Reviews Archives - Page 4 of 23

In the foreground, a worker is inspecting a book that is hanging on a clothing line, left there to dry. Behind him, his coworker is sitting at the giant desk, working on books that are piled up there. Just beyond him, another worker is holding two roped that are attached to the clothing line to make it spin, in order to make the books dry faster.

Parker Chronicle- ‘The Book Handlers’ is quirky extrapolation

Perhaps it’s less common these days, but there was a time when pretentious, well-off folks would have their decorator fill their built-in bookshelves with rows of colorful, shiny new books, or elegant leather-bound sets in assorted sizes — or a mix. But when one would visit that library, the books had obviously not been read, dog-eared, underlined and loved — they were pristine. And suppose those owners wanted visitors to view them as well-read and scholarly?

Irish author Brian O’Nolan elaborated on that idea for an essay he wrote for The Irish Times, under the name Myles na gCopaleen.

“And so, we wrote a play,” say the members of Buntport Theater, who discovered the essay: Brian Colonna, Hannah Duggan, Erik Edborg and Erin Rollman, who perform as well — supported by multi-tasking SamAnTha Schmitz, who runs sound, lights and other tech processes, plus the box office.

This clever, articulate, energetic crew originally connected at Colorado College and formed a theater company when they graduated — which has remained together since and grown stronger as its members created careers. (A few originals have dropped out.) They write, direct and stage all their own plays on highly creative sets — usually based on someone’s essay, story, play, legend or book from the past. And once in a while, someone has just had a “what if?” idea, I’m guessing.

Per Buntport Theater Company’s program notes on O’Nolan: “He imagined a service in which wealthy people could have the books in their extensive libraries `suitably mauled’ in order to look read.” That seed of an idea was enough. The group went to work, writing individually and piecing it together — and created another of its truly hilarious plays: “The Book Handlers.” It runs through March 17 and is clearly worth the time and effort to score tickets if you can!

Buntport has also performed history-based outreach programs for kids, including those at Lone Tree Arts Center in the south area, as well as regularly scheduled events at the Denver theater for adults and children. But the three or four original plays they produce each year require a visit to Denver’s Art District, where they operate in a warehouse space at 717 Lipan St., two blocks west of Santa Fe Drive.

The Book Handlers’ jumbled workshop fills the stage one sees upon taking a seat in the theater. Desks, of course, ladders to higher levels, swinging baskets and buckets for book-transfer, an old bathtub for “water damage,” specific, annotated, corporate-style processes written in a fat volume, dictating words and actions for annotations, wine and coffee spills and dog-earing corners of pages, etc.

Duggan, as Connie Diane, cheerfully sings “Elmer’s Tune” each day when she arrives through the entryway, while Erik Edborg (John), who’s in charge, manages to be silly and officious at the same time, imaging himself in a Teddy Roosevelt role occasionally, while scholarly Jard (Brian Colonna) knows a lot of stuff from his reading — but not here, of course! Erin Rollman is in top form as fussy Linda, who has lots of issues and a special way with words as she waters plants, and sputters through her workday. Amazing energy.

The routine changes, depending on who’s located where, but rope-borne baskets and buckets swing through the air delivering volumes for special coffee stains, pounding, scraping and dunking. They are sent along a sort of belt-drawn assembly line at times, on a slide at others, and stacked awaiting their next treatment, until “suitably mauled,” then shipped out again to make space for more. And all too soon, the 90-minute piece is over — I could have happily watched longer.

Sonya Ellingboe March 12th, 2018 Parker Chronicle

Go Play Denver- Buntport: The Book Handlers

Like that slow, satisfying burn of your favorite spicy foods, “The Book Handlers” at Buntport lingers with you long after you’ve left the theater and gets even better the more your mind dives into the juicy themes of the play. Seeming to draw inspiration from “The Twilight Zone,” absurdist playwrights like Eugène Ionesco (The Bald Soprano) and existential thinkers like Kafka, this show is a multi-layered piece about everything and nothing. The play centers on 4 characters who distress books in order to make it look like their wealthy owners have actually read them. They clock in each morning, exchanging the same greetings; toil at their tasks; make chit chat at the office; a bell rings to mark the end of the day and they exchange trite goodbyes. Though their work is absurd, the routine of the workplace is easily to recognize and pulls the audience into considering the meaning of life, the purpose of work, the power of words and whether Connie Diane and Jard are really acceptable first names (this is a Buntport show after all!). Masters at blending deep themes with quirky humor, the Buntport troupe, who write all their own shows, have done it again. A triumph! Catch “The Book Handlers” now through 3/17.

March 5th 2018, Go Play Denver

A woman is sitting in her backyard in an old folding chair. Behind her in the basement windows of the house, you can see a man in the window on the right and his best friend in the window on the left and they are in the middle of recording a pod cast.

Denver Post- Buntport’s “Edgar Allan Poe is Dead and So Is My Cat”

There’s high-brow, middle-brow and low. And then there’s the often arched-brow shenanigans of Buntport.

In its latest, “Edgar Allan Poe Is Dead and So Is My Cat,” the wiseacre (emphasis on “wise”) company of five mines a testy brother-sister relationship for laughs more than literary insights. That’s intentional, though, at their finest, they deliver both. But if you’re looking for a larky amusement, seek no further.

Things open on a funeral for a feline friend in Baltimore. In front of a brick facade, on a downward sloping lawn is a tiny rectangular hole, a mound of dirt nearby.

A man stands clad in a brown turtleneck, handsome dress shoes and colorful, rather tight boxer briefs. The pattern on them is the Baltimore Ravens logo. That port city is where the poet (and, for that matter, the cat) of the title met their ends. The oddly clad man’s discarded suit rests on a pile of leaves. He purchased his suit — or as he intones with “get it? get it?” glee throughout the play, “another man’s suit” — at a thrift store.

The show’s program IDs this fellow, played with over-enunciating pleasure by Brian Colonna, as “That One Guy.” You don’t have long to wonder why. He’s that guy who repeats facts and factoids, that guy whose obsessive interests and hardly original insights demand constant affirmation.

Hannah Duggan plays His Sister, the bereaved. She’s not happy that her brother keeps trying to turn the burial into a rite. He even invited His Best Friend (Erik Edborg) to the under-attended non-ceremony.

That One Guy’s penchant for the pedantic isn’t the only thing exasperating his sister. He’s 40, and lives in her basement where he hosts a “Poedcast” on all things Edgar Allan Poe.

In addition to That Guy’s broadsides about Baltimore’s hardly native but very much adopted son, we learn facts about Tolstoy and a tidbit about a toymaker who presented Louis XIV with a particularly inventive mechanical toy.

The set is modest and effective. From the start, the latticed garden-level windows draw interest. The costumes — from the boxer briefs so tight they fit like a codpiece to the convincingly alive Suit to His Sister’s grey hoodie to the assorted Poe-related T-shirts — are humorous in their own right.

Buntport has never feared traversing the space between silly and absurd. For instance, the sister’s brick home has no stairs, a head-scratcher that makes for some fine slapstick exits.

Then there’s the matter of the suit. Redolent of Washington Irving’s Headless Horseman — but so much kinder, gentler, erudite — the suit is voiced by Erin Rollman.

There are moments when “Edgar Allan Poe” resembles an “SNL” — or more brainy Monty Python — sketch, but Buntport is always able to sustain its idea-buttressed lunacy. The troupe — with ace SamAnTha Schmitz behind-the-scenes — consistently works through its heady humor with hearty compassion. In fact, it aimed to deliver a decidedly not-Poe-like romp because there’s more than enough darkness out there.

The writing is often swift, the actor’s delivery even swifter. As the beleaguered Best Friend, Erik Ekborg captures the weird competitive need embedded in the notion of “best friend.” Like That Guy, he tries too avidly.

Early in the 90-minute show, the Suit remarks on its own presence: “it was always going to be awkward … but I hope it was a little magical, I mean at least when I first got up. Or if not magical, I’d settle for surprising.” It was surprising — and magical.

3 stars

–Lisa Kennedy November 2, 2017, Denver Post

A photo of Edgar Allan Poe in a t-shit with grumpy cat that say NOPE. The title above says "Edgar Allan Poe Is Dead and So Is My Cat"

North Denver Tribune- Buntport Delivers Creative Comedy with a bit of Meaning in “Edgar Allan Poe is Dead, and So Is My Cat”

LINCOLN PARK: Buntport Theater has been presenting brilliantly clever original productions for over 16 years, with their earlier works focused more on comedy, and more recent work somewhat darker and more serious, but still containing a comic thread. Their latest production, Edgar Allan Poe Is Dead, and So Is My Cat, returns to their funny roots, but still manages to make the audience think about the nature of life, and especially what it takes to make life meaningful.

Edgar Allan Poe Is Dead, and So Is My Cat starts with the burial of a cat (though there is some question of whether it is a funeral, or even an event, and whether there will be snacks available). We met That One Guy (that is the way the character is identified in the program), who is obsessed with Edgar Allan Poe. He emulates Poe, does a podcast on everything Poe (which he calls a “Poedcast”), and emulates Poe in every way possible, including eating at Boston Market, because Boston is where Poe was born. He buys a suit at thrift store, so he can wear “another man’s suit,” just as Poe apparently did a few days before he died. This is all incredibly annoying to his sister, whose cat has just died. When (spoiler alert) the discarded suit comes to life, things get really interesting.

As is always the case, the five members of Buntport jointly wrote, directed, designed, and deliver the show. It is full of many funny little bits that constantly pop up, but all are part of story that is engaging, with twists and turns that are funny at a deeper level as well as surprisingly thoughtful and interesting. The staging is fairly simple and direct, with much of the action in the yard of a house that curiously has no doors. The show also includes effective use of awkward silences that add a strange sort of tension to the humor.

The cast (the onstage members of Buntport) brings to life fascinating yet absurd characters. Brian Colonna is That One Guy, over the top in his obsession with Poe, unable to conceive how those around him may not hold the poet with the same reverence he does. Hannah Duggan is His Sister, almost constantly annoyed with him, in a very natural, sisterly way. Duggan also opens up nicely as the show progresses, but never loses that caustic “sisterness.” Erik Edborg is the congenial His Best Friend, jealous when Colonna’s attention goes elsewhere. Erin Rollman is paradoxically the most reasonable of the characters as Burt, the suit, expressive and articulate.

The set, lighting, and costumes, designed by the 4 cast members listed above and SamAnTha Schmitz, are integrated into the production well. The set, a simple brick wall, enables some extra silliness, having no normal doors, but with functioning windows. The costumes add some nice bits of humor, and the lighting is well controlled and illuminates well.

Buntport always delivers comedy with meaning, and Edgar Allan Poe Is Dead, and So Is My Cat is no exception. This show does focus more on the comedy (by design), but they can’t help themselves; there is also some important, and dare I say profound stuff here about relationships, about art and its creation, and about the importance of making life notable. By inserting the absurd into an otherwise normal world, it makes the normal absurd, allowing the characters to become uncommon. But mostly, it is just really funny.

If You Go…

Edgar Allan Poe Is Dead, and So Is My Cat runs through November 18 at Buntport Theater, 717 Lipan. Performances are Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at 8:00 pm and Sundays at 3:00 pm, with an extra “pay-what-you-can” performance on Monday, November 6. Tickets are only $18 in advance, $20 at the door, with a $3 discount for students and seniors. For information and reservations call 720-946-1388 or visit www.buntport.com. Buntport continues their popular comic Great Debate series on the third Tuesday of each month (with BuntportTED Talks occasional replacing it), along with the wonderful ongoing all-ages pirate/myth series Siren Song, on the second Saturday of each month. Buntport’s next original show (their 46^th) will open in early 2018, and they will be bringing back My Quest to Gallantly Recapture the Past in the spring.

Craig Williamson, November 2, 2017, North Denver Tribune

A woman is sitting on a folding chair in her yard. Next to her is a men’s suit that looks like it is moving on its own. There is no body in the suit, but it is sitting cross-legged next to her on the ground. In the background, in the basement window of the house we can see a man looking horrified.

Westword- Buntport’s Edgar Allan Poe Is Dead and So Is My Cat Is a Purrfectly Silly Evening

Hannah Duggan, in an enveloping gray hoodie, and Brian Colonna, wearing very tight-fitting underpants, are about to bury a cat — her cat — while bickering bitterly. She’s loud and angry, he affects learned speech and a haughty demeanor. The cause of their argument: He bought a secondhand suit for the funeral; she says it’s not a funeral, they’re just burying her cat. Besides, the suit, which he’s already taken off and discarded on a pile of autumn leaves, looked stupid. According to the program for Edgar Allan Poe Is Dead and So Is My Cat, Colonna is playing “That One Guy” and Duggan “His Sister.” The other characters listed are Erik Edborg as “His Best Friend” and Erin Rollman as “Burt.”

Most of the people in the crowded, cheerful opening-night audience doubtless knew that the members of Buntport Theater have been presenting their astonishing work for over sixteen years, and that all of the productions are created by these four actors and a fifth, non-acting company member, SamAntha Schmitz. The scripts are original, powered by the artists’ obsessions, idiosyncrasies and talents, as well as whatever nugget of peculiar information has lodged recently in someone’s mind.

During the first few minutes of Edgar Allan Poe, with Duggan yelling and Colonna poncing around, though, I couldn’t help wondering if maybe this time the group, normally so reliably brilliant, had come a cropper with this show. Maybe it was going to be just plain silly. And as it turned out, that’s the goal. As the program explains, the actors “just want to laugh right now. We want something that occupies us for ninety minutes in a silly fantasy. We hope you want that, too.” Of course we do. We need a laugh as our president and his puppet Congress threaten to destroy everything we care about, hammer blow by hammer blow, from education to medicine, art to justice, democracy to the very world we live in.

But Edgar Allan Poe isn’t just silly; it’s Buntport-style silly. Which means silly in the inspired, nonsensical vein of Edward Lear, creator of “The Yonghy Bonghy Bo” and “The Dong With the Luminous Nose.” Is it disgusting that butterflies taste with their feet? His Best Friend wants to know. Whenever food is mentioned, That One Guy springs to the defense of Boston Market chicken, so unjustly and universally defamed. And later, there’s a discussion of margarine, that nasty industrial stuff that mid-twentieth-century women were persuaded to buy as more nutritious than butter. Under pressure from the dairy industry, manufacturers weren’t allowed to color their product, so little packages of yellow dye came with the unappetizing white blocks. As I listened, I remember thinking that the margarine riff served as a metaphor, encapsulating something important. But by the time I left the theater, I was so dizzy with laughter I’d forgotten what.

Despite the cast’s best intentions, there are moments that do suggest a deeper meaning beneath the arguments spiraling around in circles like peel stripped from an apple. Buntporters are always thinking about art — what it is, how it’s made. In Edgar Allan Poe, someone delivering a soliloquy stops to remark on the uses of soliloquy. “We are discussing metamorphosis,” another character says grandly, while heaving away a garbage bag. The reason That One Guy bought a secondhand suit was that Poe, to whom he devotes a worshipful podcast, wore another man’s suit to a funeral — but since he’s purchased the suit, it’s no longer another man’s, His Sister argues. Of course, there are references to Poe’s “The Raven” and his essay “The Philosophy of Composition.”

Every element — sound, visuals, costumes, lights, the use of space — is brought together in service to the company’s vision (whatever the hell that is). The set is a leaf-strewn garden fronting a conventional-looking house that the performers have to scramble in and out of since it has no doors. Each actor has a distinctive presence, and they balance each other perfectly: Edborg’s dopey friend, Colonna, trying for the gravitas of a genuine literary critic; Duggan’s hotly passionate disaffection. As for Erin Rollman — you’ll have to see what she does for yourself.

This show is a nod to the spooky season, complete with candles, fog machines and sinister music, as well as an homage to Poe, a release from political anxiety and an assertion of the liberating power of unadulterated silliness. And that’s more than enough.

-Juliet Wittman, October 31st, 2017 Westword

North Denver Tribune- Buntport Gets Delightfully Stranger With “Crud”

LINCOLN PARK — Buntport Theater is unconventional. And with their new production, Crud, a story created using all the things found in an abandoned storage locker, they have moved even further toward the unorthodox. This is no mere attempt to reconstruct the past of this odd collection of stuff, it is something new, literally creating characters and the story from crud. It is a story of memory, of things, and of identity.

The play, created by the Buntport five, SamAnTha Schmitz, Erin Rollman, Erik Edborg, Hannah Duggan, and Brian Colonna, is surreal. Things seem to be real, with jelly toast, antlers, dolls (some in pieces), and shoes, just to name a tiny percentage of the featured crud. And there is a live video feed, constantly providing surveillance, adding an artificial layer of apparent reality. But by focusing on the stuff, the things, the possessions, and always worrying about if someone might be taking them, three of the characters ironically become completely blind to their possessions disappearing. It makes no sense as I describe it, but it seemed to make sense as I watched it on stage. I think it did, anyway.

Two characters are (sort-of) visible onstage as the house opens and the audience trickles in. Two more appear later. These characters are not separate from their stuff; they are physically and emotionally made of crud. But they are also human, and we can relate to them, perhaps more so because they are so tied up in stuff, in physical possessions, just as we all are.

The actors create these surreal yet real characters naturally. Brian Colonna is Broken Baby Doll Detective, with another broken baby doll detective on his shoulder, constantly clarifying which of those descriptions qualify which words. Militantly stuck in his need for “surveillancing,” he refuses to actually look at what is really happening around him. Erin Rollman is at her bizarre best as Dear Deer, climbing about the piles of crud, wonderfully thrilled by the simple pleasure of jelly toast. Hannah Duggan is comfortable as Barely Bear, in a costume that is amazing. The three are constantly interacting, mostly bickering and playing games, just as we would expect from those who have little real substance to their lives, but instead are focused on stuff. As the character called “I have no name,” Erik Edborg is the antithesis of the others … sort of. He is invisible to them, most of the time, and frightening to them when he appears. He is the only character that remembers things, which creates a very strange dynamic. He tells them that they will forget him, but that does not keep them from forgetting him a few minutes later. At times, he seems cruel, but he is not – he is compassionate, but can’t do anything for the others, because they only focus on crud.

The design elements cannot be considered separately from the play itself. Because Buntport fully integrates the creation of their scenery and costumes with the playmaking process, they are a crucial part of the storytelling. Even in this case, when all the stuff, the building blocks of the set and costumes, came from the storage locker, the way they put everything together onstage and in the costumes is phenomenal. Barely Bear’s costume, in particular, is amazing, not appearing human, nor really bear-like, but precisely what this character should be. “I have no name” is nearly invisible at the start, with the surveillance projected on him and his background. The live video is used appropriately, with select moments when the characters take full advantage of the capabilities it provides.

So maybe with Crud, Buntport is just being weird and funny. Very weird, and very funny. But I kept seeing glimpses of meaning as I watched, and the overarching commentary on how crud can dominate our lives and who we are is too important to ignore. In classic Buntport style, Crud is funny, absurd, and laced with meaning, but not too much meaning. And if you go see this, you will never be able to eat (or pronounce) raspberry jam quite in the same way again.

If You Go…

Crud runs through June 10 at Buntport Theater, 717 Lipan. Performances are Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at 8:00 pm and Sundays at 3:00 pm, with an extra “pay-what-you-can” performance on Monday, June 5. Tickets are only $18 in advance, $20 at the door, with a $3 discount for students and seniors. For information and reservations call 720-946-1388 or visit www.buntport.com. Crud marks the end of Buntport’s 16^th season, but their popular comic Great Debateseries continues through the summer on the third Tuesday of each month, along with The Narrators, a live storytelling show, on the third Wednesdays of each month. Look for an announcement of their 17^th season this summer, which will hopefully also include the ongoing all-ages pirate/myth series Siren Song, on the second Saturday of each month.

Craig Williamson, June 1, 2017, North Denver Tribune

Denver Post- “The Crud” hoards a few too many ideas

Amid the mess that is “The Crud” shine some gems of insight. Which is apt, since Buntport Theater’s latest, ambitious and absurdist performance piece takes on the stuff that humans keep — or, rather, shunt off to a storage unit we may or may not visit.

Last October, Buntport announced it was going to purchase a storage unit at an auction. “Yeah, like ‘Storage Wars,’ ” stated a later press release.

In that release, the company went on to lay out the artistic/philosophical parameters for its endeavor. “(W)e said that whatever we found in the locker would inspire our next play. We all knew that we didn’t intend to write a play about the original owner of the contents, but that this collection ― curated by a stranger ― would be a jumping-off point.”

I share some of the reasoning behind the entertaining albeit uneven show because it speaks to the personality of this always imaginative outfit. Because the Buntport troupe — Erik Edborg, Hannah Duggan, Erin Rollman, Brian Colonna and SamAnTha Schmitz (offstage) — most often operates in the “meta” sphere. Cogitate about, chuckle at and wrestle with human complexity is what the gang of five co-creators does with consistent and edgy aplomb.

And so “The Crud” finds three fanciful denizens of a pile of stuff contemplating … well, that’s the tricky part. Let’s say boredom, attachment, the waxing and waning value of “junk” for their owners.

Interceding from time to time is a white-clad fellow with a white plume atop his head. Portrayed by Edborg, the character “I Have No Name” is there to help Bearly Bear, Dear Dear and Broken Baby Doll Detective (and, more important, the audience) formulate questions about memory and forgetting, hoarding and letting go.

Off to one side of the stage is a pile of stuff that includes furniture, an old stereo receiver, clothes, a shoe here and there. It’s a “bunch of who-needs-it against a background of the same,” says I Have No Name at one point. making the comparison of the pile’s contents to those of our fading memory.

Behind a gauzy scrim on the other side of the stage is a white wall. Because the scrim acts as a screen for “surveillance” projections, the show’s visual field can be layered, disorienting or both.

The costumes, too, are bizarro. A pony head with antlers sits atop Dear Deer’s head. A wee toy man with no arms rests on Broken Baby Doll Detective’s shoulder. When introducing a hunch, the ultra-specific private eye (Colonna) presses “play’ on an old-style tape recorder. Out comes a sobering tune to loopy noirish effect. As for the kindly if dim Bearly Bear, Hannah Duggan makes a heckuva entrance (not to be spoiled here). Her pelt is made up of (mostly) stuffed animals sewn together.

Forget her moniker: Dear Deer (Rollman) isn’t very gentle. Aggravated by boredom is more like it. She does not respond favorably to Barely Bear’s sweet invitation to “go lick some batteries.” The only cure to her ennui: raspberry jelly, of which there’s a scant supply.

If “The Crud” sounds rather mad, it is.

The show has wit. When Bearly Bear gets hit with a wave of nausea, the audience guffawed. Some ender lines of dialog stick. For instance, “Let’s all hate each other is not as fun as it sounds.” And the repeated gesture of the characters greeting anxiety with “arms-open” is touching for its topsy-turvy vulnerability. As always, each cast member injects his or her performance with idiosyncratic verve.

What “The Crud” doesn’t have — and I want to say “yet,” because I can see how this show could become special in a future iteration — are some moments of empty space and quiet. Like the mix of treasures and rubbish Buntport purchased, the show’s ideas are strewn throughout the 75-minute piece.

The closest the “The Crud” comes to much-needed pauses are the interventions of Edborg’s character and the brief, repeated refrain “time passes.” It does, quite swiftly.

While a great deal of the clutter and breakneck pacing is intentional, the show would benefit from some deep breathes. Throw open that roll-up storage unit door! Let some air in!

Lisa Kennedy, May 24, 2017 Denver Post

Peaking up from behind a bunch of clutter is the top of someone's head. They are glaring at something in the distance and have a large headpiece that includes a plastic horse head with antlers.

Westword- Enter the Mysterious, Magical World of The Crud at Buntport

Enter the Mysterious, work is always newly minted, nonlinear, rich in metaphor and submerged — perhaps inarticulable — meaning. Still, I can usually ferret out some kind of narrative, even if it’s highly fanciful. But I could find no real through-line or progression in Buntport’s latest original production, The Crud, which is based on objects found in a storage locker the company bought last year. That’s logical, I suppose, since the play’s oft-repeated catchphrase is “Time passes,” after which someone in the four-member cast will inevitably observe that nothing changes.

Once a hippie friend told me of an experience he’d had while stoned. (As I’m sure you know, profound breakthroughs in understanding often occur at these times.) Michael was eating mashed potatoes, and he suddenly realized that when the potatoes were on the fork in front of him, they represented the future. As soon as they were in his mouth, they became the present. And as they slid down his throat, they moved inexorably into the past. The Crud is about time, too, and like Michael’s story, it shimmers with absurd but oddly bewitching meaning. (This same Michael, by the way, once found himself intolerably thirsty while wandering in Berkeley’s People’s Park. But somehow he’d forgotten the mechanism for drinking. How did you get liquid into yourself? He tried pressing his body up against a tree in the hope that its sap would flow into him. When that didn’t work, he sat down next to a young mother seated on a bench, picked up her hand, and tried to match the tracery of veins in his wrist to the tracery in hers. He actually tried this on a few people. This being Berkeley in the ’60s, all of them surrendered their arms quietly, with no sign of surprise or resistance.)

Despite the nonexistent plot, there’s nothing sloppy or tentative about this production. In fact, it has moments that hint at tremendous insight — insight you never quite get but know is hovering in the air between you and the playing space. The acting is brilliant; Brian Colonna, Erin Rollman, Hannah Duggan and Erik Edborg (the offstage co-creator is SamAnTha Schmitz) work together with the kind of rhythm and mutual understanding that only comes from long and trusting collaboration.

The crud itself is a huge pile of cast-off objects, toys and appliances belonging to three very peculiar people. First comes Barely Bear (Duggan), who’s covered in dolls and stuffed toys, including the Cookie Monster. Dear Deer (Rollman) wears a horned horse’s head and a skirt made of rustling newspaper and magazine pages that she occasionally consults. (This touch really speaks to those of us whose shelves are filled with old journals we can’t throw away because they just might contain some crucial piece of information.) Dear Deer has a constant craving for raspberry jelly; I won’t describe the revolting way she acquires it. Then there’s the Broken Baby Doll Detective (Colonna), who behaves like a Raymond Chandler character but carries an armless doll version of himself on his shoulder — the other, literal Broken Baby Doll Detective. The objects in the pile keep disappearing, and it turns out they’re being squirreled away by I Have No Name (Edborg) to a misty place of forgotten memories behind a scrim. No Name figures there’s no harm done because the other three forget these treasures the minute they’ve vanished. All it takes is the cry “Time passes,” and for them the world begins anew.

All confusion aside, it’s hugely entertaining to watch these amazing characters bicker, laugh, fight and give up, handle objects and explore their individual worlds. The visuals are stunning. The scrim separating present from past, and through which you see everyone’s actions slightly distorted, creates a misty, shape-changing, fairytale world reminiscent of the one Alice encountered once she’d climbed through the dissolving mirror in Through the Looking Glass. Those weird costumes are miraculously evocative. Dear Deer, with her thick-soled black boots and flowing black hair, sometimes looks like a warrior woman; at other times, she’s a peculiar little girl — cocky and full of herself, but lost.

This is Waiting for Godot as written by Edward Lear: a world of color, strangeness, mystery and nonsense that you most definitely want to enter.

Juliet Wittman, May 23, 2017 Westword

Denver Post- It’s time to get your Greek on at Boulder and Denver theaters

Oh ye citizens of area metropoles, it is time to get your Greek on. And two creatively robust theater companies are here to help.

The Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company and Denver’s Buntport have torn down the fourth wall to engage audiences with a tale of humans and gods. One utilizes the poetics of disaster and melancholy. The other plies mirth and throws one hell of an unreal supper party. Each boasts the fine services of a local acting luminary.

That Boulder’s “An Iliad” has timeless lessons is not exactly edifying news. Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare’s terse adaptation of Homer’s epic wrestles with the human tendency toward endless — and, in the case of the Greek-Trojan conflict — vain warfare.

Yet there’s great news to be had in the production, directed by Stephen Weitz. Chris Kendall’s performance as The Poet in this one-man show is awe-provoking.

The Poet arrives to the set carrying a rucksack of clinking bottles, tequila and whiskey. Sometimes he can be fuzzy on the names of the warriors — and the wars. Then again, his account isn’t limited to the bloody goings-on in Troy. At one point, a misremembered battle leads him to a foggy litany of wars. “The Punic War … The Fall of Rome …The War of the Roses … The Pequot War … The Mormon War … The Six Day War … The Troubles … Vietnam … Syria” all get a shout-out. (Ron Mueller’s set hints at the ruins of recently bombed-out towns as well as ancient dusty plains.) It is a feat and a burden to recount so much blood-letting, so much loss, so much hubris. Of course, he self-medicates.

The Poet’s recitation delivers the big names. There’s Achilles and Hector, Agamemnon and Paris. But he also sings of “the fighters of Coronea,” who man the ships in the bay outside Troy. “An Iliad” puts contemporary audiences in uncomfortable company. Such was the playwrights’ purpose in 2012, when the play premiered at the New York Theatre Workshop. (It won an Obie.)

When his memory slips, it bolsters the lessons of the play. “The point is,” The Poet continues, “on all these ships were boys from every small town in Ohio, from farmlands, from fishing villages.”

With graying hair and grizzled beard and eyes searingly focused on distant but riling memories, Kendall grabs hold of The Poet’s epic lament and never lets go. This is a performance of pause and vigor, hush and heat, not be missed but to be thrilled and chastened by.

*****

A different myth is getting a witty once-over in Buntport’s original one-act play, “The Zeus Problem.” What a dandy, a strutter, a bully Zeus is. What relish Jim Hunt takes in embodying that trespassing, traipsing, charismatic god.

A table — a really long one — is set for an odd, bickering dinner party. On one end sits Henry David Thoreau (Brian Colonna), hunched over a manuscript. He’s adapting “Prometheus Bound.” On the other end, Prometheus (Erik Edborg), Eagle (Hannah Duggan) and Io (Erin Rollman) huddle together. Zeus, being Zeus, takes any position he pleases.

How did this collection of guests come to be? Well, getting at that is the pleasing task of this comedy. Zeus has some very different ideas about Prometheus’ never-ending end. You may recall that the Titan’s punishment for giving humans fire found him chained to a rock, an eagle feasting on his liver. Duggan’s cranky Eagle would peck hard at the notion of “feasting.” Also up for debate: How did Io, the mortal daughter of Inachus, come to be a cow? Was it Zeus hiding her from his wife, Hera, or Hera herself? Or was there some other, darker cause?

The delightfully weird animal costumes for Io and the Eagle are themselves worth a night out. And the two characters chime in with critiques — smart and silly — on the sexual politics of the whole enterprise, often rendering “The Zeus Problem” utterly playful and pointed.

Did I mention the table is long? It’s long enough to become a runaway when Zeus feels the urge to vamp, to vogue, to shake his groove thang and pantomime the hurling of lightning bolts.

“An Iliad” and “The Zeus Problem” encourage us to slip into joy and sorrow, hilarity and ache. They represent a fine kind of escapism. One dons the mask of tragedy, the other comedy. And when those masks slide away, it is ourselves that we see.

Lisa Kennedy, February 16, 2017 Denver Post

In very stark lighting a woman dressed as a cow side-eyes the camera. In the background a man is standing, but is lit from the other side so only an outline of his head and shoulders is visible.

Westword- Jim Hunt is a Powerhouse in Buntport’s ‘The Zeus Problem’

If you’re a theater fan, you’ve seen Jim Hunt on various stages around town, usually playing kindly, warm-spirited, avuncular fellows. But in casting him as Zeus in The Zeus Problem, Buntport Theater Company has slipped the leash and given him immense power — and you know how power corrupts. Wearing a plum-colored jacket, white socks and sweatpants (to facilitate his “rise,” he explains more than once, gesturing toward his testicles), Hunt is a cruel, sneering, narcissistic tyrant, a god who can call down thunderbolts and — if he so chooses — obliterate humanity. For a while he rants at the audience, a long curtain drawn closed behind him. When the curtain slides back, we see we’re at a sort of dinner party. At one end of a long table sits a dapper Henry David Thoreau, earnestly scribbling away at a translation of Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound. At the other end is Prometheus, chained to his rock. Zeus has condemned him to a life of torment for stealing fire from the gods and giving it to humankind; a giant eagle continually tears out and eats his continually regenerating liver. That eagle is at the table, too, and so is Io, the beautiful maiden that Zeus transformed into a cow to prevent his wife, Hera, from sensing his lust for her.

Zeus has always disliked the way that he’s portrayed in Aeschylus’s play, particularly since he comes off far better in the playwright’s other works, so he’s here to harass Thoreau into doing him justice in the translation. He invents a game and orders everyone to play, collapses intermittently into sleep, argues, berates and threatens. As for the others, they have their own concerns — human, linguistic, metaphysical and plain absurd. The eagle, for instance, played by a hilariously peevish Hannah Duggan, hates liver and, if she has to eat it, thinks it should at least come with onions. Erik Edborg’s sad and complex Prometheus is primarily preoccupied with his own suffering, but he still has enough energy to face off against Zeus.
First of all, he argues, the fire he stole carries multiple meanings, spiritual as well as practical. (He doesn’t mention, though he could have, Harvard anthropologist Richard Wrangham’s theory that discovering how to control fire and cook actually made us human in the first place — and there is some discussion in the play about the effect of feeding cats cooked or raw meat.) Prometheus also points out that it was he who first introduced writing, agriculture, architecture, medicine and other civilizing arts. As for the poor, wronged Io, plaintively played by Erin Rollman, she ruminates a great deal about her digestive process, which disgusts her while also leaving her constantly hungry.

Except for a few moments of Zeusian lunacy — Hunt’s strangely Michael Jacksonish, self-celebrating dances and his occasional thunder-accompanied threat — there’s not much action; the play is pretty much all talk. But you won’t be bored for a moment, because it’s fascinating talk. The Buntport artists, who collaborated on the script with Hunt, have always been interested in language, myth and the way stories morph over time. Myths are ever-changing, and the authorship of Prometheus Bound is now disputed, too. Thoreau, played with dignity and conviction by Brian Colonna, is determined that his translation will convey as much as possible the meaning of the original, which results in his thinking a lot about rhythm and vocabulary. Watching, I was reminded of Lucas Hnath’s The Christians, now playing at the Denver Center, where an evangelical church essentially falls apart when members start arguing about the existence of hell. It’s a potent reminder of the problem of taking any key text literally, particularly the Bible, patched together from so many ancient sources. Or the United States Constitution, which strict constructionists insist requires judges to deal only with the written text and not to draw inferences from it. Language is a slippery beast, and meaning changes with changing times.

It seems that Buntport had the Trump presidency very much in mind when creating The Zeus Problem, a story about what happens when all power is invested in a single figure, particularly one as mercurial and unaccountable as Zeus. Prometheus’s mention of torture sets contemporary teeth on edge, and Zeus’s clownish and impermeable ego is irresistibly reminiscent of the current president’s. Except that Jim Hunt is a whole lot funnier.

Juliet Wittman, February 14, 2017, Westword