“Moby Dick Unread” begins with a mad actor dropping a tiny wind-up whale into an aquarium.

Hit the dramatic music, and soon Erik Edborg is splashing madly trying to retrieve the toy, finally taking a desperate cue from Buster Keaton and attempting a candy- apple-style head-bob. He fails. He silently curses the gods. Blackout.

This prologue could be subtitled, “Moby Dick in Miniature.”

They’re lying, of course, with that “Unread” title. The smarty-pants from the Buntport Theater have not only pored over Herman Melville’s 135-chapter classic, they’ve likely burned a few bags of popcorn mocking Gregory Peck and Patrick Stewart taking turns as the apoplectic Ahab on celluloid.

“Moby Dick Unread” is Buntport’s 21st original undertaking, though if this great young company has an m.o., it’s just this kind of quirky literary re-interpretation (having already toyed with “Cinderella,” “The Odyssey,” “Hamlet,” “Titus Andronicus” and “Don Quixote,” not to mention five years of “Magnets on the Fridge” book-club episodes).

These are theatrical Cliff’sNotes for short-attention spans – respectful of the original but infinitely more fun.

Walking into Buntport is like walking into a new world every time. This group of six thirtyish pals always comes up with something so wonderful to behold, you feel like a kid again.

For “Moby Dick Unread,” it’s the 15 pails of water dangling from the rafters, which will become overturned during a brilliantly staged storm. It’s the glorified canoe on wheels that doubles as the Pequod. It’s the use of Edborg’s stomach as a storyboard. It’s the chalkboard etching of a whale against a wall that’s just big enough to make the man standing in front of it appear to be Jonah inside that other famous fish’s belly.

It’s easy to see how staging Ahab’s epic, ongoing aquatic chase on dry land must have seemed irresistible to Buntport. The universality of our obsessive need to stare down our demons is evident to anyone who’s seen “Zodiac.” White whales: We all have one.

But at its core, Melville’s tale is a lonely and solitary pursuit. Buntport also captures its melancholy, as well as its musical, mystical and religious undertones. There’s a constant underscore of ocean sounds punctuated by sad strings and hearty whaler songs. Like the book, this staging is funny and weird, and ultimately quite sad.

Our four on-stage actors are Edborg, Erin Rollman, Hannah Duggan and Brian Colonna (with Evan Weissman pulling backstage ropes and Samantha Schmitz handling technical duties). In quick-change fashion they bring us Ishmael, Starbuck, Elijah, Queequeg, Pip and more.

But this ensemble, which writes and stages all its shows in collaboration, is also charmingly enamored with Melville’s odd meanderings and side stories, which is why they bill the show as “Moby Dick with the fat left on” – while still coming in at a lickety-split 80 minutes.

The actors have self-deprecating fun with their own lack of ethnicity (the crew of the Pequod was multinational, and our four actors are as white as Ahab’s whalebone leg). They each have great moments but this time it’s the versatile Edborg, and particularly Duggan as the revenge-driven Ahab, who most resonate.

The actors’ recurring mantra is, “We’re making do.” And do they, until things end with a thud. After that stunningly staged storm comes the climactic chase, in which Ahab gets caught in harpoon ropes and becomes forever lashed to the whale. But we don’t see it. We’re told straight out, “We couldn’t think how to show that to you.” So, finis.

I appreciated the honesty, but having been spoiled by that storm, I felt let down. It didn’t seem so much like they were “making do,” it seemed like perhaps they had just run out of time.

-John Moore, April 5, 2007 Denver Post

To answer the perennially perplexing question – “What to perform during the holidays?” – Denver’s perpetually innovative Buntport Theater has created “Winter in Graupel Bay,” a poignant and witty snapshot of the residents of a small town on the shortest day of the year.

The company’s evolving proficiency in collaborative theater – this is its 20th original production – expresses itself in a delightfully complex and interwoven storyline and a poetic script that conjures a neighborhood somewhere in the vicinity of Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” and Dylan Thomas’ “Under Milk Wood.”

A spare but multifaceted set offers us a cutaway of the residents’ living quarters and entry into their intimate behavior. The jazzy sound design that accompanies the scenic interludes of the burghers scurrying to and fro sets an up-tempo pace for the proceedings.

Above all, Graupel Bay is inhabited by a collection of quintessential characters; company members play multiple roles. Precocious Polly Soldonovich (Erin Rollman) serves as the narrator, setting the stage and filling us in on the locals’ eccentricities. Dressed in a jumper and accompanied by only a small rubber ball, Rollman skips from one abode to the next, inviting us to join her as she makes her inquisitive rounds.

First, there’s Mrs. Green, an elderly gossip who trades barbs with Mrs. Walsper at tea every day, where they perform their version of Russian roulette, each trying to poison the other when she’s not looking. In an ongoing series of vignettes, Hannah Duggan and Rollman switch cups with elaborate hand choreography, orchestrated to a riot of vocal gymnastics that air the neighborhood’s dirty laundry.

Every town needs a loser, and in Graupel Bay that’s Andrew Fromer, who for the life of him can’t seem to land a job. Morose from head to toe with a face nearly as long, Brian Colonna’s Andrew mopes around town when he’s not seeking solace in sleep. We learn he’s inherited his karma from Great-Grandfather Fromer (Evan Weissman), who spent his whole career in show biz as the rear end of a horse.

Weissman sends us to a bygone era with his melodramatic flair for vaudevillian song and dance numbers – first a soft-shoe solo and then a spin around the stage with Duggan’s Peg Mulord.

Erik Edborg, as the local drunk, Toothy Bill, cleverly avoids overdoing the stereotypical indications of inebriation, painting a souse worthy of the best fools: silly one moment, astute the next.

As the day unfolds, we meet the rest of the townfolk, including the irrepressible Rollman’s Miss Perkins, the terminally cheery shop owner; Lady Fergus, a pretentious bed-bound grand dame of operatic proportions; Colonna and Duggan’s Bob and Addy Hooks, he obsessed with the obits and she with her cockatoo; Weissman’s Clark Walters, a couch potato with a penchant for old movies; Bruce Bentley, whose daily purchase of flour is a local mystery; and Edborg’s William and Larry Lunelia, a lonely banker and a stargazing dreamer.

If you’re burned out on the Sugarplum Fairy’s magic and Ebenezer Scrooge’s miraculous transformation, perhaps a day in Graupel Bay is just the ticket to lift your holiday spirits and bring home your everyday blessings.

-Bob Bows, December 8th, 2006, Denver Post

Imagine a kid, 16, sitting in a theater – a live theater – guffawing, thoroughly engaged, leaping up at curtain call. And it’s Shakespeare, even. Kind of.

That Laertes is played by a remote-controlled toy bulldozer may have had something to do with it. Or Ophelia as a live goldfish (wait, can a goldfish drown?). Or Polonius as a Teddy Ruxpin doll, his “to thine own self be true” speech recorded on the cassette in his back. Or the gravedigger sampling Justin Timberlake’s “I’m Bringing Sexy Back.” Or Horatio as a marionette with Irish actor Geoffrey Toone’s face taped over his.

OK, maybe the 16-year-old missed that one. I know I did.

That doesn’t begin to explain the appeal of Buntport’s 16th original creation, “Something is Rotten,” featuring “Hamlet” – as a sock puppet.

There have been plenty of stabs at dumbing down the Bard (“The Complete Shakespeare Abridged”). “Rotten” is silly, but hardly dumb. Just the opposite.

“Rotten” is a ripe introduction to Shakespeare. But what that kid won’t even realize is that “Rotten” is a pretty accessible introduction to Samuel Beckett as well.

Three inexplicably, inextricably tied pals, only one an actor, have been compelled to perform “Hamlet.” By whom? The ghost of one’s long-lost sock, of course. No other context or explanation, no sense of time, place or greater purpose. Buntport doesn’t play by those rules. It’s absurdly Beckett.

Julius (Evan Weissman) enters preening and shy, a hint of an actor begging to break out from within him. Harold (Erik Edborg) is dressed in black, stern but trepidatious. He’s a ’50s-looking combination of Michael Douglas in “Falling Down” and Dieter (“Vould you like to touch my monkey?”). Sprawled between them is George (Brian Colonna) an intense “thee-a-tah” actor and narcoleptic.

With a trunk, a few cases and a coat rack, they embark on a fearful demonstration of the power and humor in transformative theater.

Harold, for example, portrays Claudius and Gertrude at once. As the foul king, he has an oversized mask over his head. To become Gertrude, he flings the mask back to reveal his wigged face. Simultaneously he unclasps a bowling bag, unfurling the queen’s dress before him. Brilliant.

The three oddballs bicker and banter as they go about their existential task, never questioning the necessity of its completion. But only George takes the actual art of the presentation all that seriously. His sleepy bouts allow his pals to skip ahead.

Julius is insistent on just two things: the safety of his beloved fish, and that the famous “play within the play” be a cutting from “Death of a Salesman.” As you can imagine, that slightly mucks up eliciting a guilty reaction from the king.

Does “Rotten” mean anything intellectuallly? Who knows. But the writing is absurdly clever, the performances sublime.

The pre-show amusement is an enormous treat; Hannah Duggan performs an endearing new-age folkster’s intro to Shakespeare. Duggan is funny from her first word to her final eyebrow twitch – better than anything “SNL” has done in a decade.

It was obvious the grandparents nearby loved “Rotten” as much as that 16 year old.

Imagine again: Buntport fans new and old walking out buzzing. Just another night at Buntport, where the only comfort zone here is entering a creative danger zone.

-John Moore, September 15, 2006, Denver Post

“Well, that was different,” a titillated woman said leaving Buntport’s 18th original production, “A Synopsis of Butchery.”

Of course, saying something is “different” at Buntport is like saying something is “just what you expected” anywhere else. When the lights go down, you never know where you are going to be when they come back up.

Buntport is an experimental, collaborative theater company whose youngsters take novel theatrical concepts and make them accessible, understandable and even fun for audiences. Talk about avant garde.

“Butchery” does not rely on visual trickery. This is something far more magical and unexpected. It’s a bona-fide character study that proves “terrific acting” belongs on the long list of accolades used to describe this spellbinding troupe.

The great Erin Rollman plays Eleanor Fletcher Bishop, aggrieved mother of celebrated mentalist Washington Irving Bishop. He was prone to fits of extreme catalepsy – long, death-like trances. Two doctors, perhaps believing Bishop to be dead (or perhaps not caring), were curious whether anything was unusual about his brain, so they performed an unauthorized autopsy on him in 1889. Eleanor was convinced her son was alive at the time, and therefore was murdered by autopsy. A court disagreed.

In “Butchery,” Eleanor takes her case to the people, as victims of ghastly true crimes often do today. But in the absence of TV, what better audience for this freak show than a carnival? Eleanor narrates her biased tale as hired actors re-enact events.

This premise, while provocative, never could carry 90 minutes. I thought the Buntporters might take us into the actual world of telepathy, or explore the shadowy boundaries of where life ends and death begins. Instead, the focus turns to this embittered, lost mother unraveling before our eyes. That’s not a bad alternative.

“Butchery” is not as funny or engaging as previous Buntport efforts; the writing not as profound. But it’s a delight to simply watch Rollman at work.

In demonstrating Eleanor’s palpable grief, she also unknowingly communicates what a delusional, insufferable mama she must have been. Eleanor was a failed stage diva, and it’s easy to see why. She wants justice, yes, but one can’t help but wonder if she’s not also an opportunist whose tragic tale has punched her ticket back to a sorry stage.

“Butchery” came from Buntport’s loyal audiences, who were gathered last summer and offered three possible show concepts to choose from.

It’s power to the people at Buntport. But the juice comes from the players’ bold, ongoing experimentation with craft.

-John Moore, April 28, 2006, Denver Post

If you have followed the evolution of Buntport Theater’s collaborative ensemble pieces, all you may recognize in its two mind-expanding new offerings are the faces. That and the familiar feeling of being seduced into unfamiliar worlds.

Buntport never takes the easy way out, nor does it fall back on previous formulas. So simply going along for the ride can be as nerve-wracking for audiences as for the gang of seven who create and perform there. But audiences do so, enthusiastically, because the company has a track record that makes taking the leap of faith asked feel safe.

Leaps of faith are at the core of Buntport’s 16th and 17th creations, the melancholy, fact-based dramas “Realism: The Mythical Brontosaurus,” and the meditative but bloody “Horror: The Transformation,” running in repertory through Dec. 10. The former, more accessible piece follows a young man who has locked himself in his bedroom. The latter, more unsettling tale is a modern take on the farmer who in 1760 listened to voices telling him to kill his family.

Both challenge how it is we come to believe whatever it is we believe to be true. That may mean science, God, evolution, ghosts or even the validity of the love we feel for one another. In the end, we choose the truth that brings us the most comfort. Belief is a leap of faith.

“Realism”

How might it change your perception of reality to learn that scientists have had something wrong all along? Might that cause you to question everything else you have accepted as true? In “Realism,” that’s the plight of Jack, who locks himself safely away after he learns the scientific community has issued a mea culpa: The Brontosaurus never existed. The so-called “nice” dinosaur was discovered and classified in 1879 but later determined to be synonymous with the previously documented Apatosaurus. So in 1974, in a bit of scientific housekeeping, the term “brontosaurus” was formally removed from the scientific record.

Jack, a thoughtful and psychologically fragile young man (Evan Weissman), is now experiencing a profound sense of groundlessness. His isolation has deeply upset his sister Fiona (Erin Rollman), her fiancé, Michael (Brian Colonna) and Jack’s roommate Ben (Erik Edborg), a gay Christian. Far from an absurd comedy, “Realism” is a doleful character study that examines the damage a slight tilt in one person’s axis of reality can have on everyone around him.

There is both a deep sadness and an odd tenderness at the core of “Realism,” Buntport’s first straightforward script. Fiona and Jack share an abusive childhood, and she harbors guilt for fleeing home and leaving him behind. Michael’s homophobia manifests itself against Ben.

This kind of regular acting is new for this extraordinary ensemble – which is why they are trying it now. While Weissman is remarkably natural in the task, the others seem tentative at first. But by the end, Colonna and Edborg have etched complex characterizations, and Rollman emerges as a woman eviscerated in 75 minutes of slow, Beckettesque waiting.

That’s the great irony of “Realism”: This is really pure existentialism, an attempt to portray a convincing illusion of a reality. The play is set on an impressive, two-level house where all the walls have been removed, allowing the audience to see in from both sides. In this story about barriers, the only actual physical barricade is this meager bedroom door. And ultimately, it’s not this door that’s separating these two damaged souls from making a human connection.

“Horror”

The more visually stimulating “Horror” is more recognizable as an experimental Buntport piece. It’s based on the Gothic 1798 novel “Wieland; or The Transformation” by Charles Brockden Brown, generally considered America’s first professional fiction writer. It’s the politely brutal tale of a decent husband and father who is led to destroying his wife and kids by a mysterious agent that may be “ruffian or devil,
black as hell or bright as angels.”

Onstage, the actors all don blackened eyes, as if already dead. Ghosts and memories reveal themselves and, in the coolest twist, the (restored) walls both breathe and bleed. The actors take turns operating puppets representing the two doomed children, both as physical extensions of themselves and later as marionettes. In this story of personal accountability, this is in many ways a puppet show within a puppet show.

Despite its magic, “Horror” is a bit more stilted and likely will be inscrutable to audiences unfamiliar with the source story. Catherine (Rollman) and Colonna (Theodore) are parents who dote on their children and entertain philosophical parlor discussions on skepticism, Socrates, God and reason. But the driving agent here must be the mysterious Carwin (Edborg), who has renounced his birth country and religion. He’s portrayed here as a mere magician and a voice-thrower, not a supernatural force personified capable of driving a man to kill his family. This inevitabile bit of business instead comes along so abruptly it seems more of a tangent than an effective climax.

In this one, backstage wonder Matt Petraglia is the star of the show, navigating more than 100 disturbing sound, light and special-effects cues.

-John Moore, October 28, 2005, Denver Post

Who would have thought if you pitted William Shakespeare against Franz Kafka mano a maggot, the bug would squash the Bard?

When it comes to the two original productions the Buntport Theater Company is running in repertory through Dec. 3, “Macblank” is an amusement compared to the more sophisticated and realized “Kafka on Ice”.

No one produces original ensemble comedies with the intelligence and depth of Buntport. What makes them so magnificent is that they have such a low threshold for boredom. They constantly concoct artistic challenges for themselves both noble and mad. Here, not content with merely presenting their 14th new collaboration, they are debuting Nos. 14 and 15 simultaneously.

“Macblank” would have made for a fabulous episode of Buntport’s winter side gig, “Magnets on the Fridge,” the biweekly original sit-com that returns for a fourth season Nov. 16. Each episode is loosely based on a random book title, and “Macblank” plays as if the Scottish play were the most recent slip of paper pulled from the lunch pail.

Each “Magnets” episode is developed in its miraculous entirety in two weeks. That is part of the appeal. But as a mainstage production, “Macblank” feels similarly rushed.

“Macblank” is constructed, too loosely, as a documentary of one company’s doomed production of “Macbeth,” the world’s most famously cursed play. So many bad things have happened during 400 years of productions, thespians won’t even utter the title inside a theater unless in performance.

“Macblank” is so pregnant with parody possibilities, it’s like plugging fish in a pond. The Buntporters lampoon all those “Macbeth” superstitions while sweetly toying with the peccadilloes and insecurities of actors and poking self-effacing fun at themselves.

The “Macblank” troupe consists of five lovingly hardcore theater geeks whose names have been changed to protect them from being too easily compared to the Buntporters playing them.

Stuffy Ryan (Erik Edborg) dons a faux British accent from having lived in London for 21 months as a boy. Rob (Brian Colonna) is the typical tense actor working six miserable jobs. But underdog Evan Weissman walks away with the show as misfit Greg, the prototypical theater outcast. He’s a sweetly insecure loner looking more for a home in this theater (or a girlfriend) than a calling. Greg constantly blurts awkward non-sequiters that ring painfully true to anyone who has ever tried a little too hard to fit in.

Then there is Beth (Erin Rollman), heartbreakingly passive-aggressive and growing drunk with desire to improve her position in the production. You know there must be underlying parallels to Shakespearean text, and in Beth we are clearly witnessing a descent into murderous madness to match the killer king. Ah, such a thin line between a curse and a capital crime.

Between scenes, cast members offer “Real World”-style confessionals. Most amusing are Miranda’s (Hannah Duggan) real-life travails, all of which parallel Bard works such as “Romeo and Juliet,” “Hamlet” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (my boyfriend looks like a donkey!”).

But as the evening wears on, “Macblank” runs out of steam. The evening is dominated by Beth’s anecdotes about past cursed productions, and a device that works initially grows tiresome. More fun could have been had with the fact that Charlton Heston once suffered severe burns on his groin from wearing tights that had been “accidentally” soaked in kerosene in a 1953 production.

Because the company’s adherence to “Macbeth” parallels go by the boards, the evening ends with a thud. Our perpetrator suffers no consequences, and no outsiders sweep in to clean up the mess.

But there are worse things that could be said of a company than that really it only suffers in comparison to itself. Call it the curse of Kafka.

-John Moore, October 21, 2004, Denver Post

On its synthetic surface, the premise of “Kafka on Ice” sounds as slippery as a fiddler on the roof. “Kafka on Ice”? What’s next? “Asimov on AstroTurf”?

“Shakespeare on Steroids”? “Capote on Peyote”?

But the Buntport Theater Company consistently makes miracles seem mundane. In this case, they stage the life of Franz Kafka with accessible intellect, self-effacing humor … and all the musical flair of the Ice Capades.

The crowd is seated around a rectangular synthetic surface, upon which the actors can skate as naturally as if they were in a real rink. We are introduced to Kafka (guest artist Gary Culig) as five company regulars spin and salchow around him in white figure skates and Lycra tights. Kafka’s grandfather, we are told, was so strong he could carry a sack of flour in his teeth, and whoosh! Here comes teeth-clenched Hannah Duggan speed-skating across the stage like Apolo Ohno.

The premise is not entirely ridiculous. The skating is choreographed so precisely, it actually adds elegance to the storytelling by heightening the pace and rhythm. That Kafka is the only character not on skates is consistent with his place as one of history’s quintessential loners. And there is even a literary basis: “I hold onto facts,” Kafka wrote in his journal, “like a beginner learning to skate.”

OK, that’s all a bit strained. The Buntporters skate because it’s fun … and funny.

Kafka’s bio is woven into a dramatization of his classic 1912 story “The Metamorphosis,” in which traveling salesman Gregor Samsa turns into a monstrous vermin.

Kafka died at 40 of tuberculosis, and much is made of how his private writings were later exploited for profit. Pesky acquaintance Gustav Janouch (Evan Weissman) even took his largely fabricated conversations with Kafka and sold them as a doctrine advocating libertarian socialism.

On stage, Kafka is horrified to learn these ramblings have been analyzed, recycled and turned into, well, this play. “But you love the theater,” friend Max (Brian Colonna) goads. “I am not sure this qualifies,” Kafka replies dryly.

It does. “Kafka on Ice” not only presents real insight into the man who came to embody all beaten down drones, it offers terrific opportunities for Buntport’s signature form of experimentation.

Kafka’s first, awkward sexual encounter is played out as a silent film. His briefcase opens into a miniature, 3-D map of 1883 Prague. The words of his short story unfold into a life-size man, with whom his lover dances. Music, costumes and video projections inject further understanding and humor. It is no accident that the sound of Kafka’s pen scribbling on paper duplicates the sound of Gregor’s bug scurrying across the floor.

This is another superb ensemble effort, but the smartly understated Culig stands out in the featured role. The most sublime moment is a wholly tangential scene in which Kafka finds himself in a contemporary English class led by a teacher (Erin Rollman) hilariously bluffing her way through Kafka’s text with the help of an online lesson plan.

“Kafka on Ice” has its problems. It intentionally loses its grip by turning almost wholly into a bad 1970s musical offering a much happier alternate ending to “The Metamorphosis.” No real attempt is made to explain why Kafka remains a beacon for the alienated and downtrodden. Or that buried in Kafka’s work is real hope.

The irony of “Kafka on Ice” is that Buntport never skates. Not only have they brought this enormously original work to life, they are performing it in repertory with another entirely new work, “Macblank.”

-John Moore, October 15, 2004, Denver Post

The busy Buntport Theater Company, which is to rest what adult companionship is to Michael Jackson, is parking it on the couch this December for a brief series of comic parodies targeting all things television.

The Buntporters are calling “Idiot Box” their first foray into sketch comedy, but aficionados of their biweekly original book-club sitcom, “Magnets on the Fridge,” will quickly recognize its irreverent style and sensibility.

Though there may not be a subject more rife for Buntport’s sophisticated and intellectual brand of comedy than the vapidity of television, “Idiot Box” does not aspire to be much more than ticklish. This is neither high concept nor particularly biting social commentary. It’s just, for the most part, very funny.

And not surprisingly, it is executed at a level of exactness, characterization and timing that betters most companies around town who do sketch comedy for a living.

During a stretch when Buntport will open its 12th and 13th original mainstage productions within three weeks, and while still cranking out its midweek “Magnets” episodes to a stunning standard of originality, it’s frankly a bit of a relief to see Denver’s hardest-working theater company unburden themselves of the need to be so darned relevant all the time.

“Idiot Box” plays on the fact that most of us only have vague notions of the way televisions actually work. It opens with an unseen conversation between some kid (Andy Vickory) rattling off his blah blah scientific theories about electron beams and cathode rays, and an adult(-like) Evan Weissman, who sets his precocious counterpart straight: Actually, young Andy, tiny fairies are trapped inside our television sets and are forced to act out whatever show is playing on the selected channel.

That’s how televisions really work, Andy. Cathodes. Hah.

Our five bickering and sardonic fairies operate on a stage framed by the simple outline of an old fashioned television set. When these proletariat pixies interact behind a silhouette that represents the television screen itself, we get to know their off-camera personalities. When they are in front of the silhouette, they are considered on-duty, and subject to the channel-changing whims of their unseen despotic couch potato.

Among the easy targets are buddy-cop shows, soap operas, the Food Network, inane game shows, vapid local newscasts, the strange preponderance of Australian outdoorsmen on American television and, most especially, the emerging genre of “Mean TV,” with all its subhuman reality genres including cruel coupling contests and demeaning prank shows.

Among the less-obvious gems are Erik Edborg performing “Cooking With Stalin,” a cooking show for dictators. “Remember what Lenin says,” we are told, “You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few hundred people.”

The incomparable highlight is the triumphant return of young Mitchell and Stacey Petrovsky, Buntport’s longest-running and most revered characters (played by Brian Colonna and the queen of comedy, Erin Rollman. Bow before her.).

For three years, the Buntport’s signature traveling sketch has been Mitchell and Stacey’s riotous foray into Girl Scout-cookie capitalism, which featured a diabolical pre-teen Stacey domineering her braided and brown-skirted younger brother in her pursuit of the local cookie-selling crown. Here, maniacal Stacey is being interviewed on the local news about her science fair invention, “Monopolize Your Risk,” a board game of “capitalistic skill and global domination.”

Television presents such a target-rich environment that by the evening’s short (70 minutes) end, one wonders how topics such as infomercials, sports, humiliating talk-show revelations and Paris Hilton escaped unscathed.

Given more time and energy, you might expect to see more multimedia touches from Buntport and some sort of social commentary beyond Hannah Duggan’s prescient observation that most of us like to watch others humiliate themselves on TV “just so we can feel patently superior to them.”

After all, the evolution from “The Dating Game” to “Average Joe” is as apparent as the bloodlines linking “Candid Camera” to “Punk’d.”

But while some parodies such as the situational game show “Blame It On” are standard stuff, Buntport on a day off is still vastly superior to any banal collection of “Saturday Night Live” sketches.

In small ways, “Idiot Box” manages to accomplish what Buntport always has been known for. It manages to stretch the sketch-comedy form like those poor fairies’ multicolored, skin-tight Lycra costumes.

-John Moore, December 19, 2003, Denver Post