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Season 7
TheaterMania- Titus Andronicus! The Musical
If your aim is to poke fun at Will Shakespeare, why not start with Titus Andronicus? This early work masks young Will’s yet-to-ripen greenery as a playwright with buckets worth of stage blood, quenching the thirst for carnage that preceded his shift to an emphasis on character. And if a playful swipe at the Bard is on the bill, it helps to have the wit and resourcefulness of Buntport Theater, which in Titus Andronicus! The Musical stabs at the play’s thinly stretched canvass and runs the characters through with makeshift swords in the form of everything from trombones to dipsticks.
The award-winning, Denver-based theater company takes on the guise of a traveling band of thespians, prepared to perform any play wherever they pull up; P.S. McGoldstein carts his five member company and their wares in an old van. “We are few in number, but we are resourceful,” McGoldstein confides to the audience in a huge understatement as the play begins. The actors take on anywhere from three roles each to upwards of a dozen in the case of Evan Weismann, who plays the company musician as well as a parade of characters identified as “Someone Who Will Probably Die.” To help the audience up with the shifts between characters, the players operate a light board with a rendering of each actor and a series of bulbs below each rendering, one for each character they play. Next to this is a chalkboard on which to tally the ever mounting death toll. At times, the lights are flicked on and off as quick as the parries in a sword fight — most notably in a scene during which two of Erik Edborg’s characters, Saturninus and Lucius, engage in mortal combat.
The van is the play’s central set piece, epitomizing Buntport’s knack for turning seemingly insurmountable production challenges into jaw-dropping creativity. As the play-within-the-play commences, the van doors are opened to reveal a backdrop painted across the insides of the doors and a screen that rolls down, blocking the interior of the van and setting the scene with an image of ancient Rome’s famous Eiffel Tower — which, upon discovery, is quickly covered with another pull down screen depicting the more geographically correct Coliseum. The van is used to great comic effect throughout the show — e.g., the carriage rocks when Saturninus and Tamara consummate their marriage in the back of the vehicle. As for depiction of the play’s horribly tragic events, blood spurts out of the roof when a victim is hacked up inside, and the big picture window on the side of the van offers a view of the carnage that occurs after Aaron traps Titus’s sons in the forest.
Then there are the show’s musical moments; the company members perform several production numbers with macabre hilarity. I particularly enjoyed Edborg’s Frankensteinish dance moves as the rhythmically-challenged Saturninus in the opening number — a foreshadowing of the grand finale, when all of the corpses sing and twitch, whether marinating in a pool of their own blood or, in the case of Tamora’s two puppet sons, baked into pies for mother. There’s also a cha-cha version of “I Love You For Sentimental Reasons,” with the newly crowned Saturninus and the captured Goth queen Tamora dancing on the roof of the van before slipping inside for their honeymoon. And there’s a wonderfully romantic “montage” when Lavinia sneaks off to be with Bassianus (Saturninus’ brother). As The Carpenters’ “Close to You” plays on the van stereo, the two fall in love. But then the vengeful Tamora arranges for her sons — the car stereo and the gas can — to kill Bassianus and to maim Lavinia, cutting off her hands and tongue. This doesn’t keep Lavinia from singing an incomprehensible lament as blood drips out of her tongueless mouth. “You see ladies and gentleman, we handle violence with grace and delicacy,” McGoldstein remarks to the audience as his cast slips and splashes across the blood-slick stage, heading toward intermission with a lively hand jive (and paying no heed to the fact that Titus and Lavinia have only one hand to jive with between them).
Buntport’s decision to season this savage play with comedy and music makes for a riveting two hours’ traffic on the stage. For all the jesting and poking, Titus Andronicus! The Musical succeeds in praising Shakespeare, not burying him. The original play isn’t beyond redemption. And though the characters are razor-thin compared to the Bard’s later, fleshed-out figures, Titus himself is a fascinating study for an actor, moving from relentless barbarism to a strangely sympathetic victimization. Add a cha-cha here, an ash-mouthed puppet there, bloody dipsticks everywhere, and you’ve got the raw materials for an inventive, accessible evening of entertainment in the hands of a company firing on all cylinders.
-Owen Perkins, January 25,2005, www.theatermania.com
North Denver Tribune- Buntport musically spoofs bard’s bloodiest tragedy
Buntport Theater delivers another original and creative comic gem in their musical send-up of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus. Buntport dismembers (pun intended) the Bard’s bloodiest and most brutal tragedy, filling the evening with slapstick humor, creative devices to help the audience follow the complex plot, bad puns, cliché musical numbers, and Monty Pythonesque blood and gore.
The production opens with a traveling troupe of actors (the “van-o-players”) that will be performing Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus. Even a brief summary of the plot would take far too long for this review, and have little value. Suffice to say that Titus is a bloody story of war, deceit, revenge, rape, murder, and limb removal, set against the backdrop ancient Rome. This production may be the most understandable rendition of this play you will every see, using a clever visual device to identify characters and filling gaps with occasional narration.
The seven members of Buntport, Brian Colonna, Erik Edborg, Hannah Duggan, Erin Rollman, Evan Weissman, Matt Petraglia, and Samantha Schmitz “adapted, produced, designed, directed, and built” this production as a collaboration. This group has developed an original, integrated piece of comic theatre. While the performances are very good, the careful construction of a complete package, including context, design concept and supporting devices, is excellent. The script itself is funny, but adding in the character identification board, the scenic element of the versatile beat-up old van, the creative puppets, the anachronistic musical numbers, and the eclectic costumes makes the whole exceed the sum of the parts.
As actors, five members of the Buntport ensemble shine as well. All five create multiple unique, recognizable characters, in some cases in rapid succession with only minor costume changes. Hannah Duggan is probably the strongest in the cast, transforming herself from the pathetic Levinia to the delightfully evil Aaron with the application of a fake mustache. As Levinia, after loosing her hands and tongue, she is hilariously ineffective as she tries to communicate what has befallen her and attempts to perform the most basic tasks. Evan Weissman shows amazing versatility, playing many characters, most of them (as aptly described on the character board) “someone who will probably die.” His bizarre facial gymnastics as Aemilius are particularly entertaining.
Ron Wilkenson vamps as the Emperor Saturninus, plays Titus’s son and grandson (both named Lucius), and controls the puppets representing Tamora’s sons Demetrius and Chiron. The choreography of the interaction of the puppets and the live actors on stage is interesting and effective. Brian Colonna opens the evening as the leader of the traveling troupe, and provides an anchor for the show as Titus, as well as covering the emperor’s brother Bassianus. Erin Rollman changes gender frequently, bouncing back and forth between the initially tragic and later cruel Tamora, and Marcus, brother of Titus, giving both characters depth and variety.
One thing that makes this show work so well is the integrated overall visual package. The design concept is reminiscent of Italian Commedia Dell’Arte, updated to modern times. The set has two elements, a character board and a modified old van, set against the backdrop of the exposed empty warehouse that is the Buntport Theater. The character board is a clever and effective device, serving two main purposes. It indicates which characters each actor is playing at any given time, and provides a running death toll, for which this play seems to cry out. Initially, the van seems benign – an offstage space for the performers to transform themselves, and a backdrop. But it is rolled (pushed by human power – by actors, no less) to expose four different sides, with each providing creative and bizarre props and set pieces, all of which nonetheless fit in the context of the overall production. And rounding out the visual impact of the play are the costumes. Difficult to describe, they are patchworks, cut and pieced together thrift store outcasts, fitting perfectly the idea of modern Commedia clowns. These are not circus clowns, but unique characters evoking the many dimensions of comedy.
This show is a hoot. It combines irreverence and skill, originality and tight execution, and cheap sight gags and cleverness. After seeing this show, I actually looked up Titus in my anthology of Shakespeare to check, and found that indeed, all the murder, mayhem, and dismemberment are right there in the script. It is no surprise that “straight” productions of Titus are rare – I can’t imagine a modern theatre company pulling off a sincere production. This is just one more reason to head to Buntport and see this much more entertaining version.
-Craig Williamson, January 20, 2005, North Denver Tribune
The Metropolitan- The Buntport Theatre Presents: Titus Andronicus: The Musical!
Imagine, if you will, theatre that blends the irreverent energy of Monty Python and Kids in the Hall, the decorous poetry of Shakespeare, the absurdist zeal of French playwright Eugene Ionesco and the toe-tapping, finger snapping rhythms of your best off-Broadway show. These disparate dramatic elements come together in “Titus Andronicus: The Musical,” a liberal interpretation of Shakespeare’s bloodiest tragedy currently enjoying a revival at Denver’s Buntport Theatre.
The Denver-based theatre company has devoted itself to pushing the boundaries of comedy and dramatic convention since 1998, with plays and skits that are rooted simultaneously in a highbrow literary tradition and an uninhibited silliness. The Buntport’s productions have incorporated subjects ranging from the angst-ridden German novelist Franz Kafka to the Greek epic poet Homer.
For those who have had an aversion to Shakespeare’s lofty language and long-winded intrigue, the Buntport Theatre’s impertinent spin on one of the Bard’s most melodramatic plots is both refreshing and redemptive. The witty asides, striking sight gags, and brilliant feats of physical comedy breathe life into what is traditionally viewed as Shakespeare’s most unoriginal tragedy. The five players display a consummate energy and enthusiasm as they take on multiple roles and laboriously move their one piece of scenery, a converted Econoline van that serves as the center of action. This creativity and endless innovation render the unlikely parody entirely natural, as if Shakespeare had rewritten the ancient Roman drama specifically as a comedic vehicle.
And, of course, there’s the music. The play’s constant violence and high death toll make the original score all the more inappropriate and effective in its irreverence. In one of the drama’s most traditionally taut and disturbing moments, the title character must have his hand amputated in order to appease the emperor. In the Buntport’s send up, the tension is broken as the characters break into a tweaked version of “Somewhere Beyond the Sea.”
The troupe works out of a transformed warehouse, and the players expertly manipulate the intimate space to engage the audience. The viewers are exhorted to participate by the sheer immediacy of the action. When the music sounds, it is as if one is at a casual concert at a comfortable club. When the pitch of the players’ voices hit their heights, the onlookers are a forcible part of the action by their very proximity. Finally, when the comedy finds its stride, creating a deft balance between the high minded and the profanely wacky, one cannot help but become immersed in the lunacy of it all.
It is in their expert fusion of high drama and sheer silliness, their uncanny ability to reconcile the polar opposites of the stage that the Buntport troupe distinguishes itself as a group of comedians. This subtle and elusive equilibrium is what marks the best comedy and the best comedians. The skill the Buntport players display in walking the line distinguish them not only as local notables, but as comedic performers worthy of national attention.
-Adam H. Goldstein, January 20, 2005, The Metropolitan
Westword- Bloody Good Fun
Buntport’s Titus Andronicus! The Musical still kills.
Going to the theater alone is depressing, so part of my job as a reviewer involves coaxing, bribing and seducing friends and family members into accompanying me. Over the years, I’ve come to rely on these companions — wise and perspicacious people all — even when their opinions clash with mine. They provide a sorely needed outside perspective, moments of insight, a salutary reminder that not everyone sees the world in the same way that I do.
It takes some thought, figuring out who should be invited to what. So-and-so likes big musicals; someone else is drawn to British comedy; this friend is in love with language; this one admires spectacle. If a friend has seen too many clunkers in a row, I try to sweeten the pot with a production I expect to be excellent (though predicting excellence is harder than you might think). Then again, many of my friends don’t mind a bad show, because we have so much fun slicing and dicing it afterward.
It’s telling that everyone who’s ever accompanied me to Buntport wants to go again. For Titus Andronicus! The Musical — a restaging of the hilarious production the Buntporters mounted a couple of years ago — I invited Linda, who had never before visited this cavernous theater warehouse space on the outskirts of town. Within minutes of our being seated, amid the general cachinnation of the audience, I heard her low, musical peals of laughter. “They’re really clever,” she murmured.
Titus Andronicus is a Shakespeare play so awful that for centuries, many scholars refused to believe that Shakespeare had actually written it. Forced to concede the point, they scrambled for explanations. It was co-written with someone else. It’s not really that bad. It’s a parody.
The plot alone is a howler. It involves the Roman conqueror, Titus, and his captive, Tamora, Queen of the Goths. There are lots of sons — Titus’s, Tamora’s, the sons of Saturninus, himself son of the Emperor. You also get lust, hate, revenge, rape, murder, mutilation and rivers of blood. Each unbelievable plot twist seems to exist solely for the purpose of ushering in more mayhem.
In the Buntport version, five actors play all of the characters, using minimal costumes and scenery. There’s a board to one side of the stage adorned with caricatures of the actors’ faces. Beneath each face is a list of names, and above each name is a lightbulb. At the beginning of every scene, someone runs to the board and rapidly illuminates the relevant bulbs so you know which character the actor is supposed to be at that moment. Some characters, like Tamora’s sons, are represented by objects — in this case, a gas can and a radio. Evan Weissman plays only one role throughout — actually, multiple roles wrapped into one. This guy is called Someone Who Will Probably Die. Like Kenny in South Park, Weissman gets knocked off over and over again; unlike Kenny, he does it with a certain sneering élan.
In addition to the helpful character board and a second board on which the corpse score is noted in chalk, there’s a van in the middle of the space, painted to represent a house on one side and a forest on the other. This van is rolled from place to place by the actors as needed, while Brian Colonna, who plays Titus with insane energy, urges the audience to help by yelling, “Push, push.” Pretty soon it sounds as if you’re in an obstetrics ward with a horde of prospective fathers. And, yes, we do ultimately get a newborn on stage — Tamora’s son, who, because of his resemblance to her evil Moor lover, Aaron, she — Lady Macbeth-like — wants killed. (Aaron isn’t a Moor in the Buntport version; what gives away the child’s paternity is the fact that he’s inherited his father’s black mustache.)
The action is punctuated by song. At one point, Titus is convinced that he can save his two kidnapped sons by cutting off his hand. He, his brother and a third son compete for the honor of mutilation in a warbling trio. There’s also cheerful singing as Tamora instructs her sons in how to rape and mutilate Titus’s daughter Lavinia, played by Hannah Duggan.
The acting is frantically funny. Erik Edborg prances and weaves about the stage like an animated cartoon figure; Erin Rollman is a smoothly evil Tamora. No one can do silent exasperation better than Hannah Duggan: Her expression when Titus asks her to reveal the name of her assailants after the rape — she’s dripping blood and supposedly missing both hands and tongue — is priceless.
There’s no attempt to make a statement here, just a fast, effervescent evening of fun. “You’ll let me know when these guys do another production?” asked Linda as we left.
-Juliet Wittman, January 27, 2005, Westword
Denver Post- Buntport just a bit off with ‘McGuinn’
Every time the Buntport Theater takes to the stage with its latest original production, you can all but tape-measure the leap in its rapid development as an innovative, intelligent and comic young theater company.
But that does not equate to a satisfying evening for its audiences every time out.
Buntport is a 5-year-old company that presents only ensemble works of its own creation. A glorious musical adaptation of “Titus” performed in a transformational van put Buntport on the local map in 2001.
Last year’s Kabuki-esque “Cinderella,” featuring actors changing form and character before our eyes with a script written entirely in gibberish, helped Buntport win The Denver Post’s Ovation Award for best new work.
“McGuinn and Murry,” its 13th and latest production, is easy to like but nearly impossible to love.
In some ways the play is both spoof and homage to 1940s Raymond Chandler-style film noir. Its malleable magic is immediately evident not only in the way two terrific actors (Brian Colonna and Erin Rollman) slip in and out of the skins of eight (by my count) characters, but more impressively in the way one simple, large office desk spins, splits apart, expands, collapses and unfolds into seven distinct and often surreal settings.
But “McGuinn and Murry” is more clever in concept than in execution. It falters in the one department where Buntport has been above reproach. The writing, so consistently taut and clever in nearly every previous staging, lacks its usual confidence, precision and wit. The dialogue is uncharacteristically repetitive and only occasionally rises to the witty repartee of the period it satirizes (A terrific exception: “Let’s all put our pieces down before someone squirts metal”).
Worse, the constant yelling establishes a tone that goes beyond the tough-talking demeanor of the day and strangely into the realm of the cold and mean.
As a result, we have exasperating characters telling a tiresome story that becomes intricate to the point of oblivion.
McGuinn (Colonna) and Murry (Rollman) are a pair of hard-boiled detectives, partners seemingly patterned in the vein of Nick and Nora Charles, minus the sexual tension. They are so underemployed they make up fictitious crimes to solve. When McGuinn says, “Even our pretend cases are dull, doll,” he’s not kidding.
But one morning, a series of misunderstandings propel the plot on a course that is part “Maltese Falcon,” part “Murder By Death” and part “Three’s Company.” After his wife has gone missing, the whiskey-soured McGuinn comes to believe he may have played a part in her disappearance.
The charm of the production is also its downfall. Audiences watch as the realigned set pieces take us to unexpected locales. With four sticks and some rope, for example, the desktop cleverly becomes a boxing ring. While most settings are grounded in reality (a restaurant, nightclub, park), others are straight out of “Being John Malkovich” in the way they play with spatial distortion.
The desktop rises to become the front door of an apartment where, when McGuinn walks in, he immediately finds himself atop a kitchen counter. In the evening’s extended climax, the desk turns into a miniaturized skyline where, from our faraway vantage point, we see a chase played out with Matchbox cars.
But these brilliant transformations require so many long and choppy set changes that they sabotage the storytelling momentum. The payoff requires far too much patience.
But even on an awkward opening night, it was clear Rollman and Colonna are two of the best and smartest performers working in Denver.
Rollman has the most fun of the two, playing characters such as an uptight Murry, McGuinn’s ditsy wife Budge and an uncanny “Fat Man” – an oxygen-deprived old fight fixer. She also has the best lines, such as when, as Budge, she discovers a letter advising McGuinn to get rid of her. “I don’t think my husband should be receiving a letter like this … not at the house, anyway,” she says in a sublime moment.
Colonna’s Phillip Marlowe-like McGuinn draws somewhat on Humphrey Bogart, Robert Mitchum and Jackie Gleason, but he’s at his best when he’s simply being himself.
There is every likelihood that with pros like Colonna and Rollman, “McGuinn and Murry” might still find the right comic tone. But even if it is not Buntport’s best work, Buntport on an off-night is still better than a night at many other theaters in town.
-John Moore, January 09, 2004, Denver Post
Boulder Daily Camera- Noirish ‘McGuinn and Murry’ is clever, but that’s it
Buntport Theater is a group of young theater artists who located to Denver after going to school together in Colorado Springs. The company has carved out a niche for itself locally with a clever brand of comedy and a reputation for prolific output since it moved into its current space in 2001.
And, as evidenced by last week’s opening, Buntport already is an important addition to the local theater scene, if for no other reason than its youngish audience, significant for an art form that tends to rely on an older crowd for its patronage. The opening night sell-out crowd for “McGuinn and Murry,” the company’s 13th original production, was made up largely of people in their 20s and early 30s, most of whom already were familiar with and sold on Buntport’s particular sense of humor.
In “McGuinn and Murry” that sense of humor is equal parts silly and clever. It adds up to an admirable production, but one that doesn’t leave a lasting impression.
The play is done in 1940s crime novel style, a la Raymond Chandler and his noirish stories. McGuinn (Brian Colonna) and Murry (Erin Rollman) are partners in their own detective firm. When they can’t drum up any business they resort to creating some of their own. Murry sends a playful note to McGuinn’s home, but Mrs. McGuinn intercepts it and suspects her husband is cheating on her. Mrs. McGuinn has a lover herself, but nonetheless, her suspicions drive her dramatic accusations, which set the quirky detectives into investigative mode.
While Rollman and Colonna star in “McGuinn and Murry,” the company’s five other members – Hannah Duggan, Erik Edborg, Matt Petraglia, SamAnTha Schmitz and Evan Weissman – also receive writing, design and directing credit.
There’s a vibrancy to the group’s effort, including the writing. The script is as smart as it is whimsical, a mix of postmodern irony and hard-boiled ’40s repartee. McGuinn longs to get “the dust of this dirty town off my feet,” but he’s also aware that his current investigation “folds in on itself in a self-reflective manner,” a wink to the audience that he’s aware of the show’s noirish conventions.
And the genius of the play is that the whole thing – the dialogue, the plot, the characters and even the set – keeps folding in on itself in a self-reflective manner. The main stage piece at first serves as the door and office table for the McGuinn and Murry agency, but the contraption, built with several hidden compartments and attachments, unfolds and refolds into the McGuinn’s kitchen, a nightclub, a park bench, an Italian restaurant, and a boxing ring.
Likewise, the actors play dual characters who are mirror reflections of each other – Murry and Mrs. McGuinn are dead ringers for each other, as are McGuinn and Pauly, Mrs. McGuinn’s lover. And the dialogue is sprinkled with funny little lines where the actors comment on what’s taking place with their characters or the story.
One of the best scenes comes when Colonna and Rollman maneuver the set piece into a cityscape that serves as a backdrop for a road trip. They move matchbox-sized cars along a dirt miniature dirt road that sprawls out before the city while playing seven characters who inhabit the cars.
Overall, Colonna and Rollman succeed at pulling off the era’s style, the sharp wise-guy tone done in that ’40s noirish mode. Both understand where the humor is in the script and play it with ease. And they don’t miss a beat as they work the set into its different configurations, no small feat.
Ultimately though, cleverness is all “McGuinn and Murry” has going for it. Great comedy sheds some light on the human condition, however whimsical. But this show’s creators are content to serve up whimsy and cleverness for their own sake. As a story, it’s too convoluted to make a deep impression, and while the show is good for a laugh, it’s neither a lasting nor a cathartic laugh. It’s like a meal that tastes good, but still leaves you hungry.
-Mark Collins, January 9, 2004, Boulder Daily Camera
Westword- Detecting Noir • Buntport stalks laughter
McGuinn and Murry is a spoof of those ’40s detective movies in which the men wore fedoras and the women had gams. It’s a lighthearted, skimming take on the genre that’s neither cliche-ridden nor weighted by scholarship. The helium that keeps this smart, entertaining trifle aloft is Buntport Theater Company’s irrepressible inventiveness.
A pair of washed-up detectives slump around their dusty office. The phone never rings. No shadowed, mysterious, cigarette-holder-wielding blonde ever appears at the door. McGuinn is a onetime prizefighter who disgraced himself by throwing a match. Murry is a tough broad, given to barking out orders. To pass the time and keep their wits sharp, the two P.I.s try to stump each other with hypothetical cases. Murry sets McGuinn a puzzler that involves a letter sent to his home, but the letter gets into the wrong hands; soon McGuinn is frantically pursuing what he believes to be a real case — in which he is somehow the suspect — while Murry applauds the veracity of what she perceives as his performance.
Obviously, there’s a lot of playing with frames of reality here, and transformation rules. Brian Colonna and Erin Rollman, who play McGuinn and Murry, respectively, take on many additional personae, signaling the changes through adjustments in voice and posture, or with props that serve as a kind of shorthand. Colonna assumes a black eye patch and becomes the lover of McGuinn’s wife, Budgie. It takes only a change of footwear, a fluffing of her blouse and a shuffling off of Murry’s severe jacket for Rollman to metamorphose into the breathy adulteress. The set is transformed with the same economy and dexterity. Everything evolves from the office’s hefty desk and its two chairs. Panels slide aside; boxes are opened and props tossed in or whisked out of them. The desk becomes the kitchen of McGuinn’s home, complete with stove, cabinets and a clothesline sporting a tabbed rubber girdle. With a little more manipulation, the desk is a bar, a cityscape, a park bench, the lair of a fat, wheezing Mafia reprobate apparently based on Marlon Brando. Much of the evening’s entertainment stems from the surprising and creative shifts in character and set.
Conventions are created, then casually broken. For example, the one door on the set is raised and appears to open onto the top of the investigators’ desk or, in the household scene, the kitchen counter. I’d guess this was the only way Buntport could make the desk-becomes-everything-else concept work structurally. When the door first opens, we’re surprised momentarily, but the two actors play it straight, and we come to accept the anomaly. No sooner have we done so than Budgie snaps at her husband to stop walking on the countertop.
There’s a knowingness to all of this, a self-referential quality. At one point, parodying Lana Turner’s famous line about whistling from To Have and Have Not, Rollman explains to Colonna how to exit: “You just put your hand on the knob, and you walk out…the door.” The peculiarities of the door in question only underline the humor. If there’s a misstep, Rollman and Colonna treat it as if it were intentional, and somehow their skill and assurance, along with the mocking quality of the entire show, make the moment doubly funny.
Props take on a life of their own, and scale becomes meaningless. When all of the characters need to meet at the park, they arrive in a succession of toy cars, which are guided over the surface of a kind of relief map by the actors.
The only problem is that the set changes, while fun to watch, take too long. The dialogue is witty and bright, but it’s not so deep that we want to contemplate a scene’s final lines for several minutes. A piece like this demands speed.
Both actors are talented, but it’s really Rollman, with her elastic face and ability to morph from character to character, who carries the show. She gives life and spirit to each of her characters: mannish Murry, flirty Budgie, the creepily disembodied-seeming fat man. There’s something unformed about her stage persona, as if she were just waiting to flow into one role or another. The characters she creates can be hard-edged and defined or oddly amorphous. She can make you laugh by raising an eyebrow, and she seems to know instinctively just how long to hold the expression for maximum effect without milking it. Sometimes she appears to have the unfinished, partially defined quality of a James Thurber cartoon. Colonna, too, has wonderful moments — particularly the flashback during which he re-creates the thrown fight, striving mightily to help McGuinn’s wimpy opponent score a hit.
Like all of Buntport’s scripts, this one was created (through both writing and improvisation) by the entire group — Hannah Duggan, Erik Edborg, Matt Petraglia, SamAnTha Schmitz and Evan Weissman — in addition to Rollman and Colonna. And, like all their work, it has inspired moments along with a few that are less inspired.
The first time I visited the Buntport Theater, there were six people in the audience. Every time I return, I see that the numbers have grown. And this is a crowd you can’t pigeonhole: children, teenagers, young adults and their parents, entire families that have arrived together, people who look like students, businessfolk, bus drivers, intellectuals, bums or bohemians. Buntport is attracting a following not because everything they do is completely successful, but because their work is sophisticated, welcoming, unpretentious and, above all, original.
-Juliet Wittman, January 7, 2004, Westword
Denver Post- Buntport injects Bard’s ‘Titus’ with heads-up (and off) absurdity
Shakespeare certainly wasn’t known for his absurdist wit. He was a funny guy, no doubt, but he left absurdity to be conquered by Ionesco.
But through the creative pathways of others, most of Shakespeare’s plays have been transformed into different beasts from what Shakespeare originally imagined. While many directors and writers think themselves brilliant for taking a play and changing the era and aesthetics (think Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 film “William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet”), more impressive is the Buntport Theater’s “Titus Andronicus! The Musical,” which bends the Bard’s bloodiest play into an irreverent, sometimes-musical journey into the absurd.
“Titus!” is a remount of last year’s production. It takes the familiar story of “Titus” and gives it a smart, “South Park” twist. “Titus!” ingeniously weaves together Shakespeare’s story of tough love and vengeance and the theater company’s penchant for the high- and low-brow laugh line. Amazingly, “Titus” was adapted locally by Buntport, and the inventive adaptation proves that the theater company’s age is illusory – they have talent far beyond their years.
Since “Titus” is no “Hamlet,” a recap of the story is a must. Buntport smartly handles this in a (somewhat) succinct wrapup on the back of its program. Titus, the great Roman general, returns from war where he lost 22 of his sons. Titus’ daughter, Lavinia, is promised to the new Roman emperor, Saturninus, but is in love with his brother, Bassianus. Saturninus rejects her and then takes on a seductive, Andronicus-hating prisoner, Tamora, as his bride.
Tamora’s two sons and her secret boyfriend, Aaron, set out for revenge against Titus and start by killing Bassianus, framing Titus’ sons for the deed, and then cutting off Lavinia’s hands and tongue. Saturninus tells Titus he can have his sons back in exchange for one of the Andronicus’ hands. Titus cuts off his hand, and, in return, receives only the decapitated heads of his sons – an exchange that brings on his insanity.
One of Titus’ few living sons, Lucius, is sent off to gather an army to help the Andronicuses claim Rome’s throne, but before he returns, Tamora comes to Titus with her two sons – disguised – to dig him in an even deeper hole. But Titus sees the lie, kills Tamora’s sons, and bakes their heads into pies, which she later eats.
The Buntport production is put forward as just another day on the road for Professor P.S. McGoldstien and his van of traveling players. The troupe performs out of a van, painted differently on each side to make for varying backdrops. Each actor plays multiple characters, designated by which light bulb is illuminated on the character board. For example, actor Brian Colonna, in a most excellent Oedipal twist, plays both Titus and Lavinia’s lover, Bassianus, depending on which name is lit up.
The music, which takes familiar tunes such as “Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps” or “Oops! … I Did It Again” and adds knowingly bad lyrics, gives the production an elevated sense of theatricality. Not only is this part-farce, but it’s a musical, with familiar songs and choreography to boot. And the cast pulls off each song with the needed overdramatic flair. When Hannah Duggan’s Lavinia emerges from her appendage “trimming,” she mumbles her way through Britney’s “Oops!” with bloody shirt cuffs and blood spilling out from of her mouth. Later, Colonna’s Titus sings, “I’ll cut off more extremities if that will bring (my sons) back any sooner,” using a sword for a cane, to the tune of “Beyond the Sea.”
“See, ladies and gentleman, we handle violence with delicacy,” says Colonna’s McGoldstien with great comedic timing.
The rest of the cast is equally strong. Duggan, who excels as Lavinia, is wonderful, especially in her tongue-less scenes that rely on her non-verbal skills. Erik Edborg, who takes on Saturninus and Lucius, is best as the puppets that are Tamora’s two sons – and also two of the play’s absolute treasures.
Chiron and Demetrius are Tamora’s sons who trim Lavinia and eventually are cooked into pies by Titus, and they were made into puppets – one a gas can, the other an old-model car radio/ashtray by the Buntport crew. The transformation adds cult-brand humor to the mix. And right when it seems like the laughter is endless, one of the final scenes, where Aaron confesses to his evildoing, lacks flow and sinks the tail end of the production to the dregs of bad writing.
“Titus!” is very un-Shakespearean, but still this irreverent romp is something the Bard would very well adore and, possibly, envy.
-Ricardo Baca, February 19, 2003, Denver Post
Westword- Titus All Rightus!
Buntport’s version of Shakespeare’s forgotten yarn strikes a bloody good note
Titus Andronicus has always bothered Shakespeare scholars, some of whom simply refused to believe that the great man actually wrote the blood-drenched monstrosity. In his famous Tales From Shakespeare, Charles Lamb noted that Titus was “not acknowledged” by the critics whose assessment of dates he used, “nor indeed by any author of credit.” Later thinkers reluctantly acknowledged Shakespeare’s authorship but have suggested that Titus was a rewrite of an older and much worse play. Others, defending the tragedy, pointed out that there are lots of corpses in Hamlet and King Lear, as well as spurious gore, and that Greek tragedy is full of rape, murder and cannibalism. Harold Bloom, on the other hand, believes that the play is an intentional parody, a Shakespearean sendup of rival playwright Christopher Marlowe. In any case, almost nobody stages Titus these days. Audiences are too apt to titter at the forgettable merry-go-round of posturing, declaiming characters, betrayals and counter-betrayals, and the cascade of murders and mutilations.
But the folks at Buntport Theater have figured it out. They’re presenting Titus Andronicus as Titus Andronicus! The Musical. Why has no one ever thought of this before? It means that when Titus is told he can save the lives of two of his sons by chopping off his hand (don’t ask — it wouldn’t make sense even if I gave you more context), we get a stirring masculine trio as he, his brother and another (currently unendangered) son compete for the honor of self-mutilation, complete with stirring choruses and natty little rhythmic steps. “Nay, come, agree whose hand shall go along,” says evil Aaron, who has set this all up, “for fear they die before their pardon come.” And when Titus, having killed the wicked Tamora’s wicked sons, makes plans to bake their heads and serve them in pastry to their mother, he flourishes a knife in his remaining hand and musically debates the recipe in a zesty French accent.
This is Titus Andronicus as staged by Professor P.S. Goldstien — aka Brian Colonna — and four actors, out of the back of a van that occupies Buntport Theater’s cavernous and otherwise empty playing area. Each actor plays more than one of Titus‘s several dozen roles, and there’s a helpful placard with pictures, names and lightbulbs that get turned on and off during the action so you can figure out who’s playing whom at any given moment. There’s also a chalkboard to track the corpses. This doesn’t mean you can actually follow the twists and turns of the plot — it’s hard to do that in any production — but it does give you a broad idea of what’s happening, which is all you really need.
The van is tricked out with immense ingenuity. One side is painted like a forest, the other like a building. Canvases slide up and down inside the door, platforms are pulled from the side and back. Periodically, the entire cast gets together to push the vehicle from one place to another. They do this with energy, élan and high good humor, so that a fall or mishap becomes part of the performance. It isn’t just that Buntport’s is an interpretation of an inexplicable piece of our literary inheritance (and for all its lunacy, it is an interpretation). It’s that the approach to the work — the collaboration and improvisation with which it began — is valid theater in itself. You see the way the group has chosen to present a particular speech, but you also see how the actor speaking it stumbled (or strolled) into his interpretation and what he now feels about it. There’s Shakespeare’s text, and there’s also Buntport’s commentary — overt or implied — on that text.
Objects take on a life of their own. In the night scenes, a stuffed owl perches on the van’s rearview mirror. When someone comments that “the leaves are green,” several skeletal umbrellas, their spokes covered with leaves, unfurl. Blood spurts, dribbles and pools. Tamora’s sons, Demetrius and Chiron, are represented by a gasoline can and a car radio; their speech comes courtesy of Erik Edborg, who acts as their puppeteer. Later, the human-flesh pies speak, too.
Buntport Theater is the creation of several graduates of Colorado College — Brian Colonna, Erik Edborg, Hannah Duggan, Erin Rollman, Matt Petraglia and Samantha Schmitz — who create their theater pieces collaboratively. Colonna, Edborg, Duggan and Rollman are the performers in Titus, along with Muni Kulasinghe. You want to see them at work, because this production is clever, inventive, and one of the funniest evenings of theater around. It’s also definitive. Which means you’ll never have to go see Titus Andronicus again.
-Juliet Wittman, February 13, 2003, Westword