Buntport Theater

Season 7

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

Rocky Mountain News- Buntport knows its gumshoe comedy

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


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

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

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

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

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

Grade: A-

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

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

McGuinn & Murry

GUMSHOE HIJINKS

In the 1940’s, people smoked cigarettes, conducted witty repartee and solved crimes. Or so it sometimes seems, anyway.

(more…)

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

Colorado Daily- Duet for gumshoes • Buntport’s ‘Mcguinn & Murry’ A Tour De Farce

It’s not often that Denver’s Buntport Theater Company revives a production, so it had better be a good one, don’t you think?

Fortunately, “McGuinn and Murry” is. A noirish intellectual confection that features the performances of two of the company’s six creator-partners, the play is a zoom through the Buntportian analytical-parodical cosmos, serving as an excellent (and hilarious) introduction to the group’s work.

First produced four years ago, the subject of the piece is the detective story – its literary and cinematic cliches. Two slap-happy, underemployed sleuths, clad in 40’s fashion, contemplate an unringing phone. McGuinn (Erik Edborg) is a washed-up, boozy former boxer harboring a shameful secret; Murry (Erin Rollman) is the wisecracking dame who’s the brains of the outfit.

They’re driven to pose each other theoretical mysteries, to keep from getting rusty, as Murry puts it. Vigorous flights of fancy later, Murry decides to top McGuinn once and for all – by getting him to investigate himself for murder.

What follows is a fast-paced series of blackout scenes, propelled by a wry and intimate sense of how those creaky plots work. The shady encounter, the hard-bitten dialogue, the random gunplay’s all there. Like some demented commedia del arte performance, Edborg and Rollman inhabit tough-talking, two-fisted archetypes and race them clownishly through their paces.


The performers walk a tightrope of quick change and rapid switches of identity. Each plays 5 or 6 roles. Edborg dons an eye patch and vanishes into the character of a fussy English playboy named Kermit; Rollman becomes an old, fat gangster – instantly, almost by sheer force of will. It’s astonishing.What propels the entertainment to a greater level is its insistence on constant transformation. Buntport is known for its incredibly inventive staging, and the set here consists entirely (seemingly) of two large office desks, bound together back-to-back on casters. As the actors end a scene, they remain – to revolve, rearrange and transform their office into McGuinn’s home, a bar, and other landscapes. (SamAnTha Schmitz, Hannah Duggan, Brain Colonna and Evan Weissman complete the ensemble, and everyone works together on all the aspects of each Buntport production.)

You never get an easy out with Buntport. There is a climax of sorts – miniature cars chase each other across a pasteboard city, details are cleared up – but there isn’t any emotional revelation at the finish, no heavily stressed moral. In “McGuinn & Murry,” the clockwork winds up, and then it winds itself down, stuttering to a halt.

Buntport has enlisted the local jazz combo The Hoagies to accompany the play on May 15 and 22, and perhaps other dates as the run continues through the end of May. In addition, they’ve scheduled Buntport Movie Nights with noir features on the next two Sundays – “The Big Sleep” on May 18, and “The Thin Man” on May 25. (Free ice cream, too!)

“McGuinn & Murry” is strong spring fare – fast, light and funny.

-Brad Weismann, May 12, 2008, Colorado Daily

Close up on the faces of 1940’s detectives. The man looks silly with cigarette hanging out of his mouth, while the woman looks on disgusted.

North Denver Tribune- Buntport’s McGuinn and Murry Captures Film Noir Brilliantly

Buntport Theatre is truly unique. They do theatre differently than any other company I’ve ever known. Instead of starting with a script, they start with something-it could be a book, an idea, a loose concept, or, as with their latest offering, a genre. Then they transform that into a play. But they do not do things simply or superficially, tempting thought that might be. They truly reinterpret the original material, and in doing so, create something fresh and new. Their current production, McGuinn & Murry, has fun with the detective story genre, but it has its own interesting storyline, fully defined characters, and clever twists and turns. And all elements of the play are created collaboratively and in parallel, allowing for more integration of elements such as costume, scenery, acting, and direction.

McGuinn & Murry is both a spoof and a tribute to the 1940’s detective story and Film Noir genre. The story starts with our two detectives waiting for work, killing time by making up mysteries to solve. One of these mysteries takes on a life of its own, creating much more than a simple mind exercise. McGuinn is on the case-and the fact that he is his own prime suspect doesn’t slow him down one bit. Murry joins in, at first thinking it is just a mind exercise, until both get swept up into a real mystery. Maybe.

The language of this play is brilliant. I’ve always loved the 1940’s detective movies, and the dialogue perfectly captures the genre. Both actors deliver their lines with just the right amount of affectation-it sets everything up so well. Most impressive is that this dialogue was created entirely by the Buntport crew, though they undoubtedly watched a few classic films along the way.

With only two actors playing all the roles, much of the show depends on Erin Rollman and Erik Edborg. Both are more than up to the task. Edborg captures the hard-boiled detective McGuinn well, and contrasts that with the fastidious Pauly. Rollman is very good as Murry, and brilliant as she transforms herself first in to the ditzy Budge, then into a barkeep, and finally completely changing her voice, stature, and gender to become the Fat Man. The culmination of the story is hilarious and delightful to watch, as both actors bounce back and forth between multiple clearly-defined characters, never missing a beat.

The scenery becomes almost a character on its own. It is one of the most transformable sets I have ever seen anywhere. There are many clever devices used throughout the show. The lighting is competent, providing some variety and good illumination. The costumes were, like the set, an integral part of the transformation of the actors. Simple but clear changes helped differentiate the characters well.

McGuinn & Murry is a pleasure to watch. The pacing is excellent, the plot twists and the multiple characterizations are incredibly creative, the dialogue is very funny, and the acting is top-notch. If you would like a fun evening of creative and clever theatre, then go see McGuinn & Murry at Buntport. And if you choose one of the right performances, you get the bonus of live local music beforehand.

-Craig Williamson, May 2008, North Denver Tribune

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.

Westword- Buntport brushes up on the Bard

I’ve already seen Buntport Theater’s Titus Andronicus: the Musical twice. But with a few honorable exceptions, theater-going has been pretty dismal this fall, so I figure I’m entitled to a little fun.

As we prepare to file in, we see an eccentrically clad woman in the lobby. She’s commenting loudly on the decor, as well as all the newspaper reviews and award plaques pasted on the walls. She does this with such conviction that it’s a few moments before I realize that she’s Buntporter Hannah Duggan, and the play has essentially begun. The conceit is that a wandering troupe of five actors, led by P.S. McGoldstien, is presenting Shakespeare’s bloody and incoherent Titus Andronicus as a musical. There’s lots of plotting here. Saturninus wants to be king, but the people are leaning toward Titus, conqueror of the Goths, who’s just returned to town with four prisoners: Goth queen Tamora and her three sons, one of whom he rapidly executes. Tamora marries Saturninus, and proceeds to plot revenge on Titus — a revenge that includes having her two surviving sons kill Saturninus’s brother, Bassianus, and rape and mutilate Titus’s daughter Lavinia, Bassianus’s love. More plot twists include the framing of Titus’s two innocent boys for murder; Tamora’s affair with the villainous Aaron, which results in an illegitimate baby; Titus’s attempt to save his sons from execution by cutting off his own hand; and a feast during which Tamora is served pies containing the flesh of her own children — that is, the sons who destroyed poor Lavinia.

Buntport actually gets us through the entire plot, and it’s all quite coherent — or at least as coherent as the original. The troupe uses a board with caricatures and lightbulbs to tell us which of the five actors is playing which of the several dozen characters at any given moment. Evan Weissman gets to act essentially the same role every time: “Someone Who Will Probably Die.” There’s also a chalkboard on which the actors keep track of the death toll. The cast makes inventive use of objects and weird scraps of costume, and not all the characters are flesh and blood. One is simply a hat on a stick, and Tamora’s sons are played by a gasoline can and a car radio, complete with ashtray. The scenery consists of a van that is pushed from place to place in the echoing warehouse space by perspiring members of the cast, while McGoldstien exhorts the audience to encourage them. This van has been painted and outfitted to represent different locations: trees on one side for a forest; a table set with plates and other dining accoutrements that pops down when needed. A stuffed owl sometimes perches on the antenna; naked umbrella spokes poke through the roof and open to reveal little green leaves; during one scene, the windows are awash in fake blood. Though I’ve seen all this before, I’m still struck by the ingenuity of the approach, and the jokes are just as funny as ever. I find myself fixing on amusing little things like the blobs of fake blood on Titus’s bare knees, or the watch on the wrist of a severed hand.

In their approach to their roles, the actors have it both ways: They speak and act with complete conviction while also communicating their awareness of the absurdity of the entire situation. They take a few pokes at Shakespeare. “It’s in the text,” one of them says after a particularly ludicrous exchange. “I didn’t make it up.” Brian Colonna is a marvel of energy and good humor as he darts from place to place keeping the entire show together; Erik Edborg manages to be simultaneously puzzled and full of insane energy; Duggan’s silent response to her mutilation at the hands of her rapists — and her tongueless exasperation when her father exhorts her to speak and tell him who they are — is priceless. Erin Rollman brings all her usual assurance to her several roles, and Evan Weissman punctures the action with a series of howlingly funny mini-characterizations.

It’s the Buntporters’ playfulness that makes coming here so pleasurable. Their work contains in abundance what so few productions have these days: exuberance and life. In this, they remind me of Al Brooks’s days at the Changing Scene: Some of the things I saw in that small, colorful space still resonate in my mind, while I couldn’t forget others fast enough. But the unevenness didn’t matter, because the entire place vibrated with energy and surprise.

There are huge differences between Buntport and the old Scene, of course. Al’s take on theater was profoundly idealistic; he believed in the art form’s ability to subvert and in its powers of redemption. He took big risks but could also be downright silly, putting on the work of almost any playwright who requested it, encouraging his dancers to cavort in the mountains naked while he filmed them. I don’t think the Buntporters are motivated by any idea of bettering society or communicating the lofty significance of art. Instead, they keep saying that their goal is to provide cheap, unpretentious entertainment — and this they certainly do.

Sometimes I wish they were more ambitious, interested in deepening and developing their work, since they are quite capable of transcendence. Instead, they seem content to alternate times of wonder and discovery with evenings that are simply amusing, but always — no matter what they’re doing — making us marvel at the good-humored fluidity of their approach and the imagination that lies at the very heart of theater.

They’re saying that this is definitely, positively, absolutely the last Titus Andronicus. I suggest you get over there.

-Juliet Wittman, December 12, 2007, Westword

A man in makeshift Shakespearean clothes looks at a piece of paper through a large magnifying glass. In the glass, his nose and eye are large. A woman is pointing and talking to him.

Denver Post- Yuks and yucks with Bard’s gory “Titus”

Interpreting Shakespeare’s goriest play as a musical comedy is a stretch, even in an era renowned for idiosyncratic Shakespeare stagings in samurai mufti or deep space. Not only do these Colorado College alumni accomplish this admirably, but they manage so successfully that this marks the fourth time that their Buntport Theater company has mounted it.

“People seem to like it,” said Erin Rollman, who plays both Titus’ brother, Marcus, and his nemesis, the vengeful Goth queen Tamora.

Tickets to the current production began selling months ago, when rumors spread that “Titus Andronicus!” would be remounted for the final time. Earlier productions routinely sold out, disappointing latecomers who thought they could show up without reservations. Several book clubs already bought blocks of tickets as an alternative to hosting a holiday party.

“Nothing like baking children into pies for holiday cheer,” observed Brian Colonna, referring to a particularly grisly scene that rigorously interprets the adage about revenge being a dish best served cold.

Turning a Shakespeare tragedy – particularly such a confusing and multiply flawed script that scholars debate whether Shakespeare actually wrote “Titus Andronicus” – into a musical comedy was an enormous leap, particularly for a young company.

The actors who formed Buntport all graduated from Colorado College, an elite liberal arts college that breeds unorthodox intellectuals, between 1998 and 2001. The Buntport crew is so devoutly collaborative that Denver Post critic John Moore once posited that the company “writes, directs, designs, acts, builds and probably showers as one.”

Their hallmark lies in distilling an often familiar story to its utter essence whilst plundering and frolicking with its beloved details, rather like Monty Python’s anarchist grandchildren.

The decision to present “Titus Andronicus” as a musical comedy emerged during a brainstorming session. Someone suggested that it would be funny to have Lavinia – a character whose tongue is cut out early in the play – sing an aria upon being dismembered.

“We were amused and mortified, which pretty much describes the usual audience reaction,” Rollman said.

“But it IS funny. It’s hard not to laugh.”

So they allowed the aria – a Britney Spears parody as vicious as it is visual – to set the show’s tone.

Since 2002, when they debuted their version of what they delightedly call “Shakespeare’s bloodiest play,” Buntport similarly dissected “Hamlet,” “Moby-Dick” “Macbeth” (as “Macblank,” referring to the theatrical superstition that forbids naming the play offstage), and “The Odyssey: A Walking Tour.”

The results are as reachable as they are illuminating, both conceptually and concretely. Those Elizabethan frocks are made from corduroy and denim pants acquired at the ARC thrift store on South Broadway. A car radio/ashtray and a gas can serve as two puppets. A hat on a stick becomes an appreciative listener.

“You end up with integrity when you stage a show you can afford,” Rollman said.

“It doesn’t take a big budget to put on a good show. We wink at the audience. We all know this forest is just a van. So let’s be in cahoots!”

-Claire Martin, December 2, 2007, Denver Post

Denver Post- Buntport votes against passivity

What if you came home one day and, say, your wall paintings were turned upside down, but you didn’t even notice? Eventually the upside-down version might begin to look more “right” to you than wrong. And what if you came home one day and your TV were turned to a 90-degree angle … but rather than turn it right, you simply starting watching TV with a crooked neck?

Buntport Theatre’s 22nd original production, “Vote for Uncle Marty,” seems to be warning audiences that when you passively allow one incremental change after another to happen to you without question or protest,

Now apply this thinking to everything from the electoral system to civil liberties to the Iraq war to your own marriage.well then, one day you might find that your whole world has been turned upside down. And you let it happen to you, right before your eyes.

Welcome to Buntport Theater’s head-first dive into Ionesco’s absurdist pond – only more fun. Only Buntport could conjure a challenging, comically disturbing play that combines the paranoia of a Talking Heads video with the family dynamics of a Thornton Wilder play with the skewed perspective of “Being John Malkovich” or an M.C. Escher painting.

This innovative collaborative company, which writes, directs, designs, acts, builds and probably showers as one, tells all its stories from mind- bending points of view. One took place suspended 3 feet above the ground; another entirely in an elevator; and who could ever forget Kafka – on ice?

“Uncle Marty” takes place in a brilliantly built upside- down house, where a bizarro family of unhappy eccentrics must avoid the ceiling fan on the “floor” as they walk. Who vacuum the carpet on the “ceiling.” Who must step over arched doorways to move into the next room.

Most are intractably oblivious. Colby (Erin Rollman) is a pregnant delusional lost in her world of Spanish soap operas she can’t even understand; husband J.J. (Brian Colonna) is a theorist who contemplates jigsaw-puzzle solutions without ever actually touching a piece. Heather (Hannah Duggan) has for seven years been running a pointless exploratory campaign to determine whether her inept Uncle Marty (who’s neither her uncle nor named Marty) should run for town council. An unseen matriarch never leaves her room. These are the habits of five highly ineffective people.

It’s only the crazy-haired, conspiracy-theory rebel anarchist Uncle Gene (Evan Weissman, at his best) who acknowledges that something is very wrong in this world. Crazy- haired, we learn, because he finds his oasis by hanging upside down from moon boots. It’s in these few fleeting moments of “suspended belief,” with blood rushing to his brain, that things look to Gene as they should.

This conceit ranks among Buntport’s most clever of inspirations. But while these youngsters never explain their worlds or telegraph where they might be taking you next, neither are they typically as obtuse in their storytelling.

“Marty” is navigable, but also abstract and circuitous, never building to that expected “aha!” epiphany that lets you fully in on its purpose. That’s fine if you’re doing Beckett or Pinter, but Buntport is usually much more accessible and absorbing. So while “Marty” is a treat for veterans, it’s not the ideal introduction if you’ve not seen Buntport’s work before.

The most cogent scenes allow the staunchly platform- free candidate Marty (Erik Edborg) to blithely spoof the inanities of American political campaigns, which is humorous if a bit obvious.

Weissman’s volatile explosion clarifies that the target here is not so much the powerful but you and me. The play is a condemnation of complacency, of everyday ineffectiveness, of our steadfast need for all the pieces to fit together in a world where the puzzle keeps changing.

“Marty” is payback for our letting Bush steal the election(s). For allowing the Patriot Act. For turning into a nation of oblivious “passivists” with a dogged need to believe that everything is perfectly … normal. For the collective abdication of our civic responsibility to ask questions, to watchdog, to protest … to turn the painting right side up.

Problem is, if you stare into an Escher painting long enough, after a while, who’s to say what’s right side up?

-John Moore, September 28th, 2007, Denver Post

The setting is an upside down room, with pink carpet on the ceiling and flowered wallpaper. Five people crowd into the room, each doing their own activity.

Rocky Mountain News- Weak script sinks campaign of comic satire

It had to happen, eventually, but it still hurts. Buntport Theatre Company, those collaborative creators of eight years’ worth of funny, inventive and zippy new works, has come up with one that sinks rather than sparkles.

Mom never surfaces, but visible in the house are her warring daughters, the extremely pregnant and telenovela-obsessed Colby and the careerist Heather, played by Erin Rollman and Hannah Duggan. Colby’s husband, J.J. (Brian Colonna), is devoting his life to the study of jigsaw puzzles, while their uncle, Eugene (Evan Weissman), struggles for respect from nieces who are older than he is.Things never quite gel in Vote for Uncle Marty, the company’s comedy about a family of five living in an upside-down house, where the ceiling is the floor, the arched doorways provide an impediment to walking and light fixtures protrude from the floor.

Meanwhile, everyone calls their visitor Uncle Marty (Erik Edborg). He’s a stranger who wandered into the house six years ago and has since been Heather’s project as she prepares his campaign for city council. Marty has no reason to run. He has no platform, no desires, no philosophy. But he’s friendly. People like him. And Heather has been coaching Marty on his gestures (Clintonian thumbs) and searching for a meaningless slogan.

The satire is a little too spot-on. Candidates more enamored of process than belief have been mocked before and better.

The writing suffers here, but other Buntport assets continue to shine. Rollman and Weissman in particular display ever more nuanced acting. Her character is infuriatingly passive-aggressive; watch her eat peas for a bit of performance immersion. Weissman is dark and strange here, obsessed that he is the only one troubled by the house’s geographic disorientation.

The house is its own triumph, a full-size first floor that looks as though it could withstand a hurricane.

Vote for Uncle Marty strives to be a comic analogy to our contemporary world. But saying the world is upside-down doesn’t tell us much we don’t already know. It’s not terribly profound, which is OK; but it’s not very funny, either.

-Lisa Bornstein, September 21st, 2007, Rocky Mountain News

Four smiling people give the camera a thumbs up while one smiling man gives a thumbs down. They are grouped together in the middle of an upside down room.

Westword- Buntport does right by an upside-down world.

From the moment you walk into the theater and see the topsy-turvy set, the central metaphor of Vote for Uncle Marty is obvious. And although the suggestion that we live in an upside-down world isn’t particularly original, the play certainly is, since it arises from the collaborative work of Buntport’s five actor-director-playwrights – Brian Colonna, Erik Edborg, Hannah Duggan, Evan Weissman and Erin Rollman – as well as the sixth, non-performing member, SamAnTha Schmitz.

What else are these characters doing? Well, Colby, very pregnant, is watching Spanish soaps on television, trying to figure out the action though she doesn’t understand the language. Her husband, J.J., has a jigsaw puzzle on the table and is attempting to solve it on a theoretical level without actually manipulating the pieces. Several years ago, Colby’s sister Heather befriended the affable, empty-headed Marty because she believed he would make a good city councilman; she’s been planning his campaign ever since, worrying more about the color of his posters and the need for a slogan than about his complete lack of anything resembling a platform. There’s also Colby’s Uncle Gene – her mother’s brother, and not much older than she is. Gene is the only character who seems troubled by the house’s topsy-turviness. He places himself in various upside-down positions, hangs a mirror above his own nose so that he sees a right-side-up reflection, and rails at the others for their lack of interest in the problem. The final member of this household is Colby’s mother, who remains upstairs and invisible throughout.The company usually makes an art of scene-changing and object manipulation, but this set is remarkably stable and solid. It shows a tightly constructed house interior, with carpet on the ceiling and weirdly vertiginous stairs (to go downstairs, you ascend). The arch of a doorway curves from the floor like a C set on its back. The wallpaper’s floral pattern is upside down as well. The furniture is all right side up, and the inhabitants of the house have set up various objects to serve as steps where needed – a pile of books here, a toaster there. Eventually, two of the characters will get into a heated dispute over a painting of flowers that looks fine no matter how it’s hung.

These activities – Colby’s withdrawal into fantasy, Marty’s ineptitude, Heather’s meaningless political busywork, J.J.’s devotion to abstraction, the patently absurd manipulations of Uncle Gene – are all intended to represent the American public’s response to the current political situation; that much is clear. Even the complete inactivity of the absent mother figure is meant as a protest. (During the Vietnam era, John Lennon said that he and Yoko Ono intended to stay in bed until the war was over. As explained by Uncle Gene, the mother’s gesture is just as dopey, but a good bit more entertaining.)

As I watched, I couldn’t help but think about Ionesco’s 1959 play Rhinoceros, in which one person after another metamorphoses into a thick-skinned, lumbering, snorting beast. Everyone in Ionesco’s original audience would have understood that this was a warning both of the dangers of fascism and of the kind of mindset that allowed fascism to prevail. But in this interesting, evocative piece, the Buntporters never tell us why they feel our world is upside down. Perhaps they assume that in a time of endless war, secret imprisonment and torture, not to mention government propaganda unquestioningly parroted by the mass media, the answer is apparent. Still, while no one wants to sit through a political polemic, I’d have liked more of a clue.

Uncle Marty is far more than political satire, however. There are other currents at work here, and lots of wit in the writing. And the characters are truly fascinating: Edborg’s hapless, good-natured, oddly soulful Uncle Marty; Colonna’s squeaky, jerky J.J.; Duggan’s campaign manager, who keeps storming off the job only to return again, and who hides a pathetic insecurity beneath her businesslike saleswoman’s exterior. There may still be a few folks around who haven’t figured out that Rollman is one of Denver’s most accomplished and original actresses; if so, her performance here should clear the wool from their eyes. Colby is more hugely and monstrously pregnant than any woman has ever been before; her great swollen mound of a belly seems to control her every action, while she peers around it like a toddler carrying a beach ball. Despite her increasingly dark-ringed eyes and ever-lanker hair, Colby is trying to be sweetly maternal, but flashes of demented rage keep piercing her mellifluous exterior. Weissman hurls himself both physically and mentally into the role of Uncle Gene, and even though he’s ridiculously funny, you can feel the real desperation at his core.

The Buntporters have worked together for several years now in a way that few other theater artists can match. They know each other’s tics and rhythms, passions and ideas, and the resulting inventions are wonderfully wry and entertaining. Although I still think the time has come for someone, somewhere, to revive Rhinoceros.

-Juliet Wittman, September 13th, 2007, Westword