to dig him in an even deeper hole. But Titus sees the lie, kills Tamora’s sons, and bakes their heads into pies, which she later eats.

The Buntport production is put forward as just another day on the road for Professor P.S. McGoldstien and his van of traveling players. The troupe performs out of a van, painted differently on each side to make for varying backdrops. Each actor plays multiple characters, designated by which light bulb is illuminated on the character board. For example, actor Brian Colonna, in a most excellent Oedipal twist, plays both Titus and Lavinia’s lover, Bassianus, depending on which name is lit up.

The music, which takes familiar tunes such as “Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps” or “Oops! … I Did It Again” and adds knowingly bad lyrics, gives the production an elevated sense of theatricality. Not only is this part-farce, but it’s a musical, with familiar songs and choreography to boot. And the cast pulls off each song with the needed overdramatic flair. When Hannah Duggan’s Lavinia emerges from her appendage “trimming,” she mumbles her way through Britney’s “Oops!” with bloody shirt cuffs and blood spilling out from of her mouth. Later, Colonna’s Titus sings, “I’ll cut off more extremities if that will bring (my sons) back any sooner,” using a sword for a cane, to the tune of “Beyond the Sea.”

“See, ladies and gentleman, we handle violence with delicacy,” says Colonna’s McGoldstien with great comedic timing.

The rest of the cast is equally strong. Duggan, who excels as Lavinia, is wonderful, especially in her tongue-less scenes that rely on her non-verbal skills. Erik Edborg, who takes on Saturninus and Lucius, is best as the puppets that are Tamora’s two sons – and also two of the play’s absolute treasures.

Chiron and Demetrius are Tamora’s sons who trim Lavinia and eventually are cooked into pies by Titus, and they were made into puppets – one a gas can, the other an old-model car radio/ashtray by the Buntport crew. The transformation adds cult-brand humor to the mix. And right when it seems like the laughter is endless, one of the final scenes, where Aaron confesses to his evildoing, lacks flow and sinks the tail end of the production to the dregs of bad writing.

“Titus!” is very un-Shakespearean, but still this irreverent romp is something the Bard would very well adore and, possibly, envy.

-Ricardo Baca, February 19, 2003, Denver Post

Five people are draped on and around a painted van. They all wear makeshift Shakespearean clothing. In front is a smiling man with his leg up on the bumper. The hood of the van has a large smiling portrait of him. One smiling man is draped across the hood. Sitting on top of the van are three more people holding a banner that says “van-o-players”.

Westword- Titus All Rightus!

Buntport’s version of Shakespeare’s forgotten yarn strikes a bloody good note

Titus Andronicus has always bothered Shakespeare scholars, some of whom simply refused to believe that the great man actually wrote the blood-drenched monstrosity. In his famous Tales From Shakespeare, Charles Lamb noted that Titus was “not acknowledged” by the critics whose assessment of dates he used, “nor indeed by any author of credit.” Later thinkers reluctantly acknowledged Shakespeare’s authorship but have suggested that Titus was a rewrite of an older and much worse play. Others, defending the tragedy, pointed out that there are lots of corpses in Hamlet and King Lear, as well as spurious gore, and that Greek tragedy is full of rape, murder and cannibalism. Harold Bloom, on the other hand, believes that the play is an intentional parody, a Shakespearean sendup of rival playwright Christopher Marlowe. In any case, almost nobody stages Titus these days. Audiences are too apt to titter at the forgettable merry-go-round of posturing, declaiming characters, betrayals and counter-betrayals, and the cascade of murders and mutilations.

But the folks at Buntport Theater have figured it out. They’re presenting Titus Andronicus as Titus Andronicus! The Musical. Why has no one ever thought of this before? It means that when Titus is told he can save the lives of two of his sons by chopping off his hand (don’t ask — it wouldn’t make sense even if I gave you more context), we get a stirring masculine trio as he, his brother and another (currently unendangered) son compete for the honor of self-mutilation, complete with stirring choruses and natty little rhythmic steps. “Nay, come, agree whose hand shall go along,” says evil Aaron, who has set this all up, “for fear they die before their pardon come.” And when Titus, having killed the wicked Tamora’s wicked sons, makes plans to bake their heads and serve them in pastry to their mother, he flourishes a knife in his remaining hand and musically debates the recipe in a zesty French accent.

This is Titus Andronicus as staged by Professor P.S. Goldstien — aka Brian Colonna — and four actors, out of the back of a van that occupies Buntport Theater’s cavernous and otherwise empty playing area. Each actor plays more than one of Titus‘s several dozen roles, and there’s a helpful placard with pictures, names and lightbulbs that get turned on and off during the action so you can figure out who’s playing whom at any given moment. There’s also a chalkboard to track the corpses. This doesn’t mean you can actually follow the twists and turns of the plot — it’s hard to do that in any production — but it does give you a broad idea of what’s happening, which is all you really need.

The van is tricked out with immense ingenuity. One side is painted like a forest, the other like a building. Canvases slide up and down inside the door, platforms are pulled from the side and back. Periodically, the entire cast gets together to push the vehicle from one place to another. They do this with energy, élan and high good humor, so that a fall or mishap becomes part of the performance. It isn’t just that Buntport’s is an interpretation of an inexplicable piece of our literary inheritance (and for all its lunacy, it is an interpretation). It’s that the approach to the work — the collaboration and improvisation with which it began — is valid theater in itself. You see the way the group has chosen to present a particular speech, but you also see how the actor speaking it stumbled (or strolled) into his interpretation and what he now feels about it. There’s Shakespeare’s text, and there’s also Buntport’s commentary — overt or implied — on that text.

Objects take on a life of their own. In the night scenes, a stuffed owl perches on the van’s rearview mirror. When someone comments that “the leaves are green,” several skeletal umbrellas, their spokes covered with leaves, unfurl. Blood spurts, dribbles and pools. Tamora’s sons, Demetrius and Chiron, are represented by a gasoline can and a car radio; their speech comes courtesy of Erik Edborg, who acts as their puppeteer. Later, the human-flesh pies speak, too.

Buntport Theater is the creation of several graduates of Colorado College — Brian Colonna, Erik Edborg, Hannah Duggan, Erin Rollman, Matt Petraglia and Samantha Schmitz — who create their theater pieces collaboratively. Colonna, Edborg, Duggan and Rollman are the performers in Titus, along with Muni Kulasinghe. You want to see them at work, because this production is clever, inventive, and one of the funniest evenings of theater around. It’s also definitive. Which means you’ll never have to go see Titus Andronicus again.

-Juliet Wittman, February 13, 2003, Westword

Two people in white polo shirts stand with elbows out. The man on the right wears black earphones and points to the walkman on his hip.

Colorado Daily- Expedition to the fun house

There’s bad theatre – incompetent self-indulgence by egomaniacal dullards. Then there’s the vast stretch of middling work – a nice-enough evening, but you wonder whether you should have spent the ticket money on a nice dinner or concert instead. Good theatre pleases.

Then there’s Buntport, better than good by an order of magnitude.

The troupe is unique – a sextet that has collaboratively created a string of innovative and entertaining theatrical works since the beginning of its Denver residency a little over a year ago. Its newest piece, “The Odyssey: A Walking Tour,” is not only a fun, perceptive treat, but a revolutionary (for this area) experience that blows away tired conceptions of what theatre should be.

photo by Sandra H. Elkind

The journey begins in Buntport’s lobby, which is festooned with a set of jokey, lame “exhibits.” This panjandrum of objects, which all look to be filched from dumpsters, are paired with squares of deadpan-funny explanatory text, a hilarious parody of museums’ insufferably condescending, isn’t this-significant presentational style. A scrap of dirty cloth nailed to the wall is accompanied as follows: “Could it be an ancient scrap of Odysseus’ toga or sail? Well, it could be…. we find labels to be limiting and unproductive.”

The parody extends to the tour’s introduction. Each audience member is issued a set of headphones and randomly assigned to one of two nauseatingly chipper guides, played by Hannah Duggan (“Vicki!”) and Brian Colonna (Todd!”). They, their fellow Buntportians (Erik Edborg, Erin Rollman, SamAnTha Schmitz, and Matt Petraglia) and the rest of the cast lip-sync their performances to the tape that plays over the ‘phones, which is itself a hilarious, multilayered audio experience, thanks in large part to the efforts of Buntport’s technical wizard Petraglia.

The gee-whiz kids Vicki and Todd welcome us to Odysseyland, outlining the tour’s rules and flogging the wonders to come in a deft send-up of corny themeparkspeak. Curtains are parted and we are introduced to our hero Odysseus, a toga-clad mannequin who speaks in a flat, synthesized voice. Then the tour groups are off, weaving their ways through a maze of curtain-divided spaces, each set up to dramatize an episode from Odysseus’ epic decade-long journey home.

The two tours differ from each other, and each clocks in at a little under an hour (there’s a discount for those who take both tours). The wild, irreverent wit that Buntport spouts, along with their inventive and fully integrated methods of realizing their comic visions, puts them head and shoulders above the rest. These techniques are nothing new, but no one is as bold as Buntport in putting them to work in order to create a web of interactive experiences that literally gets the audience off its ass and into the story. “Odyssey” is cultural big game, and you need to break out your entire arsenal of weapons in order to bag it.

For example: Odysseus’ raid on the Cicones is a rockin’ puppet diorama. The Laestrygonians attack the hapless (and somewhat out-of-sync) crew with Nerf boulders. With the aid of artfully placed television monitors, the Cyclops makes a horrifying appearance. Lotus-Eaters are represented by a schlocky hypnotist, and a pissy, bad-boy Poseidon makes his entrance behind the wheel of a sports car. Not many groups will gleefully bind you to a mast and squirt you with sea foam in mid performance – Buntport does.

Surprisingly, there’s a knowing moment of pathos at the end, in which the ancient gods are revealed as little more than petulant children, and the evening itself is leavened by a subtle undercurrent of seriousness. A large part of Buntport’s beauty is that they pull rich meaning out of their material by focusing on the fun of it, instead of pretentiously stalking significance and profundity.

There’s a reason why they call it a “play,” and Buntport hasn’t forgotten it. That refreshing, inclusive attitude is light years ahead of the pack. This “Odyssey” should amuse, delight and inspire all who participate in it. By all means, strap on your gear and get walking.

-Brad Weismann, October 8, 2002, Colorado Daily

Denver Post- Buntport Theater at most creative: CC students hit jackpot with show

The Buntport may not be the most important theater company in Denver – yet. For now, the six twentysomething smartypants from Colorado College will have to settle for being the most creative, intelligent, irreverent, inventive, refreshing, spontaneous and clever theater company in town.

But stay tuned. Most important may be just around the corner.

Chicago has Second City and Toronto has the Groundlings. Maybe one day the theater world will identify Denver with Buntport.

With all due respect to the first-class but hyperserious endeavors at the LIDA Project experimental theater, the Buntport is the closest thing Denver has to wickedly funny but legitimate experimental theater. No one does anything quite like they do.

With a combination of brain power, irreverence and inspiration of inexplicable origin, Buntport has created a niche in the Denver market by creating parodies of the classics that range from the silly to the profound.

photo by Sandra H. Elkind

The Buntport’s current multimedia production of “The Odyssey: A Walking Tour” is neither as funny nor as long, coming in at only 50 minutes, as last season’s breakthrough satire of “Titus Andronicus.”

But it won’t take long to appreciate the notion that brilliance never should be measured by running time.

Drawing on their best pals from the Denver theater community to form a swollen creative team of 18, “The Odyssey” is performance art rooted in the primary players’ training at Colorado College in a program called avant-garde technological guerrilla theater.

“The Odyssey” is a walking tour of a combination museum and fun house called “Odysseyland” (“Coming soon: Calypso’s Island in May 2007”). Exhibits line the walls as they would in any museum, such as tin cups with the accompanying study card, “There’s nothing like pottery to make you feel like you are actually in a museum, is there? Penelope used these pots as primitive holding devices for some sort of ancient liquids.”

Audience members are given transistor radio headsets to hear our two chipper tour guides Vickie (Hannah Duggan) and Todd (Brian Colonna, sounding a lot like that guy on those creepy CD cleaning devices). But you soon realize the entire performance has been committed to audiotape, and the guides are lip-synching their own wacky words to great comic effect.

The group splits into two separate tours (a discount is offered for those wanting to later go on the other tour). Each takes us on separate adventures inside the theater, which has been curtained off to create at least 10 distinct sets, one (the King of the Wind) built 20 feet off the ground.

Vickie’s tour begins in the Mount Olympus dorm room where Zeus’ college-age children party hard. Apollo, Artemis and Athena are the toga-wearing offspring (though in the lobby, Athena takes the form of a light bulb). This may seem odd until you remember that Athena was Zeus’ favorite daughter, the only one allowed to use her father’s thunderbolt (lightning, electricity, light bulb get it?).

Athena pleads via speakerphone with Zeus, who is relaxing in Miami, on behalf of Odysseus, who has been stranded long ago by Poseidon with Calypso. Odysseus is a Ken-doll mannequin with the voice-box of Stephen Hawking.

Just to show that anything can, and will happen, the scene calls for the Buntport’s back gate to come up and Erik Edborg as Poseidon to drive up in a 442 Oldsmobile. Last Thursday, that also made the alley’s three surprised, real-life dumpster-picking winos part of the madcap scene.

Next, with the help of three faces we see on hanging television sets backed by real human bodies, we flash back to Odysseus’ blinding of Poseidon’s son Polyphemus (the cyclops) with a Q-tip. (“I don’t regret blinding his son. I regret yelling my name back at him.”) We also visit Hades and Circes’ human swineherd. If you take Todd’s tour, you’ll meet the Sirens, the Lotus Eaters and tour the Isle of the Sun God.

And it all takes place to an underscore that includes “The Wanderer,” “Margaritaville” and “Walk This Way.”

If it all sounds a little silly, it is. But there are a hodgepodge of legitimate, ancient theatrical styles on display, including puppetry and Japanese Kabuki. The brilliance of the design is that the audience is placed at so many different points of view. The action takes place below us, above us and all around us.

One entire soundless scene has the audience following a a progressive picture story across a wall sized, neon-lit drop. The drawings by Galen Shoe tell the tale of Scylla the sea monster, who threatened passing ships and ate six of Odysseus’ companions (and also answers the question, “Where’s Waldo?”).

Some of it will leave you scratching your head, but more so your funny bone. These kids are freakin’ geniuses. Dare we say the future of Denver theater?

-John Moore, October 4, 2002, Denver Post

Two people wearing clothes that look Shakespearean, but are made from jeans, are holding hands and skipping in front of a van painted like a forest. There is a plastic owl on the van's side mirror.

Rocky Mountain New- The Bard lightens up in Buntport’s ‘Titus’

In its version of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, the six-member troupe twists a tragic tale of revenge and deceit into a manic, melodramatic musical, filled with oodles of fake blood, clever pop-song covers and abundant sarcasm.The Bard is never boring in the hands of the capable Buntport Theater clan.

It’s far from the traditional Titus but tons more fun.

Buntport presents the play as a band of roving performers (known as the Van-O-Players), harking back to the vagabond troupes who traveled the countryside in Shakespeare’s day. The Van-O-Players carry props, costumes, a musician and a player piano in their dilapidated but colorful vehicle — the essentials for making light of one of the Bard’s least-liked works.

Because they’re few in number, each player takes on multiple roles, transitioning from character to character by donning a fake beard, cowboy hat or other silly prop. The group’s musician (the multitalented Muni Kulasinghe) plays such a vast array of characters that he pastes strips of paper to his chest to indicate which personality he’s portraying at any given time. He also tracks the play’s mounting death toll on a small black chalkboard.

The Van-O-Players present an abbreviated adaptation of Titus but stick somewhat closely to the play’s plotline, which details the downfall of a Roman general in a Melrose Place-type fashion.

The Buntport tribe (made up of Brian Colonna, Erik Edborg, Hannah Duggan, Erin Rollman and their offstage counterparts Matt Petraglia and Samantha Schmitz) have a grand time poking fun at this poorly constructed play.

The groups shrewdly sprinkle songs throughout the scenes to highlight the absurdity of specific characters and situations. The new emperor, for example, celebrates his ascension with ragtime playing in the background, his loyal subjects dancing around him sporting toothy smiles and jazz hands.

A plotting lover sings about seeking revenge for his sweetheart over a cover of ABBA’s Fernando, chatting up murderers while doing the cha-cha.

Even versions of Bobby Darrin’s Beyond the Sea and Britney Spears’ Oops I Did it Again make appearances.

The props also provide comic relief. Two characters are portrayed by hand puppets; one is made of a rusty gas can, and the other is an old car radio with a shoeshine brush serving as a spiky hair covered head.

Blood is bountiful, pouring like a river out of the performer’s guts, mouths, hands, etc. By the end of the play, the actors could easily double as extras for the next Scream sequel.

And the show has a surprisingly high production value, considering that the troupe’s psychedelic van is the set. With scenes painted on its sides, the vehicle serves as a grand palace one minute, a lush, green forest the next.

But gimmicks aside, what makes this spoof succeed is the cast’s commitment. The performers are consistently solid, from Rollman as the devilishly delightful Queen Tamora (who punctuates nearly every scene with a wicked laugh) to Kulasinghe, who sprints between characters with Michael Lewis like speed.

But hurry if you want to see the Bard’s bloodiest play performed Buntport Theater style. The show, postponed by two weeks because of Colonna’s emergency appendectomy, will end its run Sunday.

-Erika Gonzalez, May 17, 2002, Rocky Mountain News

Five people are draped on and around a painted van. They all wear makeshift Shakespearean clothing. In front is a smiling man with his hands out. The hood of the van has a large smiling portrait of him. One smiling man is draped across the hood. Sitting on top of the van are three more people holding a banner that says “van-o-players”.

Denver Post- A bloody tragedy turns into a hoot: Buntport’s ‘Titus’ a biting parody

(*Revised from published version with permission*)

“Titus Andronicus” has long been regarded as Shakespeare’s bloodiest tragedy. Who knew it could also be his funniest comedy?

Buntport Theatre spoofs the Bard with the intelligent and endlessly inventive send-up “Titus Andronicus! The Musical.” The body count (kept on a chalkboard scorecard) tops out at 35 (seven times the number of people in the cast), but the only tragedy here is that the smartypants at the Buntport were forced to shorten their run to just two weekends. Brian Colonna, who plays Titus, underwent an emergency appendectomy just before the April 25 opening, delaying things by two weeks. But he’s back in full flourish, and he’s got scads of killings to make up for in a very short period of time.

The revenge tragedy “Titus” is Shakespeare’s most lampoonable work, but the key to spoofing it successfully is to stay firmly rooted in the text. Several other companies around town are currently taking liberties with Shakespearean models, but none comes close to the level of smart humor and biting parody that Buntport achieves. The Bug, for example, is presenting “Comedy of Errors,” but in acknowledgement of its difficult material, it ill-advisedly goes for broad, desperate stabs at humor that are accomplished only when its actors leap desperately out of character, or bulldoze the fourth wall. It comes across like children’s theater.

The mad geniuses at the Buntport, who adapted and directed the material as a collective, take a more sophisticated yet still-bawdy approach to “Titus,” with brilliant sight gags, silly songs and masterful prop work that has fun with the material while staying true to its lusty spirit. While the Bug’s cast doesn’t even seem to much like the material it is working with, the young Buntport players love theirs so fully they could eat it for lunch like a Chiron pie.

After I saw Buntport’s romp and stomp, I checked out Julie Taymor’s beautifully violent film starring Anthony Hopkins. The approaches could not be more different, but they have two things in common: They are both at times side-splittingly funny, and they both illuminate the text for the audience, the benchmark against which any Shakespearean production is judged.

Titus is a Roman general who has lost 22 sons in battle and upon his return offers the son of the imprisoned Goth queen Tamora as a ritual sacrifice. Titus defers the throne to Saturninus, who promptly weds the revenge-minded Tamora. Her sons rape Titus’ daughter Lavinia, and chop off her hands and tongue. They also murder Saturninus’ brother and frame two of Titus’ surviving sons. When offered his sons’ lives in exchange for a hand, Titus gladly lops his off, but in return is delivered only his sons’ heads. Thought delirious with madness, Titus fashions a tasty revenge: He kills Tamora’s sons Chiron and Demetrius and bakes them into meat pies that Tamora unknowingly eats with ketchup and mustard before meeting her own doom.

The collective has proudly chopped about 50 percent of the text, but still, how to keep the epic straight with a cast of five? The cast has fashioned an inspired cheat sheet. A large board shows the painted faces of all five actors in a row. Below each face are the names of the characters that actor portrays. Each name is accompanied by a pull-string lightbulb that Muni Kulasinghe flicks on and off at breakneck speed. So if you ever get confused, you can instantly see which character each actor is portraying. It’s a hoot to watch.

Buntport presents “Titus” in its otherwise empty warehouse space with only a Club Wagon van for a set. And when that van is a rockin’, someone comes a choppin’.

Colonna is P.S. McGoldstien, leader of the denim-based Van O’ Players minstrels. The van is painted on three sides to represent different settings, and the hole in the roof serves nicely as the pit where Lavinia’s lover meets his doom, complete with blood-smeared windows.

Another hollowed window serves as the opening for some puppet theater scenes that Taymor would love. Erik Edborg is a great puppeteer who plays the brothers Chiron and Demetrius as a ripped-out car radio and a gas can. When they get baked into singing meat pies, the gas spout (snout?) sticks out of the crust. Trust me: It’s funnier than it may sound.

The sight gags are nonstop: In the original, Tamora’s infidelity with Aaron is revealed when she delivers a black baby. Here her baby sports a tiny Chef Boy-ar-dee mustache that matches Aaron’s (Hannah Duggan). When Titus sacrifices his hand, it is smashed off in the van door. When a sword is drawn, it’s an oil dipstick.

And about that music. It’s ridiculous and bossa-nova saucy, like the play itself. It parodies the Carpenters (“Close to You”), the jazz standard “Beyond the Sea,” even Bon Jovi’s awful “Living on a Prayer.”

Just go see it. But if you don’t like it, and your heart grows full with the thirst for revenge, please forget that you heard about it from me.

-John Moore, May 15, 2002, Denver Post