The collection, which began with massive purchases by Catherine the Great in the 18th century, counts among its many treasures one of Rembrandt’s greatest works, which depicts Danaë welcoming Zeus, in the form of a shower of gold, to her bed. A reproduction now hangs on Buntport’s stage, where it is guarded by an introspective woman (Erin Rollman) of curious mind. At the Hermitage Museum (St. Petersburg, Russia), which houses the world’s largest collection of paintings, the guards are generally older women, who wear their own clothes and sit near the masterpieces. Occasionally, they interact with the public, providing historical background and general information.

Rollman’s character, Anna, has, in essence, made the painting her life’s meditation. As we learn, her contemplation goes far beyond the Greek myth depicted on the impressive eight by ten foot canvas of the original, and includes the details of Rembrandt’s life, the history of the models, and the journey of the painting itself. All this is set off by Anna’s insights and opinions on all the matters.

Rollman’s dramatic and comedic range, unlimited in all directions, serves as wonderful springboard for 82 minutes of hilarity, pathos, and opinionated hyperbole.

Imagine, for a moment, the multi-faceted directions your consciousness might take if you spent days, weeks, and years sitting with a master’s painting. At some point, it all becomes personal, as Anna’s stream-of-consciousness monologue increasingly reveals, culminating with life imitating art.

-Bob Bows, April, 10, 2016 ColoradoDrama.com

Based on Miriam Suzanne’s novel, Riding Side-Saddle‐written on 250 notecards (which are posted in Buntport’s lobby) designed to be read in any order‐the story revolves around a group of friends that share a common bathroom (along with the band, Teacup Gorilla, including Suzanne on bass, who reside in the bathtub). For their 40th home-grown world premiere production in the company’s 16 years, the Buntporters and a few guest artists have bravely gone where few have dared tread, the communal bathroom, to teach us about the proper application of beauty products, the Greeks, and the meaning of life.

To the novel, the ensemble has added their own dialogue and character development. Sam (Diana Dresser) and Herman (Erik Edborg) are in a relationship in which they literally conjoin. The “Narrator” (Brian Colonna) provides the background to the asynchronous storyline, which, in short order, begins to reveal the sophisticated layering that the ensemble has created in their script, improvisational updates, and hilarious details.

As always, character development is the hook to Buntport’s legendary zaniness: Hannah Duggan’s (Jenny) subtle waking dream-state imagery; Michael Morgan’s (Edward) laugh-out-loud funny OCD riffs; Erin Rollman’s (Jolene) gender-bending enigma; Colonna’s sublime psychological observations; and, finally, Dresser and Edborg’s phenomenal symbiotic dynamics and unique love story, based on the myth of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus.

Consider the usual time span involved in writing a play, reading it, making adjustments, repeating the process X times, and then producing it. Now think about what you would learn and hone if you accelerated the process and did this two to three times a year for 16 years with your adult productions, and even more often with your children’s productions. The answer is before us: Nuances that normally take years‐foreshadowing, time-bending, catharsis‐can be achieved in months, and voilà, an hour and forty minutes of non-stop action later, we are ready to talk for hours about our experience

-Bob Bows, March, 8, 2016 ColoradoDrama.com

Having introduced us to their own school of opera last spring, with Tommy Lee Jones goes to the opera alone, the inimitable ensemble follows up with an intriguing confection, Sweet Tooth, a Buntportesque operetta (music and lyrics by Adam Stone, additional lyrics by Chessy Normile, book by the ensemble), the company’s 32nd world premiere.

Opera buffo was never like this! The queen of theatrical voguing, Erin Rollman stars as George, a reclusive and eccentric patron of the arts. Much like the Archduke Ferdinand purportedly said of Mozart’s eternal celestial compositions — “… too many notes!” — George has it in for Charles Dickens’ plethora of words (written in serial form, to maximize commercial sales), because his touchstone novels keep her from being the chronicler of her own life, in the moment, every moment.

George has a point, that life can be art, much like Zen, we suggest, which practices mindfulness in many forms — just sitting (Zazen), flower arranging, gardening, baking, archery, tea, etc. — with the goal of expanding these meditative states to all waking and dreaming consciousness.

Only, in this case, George’s art has taken a fatalistic turn, like Jehovah’s Witnesses who watch their children die rather than allow emergency medical care. But George has her reasons, and a penchant for being the observer, not the subject, begging the question: If the highest erudition of life is metaphor, what place do our instincts (including those related to survival) have in such a cerebral universe?

Unlike the Jehovah’s Witnesses, George is imposing restrictions only on herself — and, to a degree, on her personal assistant, Hortense (Hannah Duggan) and her kept man, Mister (Brian Colonna), a painter, who humor their compelling, independently wealthy sponsor.

Duggan shines as the gatekeeper to George’s red-saturated world. Perhaps this is all a dream engendered by some indigestive experience of Mark Rothko — while listening to opera as he painted — though the clashing green patterns worn by Mister argue for an alternate interpretation involving Matisse. Who knows what free-associations pass through Buntport’s gray matter?

If there is a surrogate for middle-of-the-road bourgeois sensibilities in this alternate universe, it is Dr. Manette (a circumspect and then delightfully transformed Erik Edborg), a dentist contracted (by George!) to provide a visceral, yet third-person, experience of what to expect when dealing with a problematic sweet tooth.Colonna’s eclectic affectations as Mister are a send up from a newly discovered dimension lying somewhere between naughty British humor and the flamboyant excesses of the French court before its abused subjects made the guillotine famous.

While Hortense takes the hit for George, and George begins her passage to another world, we are left examining the nature of this self-described “dark musical comedy,” in this case a genre-bending brew of sophisticated intellectual jokes and commentary wrapped in a post-modern series of settings and arias that recall the psychological introspections of Brecht/Weil and Sondheim more than the tragic and comedic portraits of Verdi or Rossini.

Within such a world, one wonders, sometimes, where the cathartic experience takes place. This was one of those “sometimes.” As Aristotle noted, catharsis is de rigueur in tragedy, though we can only extrapolate what the great philosopher might have said about comedy (the manuscripts having been lost). We assume he would concur that “laughter is the best medicine.”

Where that leaves us with Sweet Tooth is digging deeper for a cathartic thread. If we wrap all of the musical’s multifaceted genre elements within a larger envelope of “theatre of ideas,” we find an intellectual catharsis somewhere in the sparsely populated aethers, among overlapping subsets of various Platonic forms. Shaw was the master of this, of course, but he was able translate philosophical idealism into characters with whom theatregoers could identify, and thus share in the transformative moments (his introductory essays to his plays provided an excellent means of defining topics from which he created character relationships in which topical discussions found natural expression).

Applying this Shavian approach to George, we land in Limbo — not an unfamiliar place for the human race. If you’ve seen The Three Penny Opera (an excellent rendition at Miners Alley Playhouse closed on October 21st), you may recall that Brecht inserted a “substitute ending” to send the audience home on a high note after deftly mocking and eviscerating the state of civilization. Isn’t this ambiguity in The Three Penny Opera‘s finale much like the coma in Sweet Tooth‘s coda? Perhaps, though Sweet Tooth‘s tenuously extended intellectual themes would likely reveal more harmonics by reading the script — of which, ironically, Dickens would approve — rather than hearing it pass quickly in dialogue a number of decibels below the soundtrack.

-Bob Bows, October 25, 2012, coloradodrama.com

Finding the humor in such behavior comes naturally to Russia’s impressive stable of scribes, but its basis is not always apparent to outsiders, as we so often see in angst-ridden, hand-wringing productions of Chekhov. But the creative font of theatrical talent that calls itself Buntport Theatre has no such difficulties in mining the comic and, at times, absurd from the Nikolai Gogol tale they have adapted into a barnyard allegory.The Russian temperament is as enigmatic as the country from which it arises, an unpredictable roller coaster of joy and melancholy, charity and self-interest, that somehow provides the temerity to see its hardy stock through the harshest winters with a ferocity that is willing ultimately to destroy its own resources to outlast the likes of Napoleon and Hitler.

Smack dab in the middle of the company’s flexible space sits approximately 500 square feet of mud held in check by a sturdy frame of two-by-eights – within which most of the action takes place, with the actors wearing rubber boots to navigate the slop – which along with clotheslines and picket fences that demarcate settings, serves as two abodes, surrounding yards, a courtroom, and the town square.

“Wallowing in the mire” and “airing dirty laundry” are two metaphors that come to literal fruition as the plot unfolds: two good friends start feuding for the slimmest of reasons and refuse to forgive each other, even as death approaches.

As always, the company’s characterizations are a hoot, beginning with the main adversaries: Erik Edborg as the well-mannered but easily offended, willowy Bob Boxinoxingworth and Brian Colonna as the ill-bred and blunt, torpid Bob Luggalollinstop. The intriguing question of how these fellows ever got to be friends in the first place is quickly marginalized as we watch Bob B and Bob L project their worst fears on each other.

The Bobs are enabled in their maledictions and reprehensible behavior by Wanda Wickerstickly, a delightfully eccentric and abrasive Erin Rollman, who encourages Bob L and infuriates Bob B. Rollman then turns state’s witness, reappearing as Peter Apropopanoosh, who along with Hannah Duggan’s equitable Alfred Fredfredfredful, the local judge and owner of the town’s largest house, attempt to leverage the law to ameliorate the situation.

Duggan’s alter ego, the delightful simpleton Tony Tumblestumpington, is the harmless, homeless flip side of the judge, who spreads her requests for evening shelter relatively equally between the Bobs. Evan Weissman, as Pig and as One-eyed Bob B stands inside and outside the story, mocking the sad state of affairs to which he is both a partner and an observer.

In the program, the company notes that Gogol’s unique blend of humor and fun resonates with their own work, which is certainly evident in the production. There is one other striking similarity to many of Buntport’s dramas or allegories: the lack of catharsis. In comedy, a series of good laughs is sufficient to provide a transformational catalyst, but The Squabble is not a comedy in structure or tone. It could be argued that this was Gogel’s intention – to let the unresolved issues fester without tragedy or redemption – and perhaps the Russian temperament finds succor in such a point-of-view, but this side of the Cyrillic alphabet, an emotional Rosetta stone is required.

-Bob Bows, May 22, 2009, ColoradoDrama.com