Buntport Theater

Season 9

A large rabbit wearing a ratty robe and bunny slippers slumps in a lazy boy recliner. The floor is covered in newspaper.

Westword- Jugged Rabbit Stew is a hare-raising experience

Last produced four years ago, Jugged Rabbit Stew is one of Buntport’s best shows, a startling and peculiar mix of comedy, sadness, magic, craziness and erudition that only this troupe could produce. And this revival brings back Evan Weissman, a longtime member who left – sort of – a while back to create a political organization called Warm Cookies of the Revolution. “The plan would be if there are any remounts, we’ll try to have me involved as long as that’s possible,” he says. “It’s not like a clean break; I’m still around all the time, but I’m not working on the next show. I won’t write for that or be in it. It’s kind of like breaking away from family – even if you want to, you can’t. And I don’t want to.”

As for Warm Cookies, it’s “a civic health club,” he explains. “You go to a gym for physical health or church for spiritual health. This is a place to exercise your civic health, to discuss vital issues in a fun way. I think Buntport is a part of that. We’re trying to engage people; theater and art does that. But with Warm Cookies, it’s a little less abstract, and I’m interested in trying it out right now because I feel we’re on the precipice and need to push back pretty hard to create the world we want.”

Buntport has created quite a world in Jugged Rabbit Stew. Weissman plays Alec, the Amazing and All-Powerful, an impotent magician with rock-star delusions who can’t actually can’t perform a single trick without the help of the real creator of magic – Snowball, a scruffy, mean-spirited rabbit currently on strike. Snowball (Erik Edborg) spends his time stealing objects that have no meaning for him but whose loss will upset their rightful owners: a video of a student’s high-school graduation, for instance. He lives in a strange, bare place with an array of stolen objects suspended from the ceiling, a wall covered with overlapping newspapers, and several televisions on which he watches home movies – video of rabbits, that is. In addition to the inanimate objects he’s filched, he has stolen the legs of Marla, the magician’s assistant (Hannah Duggan), replacing them with the overall-clad limbs of a workman so that she can no longer dance. Also missing is Alec’s right Arm (played by Brian Colonna) which, detached from its owner, now wanders the world on its own. Snowball’s kleptomania has reached such dangerous levels that among his acquisitions is a cheerful young Woman (Erin Rollman) he spotted in the audience, fell in love with and spirited away to his lair.

Weissman says he’s glad he returned for this play “because it gives us the opportunity to be really silly and have a few genuine moments. And every actor wants to be a rock star, and this is my opportunity to fake that.” He likes the segment when the Arm falls in love and sings a duet (composed, like all the scintillating songs in the show, by Adam Stone). “That’s pretty great,” Weissman says, “the idea that this disembodied thing has thoughts and feelings of its own and a sense of fate and love. And I like the concluding bit when my arm gets put back on me, which is sad for Arm and his love, but kind of magical.”

All the action revolves around Snowball, who – despite his depradations on their persons – is profoundly loved by both Marla and Alec. He’s as complex a character as a man in a scruffy white bunny suit can be – constantly vengeful, but also terrified by the threat implied in the play’s title. While Arm, having found his love, proudly assumes the role of hero in an old-style Western, Snowball ponders his fate as tragic hero, and Woman prattles chirpily about Aristotelian heroes, Byronic heroes and anti-heroes. Each member of Buntport brings a unique and specific quality to the stage; Weissman has often been, paradoxically, both the most sincere and the nuttiest. It’s a delight to watch his Alec, dauntless and cheerful despite the missing arm, prancing around in yellow shoes and singing his heart out about “That Special Hare.”

“It feels great to be on stage with each other,” he says. “We have a common aesthetic; we think the same things are funny. We’ve worked together so long, there’s something seamless about it.”

-Juliet Wittman, February 27, 2014, Westword

A man in a brightly colored suit stands talking. One of his arms appears to be separated from his body and is putting a toy gun in his pocket. Seated in the background, a woman dressed as a magician’s assistant but wearing mechanics pants looks unimpressed.

Denver Post- Buntport Theater’s Jugged Rabbit Stew, a bit overcooked but tasty

The Buntport Theater ensemble members are among the smartest folk in the room. No, not in some superior and arch way. Instead, the inventive group – now in its 13 season – engages the lunacy of the world, literature and theater from an often absurdist, very meta remove. There’s a generous humility to their twisted undertakings.

There are hits. There are moments ever so slightly off the mark. There is never a shortage of ideas.

Through the next two weekends, Buntport revisits its 2010 “Jugged Rabbit Stew.”

The tale about an angry, brooding bunny named Snowball was their second musical undertaken with composer/lyricist Adam Stone.

“Jugged Rabbit Stew” is at times a little chewy, a bit overcooked, but there are many moments of earned pathos, dark humor and jagged music.

When we first meet Snowball, he’s in a foul mood and a dirtier bathrobe. Actor Erik Edborg does edgy work encased in the grungy bunny costume. Think the Grinch, only more self-aware and meaner.

His deep funk has put the kibosh on Alec the Amazing and All Powerful and assistant Mystical Marla’s magic act.

Evan Weissman portrays the hapless magician. How out of sorts? Let’s just say that Brian Colonna is amusing as Arm.

Pilfered goods hang from the rafters of the captivating and eerie set. An Electrolux, panty hose, an umbrella, Victrola phonograph and Woman.

Erin Rollman spends the play on a chair suspended in air. Her character Woman hasn’t fallen down a rabbit hole, exactly, more like a hovel. And yet, she’s full of sweet wonder at her good fortune. Before being added to Snowball’s cache, she was a fan, an avid audience member.

By the way, there is a reason a tattered copy of James Joyce’s “Ulysses” also hangs from the rafters. Our hero – who is not, we repeat, not a hare – will get his full measure.

Will we learn what makes him ticked off?

Sure he’s astoundingly flawed. But is he also tragic?

-Lisa Kennedy, February 21, 2014, Denver Post

A large rabbit wearing a ratty robe and bunny slippers squats on a floor covered with newspapers. The rabbit holds a microphone and sings.

Lowry News- Jugged Rabbit Stew

Theatre of the Absurd is alive and well at Buntport where the talented, clever cast and crew have revived their original production, Jugged Rabbit Stew. As created and performed by actors Erik Edborg, Hannah Duggan, Erin Rollman, Eric Weissman, and Brian Colonna along with their talented crew, this musical comedy has all the elements of true absurdity theatre. The characters are caught in a hopeless situation where they engage in dialogue filled with cliches, wordplay and nonsense. The cast sings and clowns getting the audience to laugh as the meaninglessness of the human condition and man’s animal nature and cruelty are exposed.

Snowball, played by Erik Edborg, is a rabbit with magical powers. Not a kindly “Harvey”, this rabbit is in an alcoholic slump that is wreaking havoc on the magician Alec, the Amazing, and Mystical Maria, his assistant. They both struggle with certain physical changes Snowball has perpetrated upon them. Nevertheless, they continue to love him and try to bring him back to sobriety and to make him become the sort of rabbit they want him to be. Snowball, increasing fearful of entrapment and death, circumvents their attempts to change him. He focusses on his collection, an odd assortment of items that he has “gathered” from others in an effort to make their former owners unhappy. Among this assemblage of stuff is Woman, artfully performed by Erin Rollman. Suspended above the stage along with the other items in the collection, Woman sits in a chair for the entire play. In spite of this limitation Ms. Rollman skillfully creates a complex character. She ultimately becomes the agent of change that Alec and Maria have been seeking.

Hannah Duggan and Evan Weissman are very funny as Mystical Maria and Alec. Brian Colonna, as Arm, is so good that one begins to believe that Arm is actually human. Erik Edborg’s costume and his sure acting abilities lend credibility to his role as the tragic hero. The entire cast gave spirited and professional performances. Their singing was flawless – fun to watch and to hear.

The music, while tuneful and even toe tapping, seemed to parody much of the music in the musicals of the last thirty years. Kudos to Adam Stone for mocking the likes of Schonberg, Boublil, and Webber. The theater at 717 Lipan is small and intimate enough that amplification is unnecessary and whenever Mr. Edborg was singing, the amplification was distracting. Snowball either held the microphone too close or was singing too loud. Often it was difficult to understand the words he was singing. Overall the musical was excellent from start to finish.

-Nancy A. Murphy, February 12, 2014, Lowry News

 

A man in a brightly colored suit stands talking. One of his arms appears to be separated from his body and is putting a toy gun in his pocket. Seated in the background, a woman dressed as a magician’s assistant but wearing mechanics pants looks unimpressed.

Colorado BackStage- Jugged Rabbit Stew, the musical

When the magician pulls the rabbit out of his hat, no one thinks about the rabbit. It’s the magician who basks in the gloried applause. After all, he pulls a rabbit out of an empty hat.

Therein lies the problem.

Who is this rabbit? Isn’t he part of the magic? Or is he, after all, the magic itself?

The collaborative Buntportians, along with Adam Stone composer and lyricist, decided it was about time to seek out the rabbit and oh what a surprise they let themselves in for. The result is Jugged Rabbit Stew, the musical playing at Buntport through June 19. Charming, delightful, poignant, thoughtful Jugged Rabbit Stew is couched with humorous entanglements of the serious and even with just one-week left, should not be missed because of its electrifying creativity.

Discovering Snowball, eagerly and delightfully played by Erik Edborg, although there is no sign of Edborg anywhere to be found, there is a magic rabbit that has had it with the hat trick. After all, who gets the credit and glory? Not Snowball. It’s Alec the Amazing and All-Powerful, deliciously played by Evan Weissman.

Schlepping around in pajamas, robe, and bunny slippers, Snowball falls into a deep depression. Eating only mashed potatoes, wanting to be left alone to watch home movies over and over again.

Mystical Marla loves Snowball, and begs him to return to the magic show. Hannah Duggan takes on Mystical Marla with good reason. Magical as Snowball is, sometimes he doesn’t always complete his eye-popping stunts. In sawing off her legs during the last show, he re-connected Marla with a pair of man’s legs. Having trouble controlling them, they don’t always do what Marla wants them do.

All Alec ever wanted to do was to be a magic man. He wanted to be appreciated and loved. Nothing worked, until he found Snowball in a cage by a dumpster. The magic belonged to Snowball, and Alec ate it up knowing full well, deep inside, he “needed someone to complete him”.

Alec and Marla would do anything for Snowball, they’d become whatever he wanted them to become, and they’d be whatever he wanted them to be.

Snowball could care less.

Not only did he connect Marla with the wrong legs, he made Alec disappear. In the reappearance Alec was missing his right arm, which independently appeared on its own. Dressed in black from head to foot except for his right arm, Brian Colonna plays The Arm with delectability. It’s The Arm, dressed in red that is seen, heard and paid attention to. Unbelievable as it sounds, the Arm richly becomes a character all to its own. You hear him, see him, believe him, and, oh, the arm has much to say.

In his cock-eyed upside world of confused Fate, Snowball takes great delight in collecting objects and hanging them from the ceiling. And he does this because? That’s what Marla wants to know. Why?

The latest acquisition just happens to be a woman in a rocking chair. Alec’s biggest Fan, she attended many of the magic shows. For a while she even gave Snowball hope. Something went sour, and she ended up hanging from his ceiling.

Erin Rollman stuns the senses with her professionalism, sitting in a rocking chair, hung by cables for the entire show, Gaa Gaa over Alec, finding a wondrous sense of love with The Arm, playing a bright-eyed simplistic little girl in a woman’s body awed by the magic of an insolent broken hearted rabbit and a starry-eyed magic-less magician competing for attention from The Arm.

Buntport’s enchanted imaginative world draws in the audience with exquisitely defined characters expertly brought to life by imaginative, definitive artists.

As Marla presses Snowball for the why of the collection, this encased world explores questions of love, defining identity, fate verses destiny verses choosing one’s own path, and what happens to the self when a person wishes to become whatever anyone else wants them to become. And what happens when someone who has no magic, but hungers for it, steals the magic in one’s life for credit? Intriguing how this make believe world coincides with today’s society.

Jugged Rabbit Stew is simply a brilliant piece of work that amuses, tugs at the heartstrings, and with clever lyrics points the thought process into bold directions.

With his grouchy, self-annihilating, depressed self, one still wants to reach out and hug the rabbit. He, who hates to be petted since a little girl who just wanted to love him, petted him once too often.

Snowball can’t forget his mother and father. In a clever piece with rabbit marionettes he finds himself singing with them, Oh father you look so free. Oh mother, am I what you thought I’d be? His mother responds, My son, there is no limit to how great you’ll become. By now the magic seems meaningless to Snowball, and he begins to see his fate float toward a less desired direction.

Jugged Rabbit Stew features the talents of Steven J. Burge, GerRee Hinshaw, Andrew Horwitz, Clarity McKay, and off stage SamAnTha Schmitz. Gypsy Ames deserves credit for co-creating Snowball’s mask. After Snowball’s disappointing ride to glory, far be it from me to ignore credit when credit is due.

A fun game for Jugged Rabbit Stew exists on Buntport.com. The CD is available for purchase for $10.00 at Buntport, and it’s worth every dime.

There’s only one weekend remaining in the run of this brilliant production. They have been playing to sold- out houses. No surprise here. Buntport’s Jugged Rabbit Stew provides a refreshing, humorous, poignant slice of life in a wondrous make-believe world that will not want to go away. It makes sense. Think twice the next time you want to hug a bunny once too many times. Magic gets thrown away all too often just because it isn’t recognized for what it is.

-Holly Bartges, June 15, 2010 , Colorado BackStage

A large rabbit wearing a ratty robe and bunny slippers slumps in a lazy boy recliner. There is a television on the floor infornt of him and two more hanging above him. The floor is covered with newspaper.

Blogspot.com- Buntport’s ‘Rabbit’: musical a dream awake

We have moved into full-on hallucinatory territory.

Buntport’s final production of its 10th season is “Jugged Rabbit Stew,” an original musical that is fascinating, entertaining and thought-provoking in the Buntport tradition.

Except that there is no tradition. Every time it seems that the collaborative is about to lapse into a house style, the group subverts itself, turns its approach inside out, pies itself in the face. In a culture where art and entertainment is churned out with assembly-line predictability, Buntport keeps things fresh and alive.

Just as Buntport is a theater in the existential sense that it’s a group of people that explores the human condition live onstage, “Stew” is a musical in that it contains songs. Everything else is up for grabs. The plot is marginal, the characters are, literally, fragmented, tangential speculations abound, and in the end the whole contraption just kind of drives off the edge of a cliff.

It’s great!

The central figure is a giant magical rabbit, played by Erik Edborg, clad in ears, paws and anger, chugging booze from a hutch’s water dispenser. He is the deus ex machina – ruling the others on stage like a sociopathic Harvey, or the furry, fanged Frank from “Donnie Darko.”

His victims/cohabitants in his newspaper-lined rectangle of a room are his magician, Alec the Amazing and All-Powerful (Evan Weissman), magician’s assistant Mystical Marla (Hannah Duggan), Erin Rollman as a Woman suspended in space, along with a handful of props, above the stage for the length of the show, and Brian Colonna as Alec’s missing right arm.

Yep.

The score is by Adam Stone, who previously collaborated with Buntport last year on another original musical, “Seal. Stamp. Send. Bang.” He’s a facile composer who’s conversant in the modern musical style – flowing, pop-catchy, swooping ballads – as well as genre pieces (for instance, a gentle country/Western ode, “Hand in Hand”).

More importantly, you can tell from his writing and arrangements that his skills are extremely broad and deep: his work simultaneously reinforces the form’s traditions and asks pointed questions of it – for instance, how do you make rhymed couplets out of the chaotic premise, and singable ones at that?

Yet, Stone and Buntport do so – like Cole Porter on acid. Buntport’s members can sing, too, which is a more complicated task than the layperson might think. Besides staying tuneful and in key, a musical performer has to sell the number, stay in character, move through choreography … and breathe. Daunting, but they do it. And numbers such as “When Love is There to Blind You,” “Take Me, Break Me, Make Me Something More,” and “That Special Hare” are stand-alone good.

(Um, confession – I have been playing the cast album in the car and singing along … loudly. That’s an endorsement – CDs are available for purchase in the lobby!)

There’s no plot to summarize. Every character suffers from incompleteness. Everyone wants to be something else — as one lyric states, “To be the version of myself/That I want the world to see.” Amazing Alec’s right arm states, “I don’t have a pocket – that’s my tragic flaw,” and most of the others mull over the tragic-hero state and the fate implied for such a figure during the show. Death, fate and love are the themes here, and they are covered from a multitude of angles as the show careens forward.

Mystical Marla sports the bottom half of a car mechanic, thanks to Snowball’s magical wrath. Ditto for Alec, who can’t do much prestidigitation without his missing limb. Meanwhile, Arm (Colonna somehow performs covered in black, save for his brightly clad appendage) falls in love with Woman; everyone is at odds with each other, and all clamor for love and resolution from Snowball, who can only perceive himself as prey.

The abrupt and brutal and artfully staged conclusion still has me wondering what the hell happened. In honor of it, I won’t offer the usual sweeping statement or grandiose deduction or satisfying summation that form the final-paragraph-ending “kicker” of a review; “Stew” is a good, thought-provoking show and you should go and experience it.

Excuse me, I need to go drive around and sing now.

-Brad Weismann, June 10, 2010, bradweismann.blogspot.com

A large rabbit wearing a ratty robe and bunny slippers squats on a floor covered with newspapers. The rabbit holds a microphone and sings.

Jugged Rabbit Stew

THE SINGING MAGICIAN

Alec the Amazing and All-Powerful Magician and his assistant Mystical Marla have had to put their magic shows on hold because Snowball, the white rabbit that is supposed to emerge from the top hat, is depressed. (more…)

A large rabbit wearing a ratty robe and bunny slippers squats on a floor covered with newspapers. The rabbit holds a microphone and sings.

North Denver Tribune- Buntport’s second musical dark, hilarious, and brilliant

It almost seems unfair – each time I go to Buntport Theater, I expect something unique, unexpected, clever, hilarious, thoughtful, challenging – in short, I expect brilliance. This would be unfair, except that I have yet to be disappointed. Somehow, the six Buntporters are constantly able to expand what they do – they rarely go in the same direction twice. And their works are not just thrown together – they are complete, well-developed and structured stories that are engaging and insightful. Their latest creation, a musical called Jugged Rabbit Stew, is dark, funny, bizarre, thought-provoking, and edgy.

Jugged Rabbit Stew is about Snowball, a rabbit that is pulled out of a magician’s hat. The twist is that snowball has real magical powers. This makes the shows he does with Alec the Amazing and All-Powerful magician popular and successful – until something goes very wrong. Snowball is not a happy, cute bunny – he is angry, cynical, and mean. He has a bizarre collection of things, which exists as a result of his efforts to make others unhappy. He randomly rearranges body parts on several other characters for the same reason. But when he “collects” a fan of the magic show, he is frustrated that she refuses to be unhappy.

This is a musical, and composer, lyricist, and music director Adam Stone has written a nice variety of songs that fit into the story well. The music is prerecorded, and the quality of the singing is somewhat variable, but certainly good enough for the intent of the show. It also allowed for some very creative and funny ways of using microphones. And as with any good musical, the songs add another layer of emotion and context to the story. Buntport’s collaborative directing is excellent. The formal layout of the action on stage reinforces the interplay between the characters and provides an interesting and constantly changing visual image. The six members of the company are all involved throughout the development, so they understand the story perfectly and can integrate all aspects of the show completely. The pacing is spot-on, the musical numbers are integrated seamlessly and cleverly, and everything operates as a cohesive whole.

The acting is strong, with the story adding challenges that the company rises to. Eric Edborg is Snowball, and performs with a rabbit mask that covers part of his face. He more than makes up for this by using his voice and the rest of his body to communicate. He is angry and bitter, but also captures just enough of the essence of being a rabbit to make the character work without overdoing it. Hannah Duggan is Mystical Marla, the beautiful assistant with misplaced body part problems. Duggan’s movement convinces us that her body is not all her own – resulting in great physical comedy. Evan Weissman is the magician Alec – less his right arm. Weissman is the consummate showman, falling naturally into a presentational announcer’s voice frequently. Brian Colonna is Alec’s Right Arm (don’t try and figure it out – just know that it works). The two work together well, and get into some very funny arguments. Both also handle the restrictions on their movement and expressiveness very well. As the Woman, Erin Rollman is bubbly, enthusiastic, happy, and romantic, but also has more. She adeptly becomes serious as things progress.

As with all aspects of their shows, the six (the five actors listed above and SamAnTha Schmitz “off stage”) design the set, lighting, and costumes. The set, nicely framed by a proscenium of drapes, includes all sorts of things hanging suspended from above, and a floor covered in newspapers. The lighting provides good illumination, and includes some nice effects for some of the songs. The costumes are notable as well; especially Snowball’s mask, and the integrated costumes of Alec and his Arm. In Jugged Rabbit Stew, Buntport creates a sort of alternative universe, which is a lot like our own, but with a few important differences. But while the story exists in a different world, it is true to that world – and the feelings, relationships, and situations are authentic and relate to our world. While this may sound impossible (if you have never been to Buntport), it works flawlessly. The show is about fate and how we deal with what life gives us, and asks the question of whether we can control our destiny – or maybe suggests we can only control it by fulfilling it. It is funny, edgy, deep, unpredictable, and in the end, meaningful – and certainly worth seeing.

-Craig Williamson, June 3, 2010, North Denver Tribune

A large rabbit wearing a ratty robe and bunny slippers squats on a floor covered with newspapers. The rabbit holds a microphone and sings.

Denver Post- Waiter! There’s a Grinch in my “Jugged Rabbit Stew”

The Buntport Theater ensemble has taken audiences down the rabbit hole before, but never to the nether regions of “Jugged Rabbit Stew,” its wonderfully weird if ideologically troubling new musical, written in collaboration with impressive young pop songwriter Adam Stone.

The premise is precocious: A magician’s rabbit has quit the act because he’s depressed. He’s a guy dressed in a bunny suit, down to his cute little floppy-eared slippers. And he’s named Snowball. Cute, right? But in many ways, this ambitious piece culminating Buntport’s ninth season of all-original works is its most disturbing to date.

Imagine, if you will, a man who’s grown so fatalistic that the only joy he gets in life comes from stealing and hoarding items precious to others. Only he’s a bunny. And not some pwetty widdle wabbit, either; he’s the most surly, hateful hare since “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” Think the Grinch meets Harvey. If Pee-wee had a big adventure in a Kafka nightmare, it would be “Jugged Rabbit Stew.”

The setting, based on the newspapers lining the floor, must be Snowball’s cage. The drunken and cantankerous master of this house, free-range yet clearly trapped, wiles away his days watching home movies of his dead rabbit parents. It’s Erik Edborg in a masterful performance that unnervingly parallels his most recent role as a sotted Eugene O’Neill – only here, he occasionally breaks into song.

Suspended in midair are seemingly random objects covered in sheets – a vacuum cleaner, a toaster, a bike … and a woman, sitting patiently in a hanging rocking chair (Erin Rollman). Her unveiling is the first of many signature examples of Buntport’s uncanny presentational creativity. She’s straight out of a Tennessee Williams play – a fangirl who’s deliriously pleased to be held here in ongoing captivity.

A few parameters: Snowball is the actual magician here. His doting human assistants are Alec the Amazing and All-Powerful, and Mystical Marla. And because of Snowball, neither is whole. Snowball failed to make Alec (Evan Weissman) completely disappear, leaving him with a disembodied arm that now has a mind of its own (played by Brian Colonna). Marla (Hannah Duggan) is saddled with “nasty man legs” because, in a fit of spite, Snowball sawed hers off, and replaced them with a mechanic’s.

He’s cruel and dismissive to them, and yet both have a pathological need to be loved by him. But the ones we love are not always kind to us, Alec aptly says. And when these two sing out of their willingness to change themselves, to disappear into a top hat and emerge as something else in order to be loved by Snowball in return, well, this musical transforms from a charmingly elusive menagerie into one that is painfully, identifiably human. We all, after all, want to be wantable. In the the brilliantly titled song, “Take Me, Break Me, Make Me Something More,” Marla sings of needing to be nicer. Alec sings of needing to be meaner. To win the same man’s affection. Who can’t relate?

But Snowball, as the doted-upon often are, is otherwise consumed. He’s convinced himself that his fate is to twirl on a roasting spit, as did his parents before him, a mere ingredient in someone else’s stew.

This heady talk of fate versus self-determination takes us out of the land of Lewis Carroll and into that most classic and human of storytelling genres: We’re in the land of the Greeks. Of Shakespeare. And you know what happens to the tragic hero there. Only in Snowball, we have a tragic hero who isn’t at all heroic.

How this musical handles Snowball’s epiphany will have audiences asking: Is the finale inevitable … or irresponsible? Those paying the most attention might be left shaken, even indignant, by what it seems to be advocating.

It’s certainly impressively staged, if bloated at more than 2 ½ hours. It’s unnervingly well performed – and yes, that takes into account that none of these actors are trained singers. That’s part of their charm.

Stone’s considerable 17-song score (performed to his taped synthesizer accompaniment) is laden with meaningful, soul-searching lyrics that evoke everything from “Sweeney Todd” to “Les Miserables.” They are often performed in the rapid-fire (and sometimes indecipherable) tempo of, say, REM’s “It’s the End of the World as We Know It.” Fine for a rock concert, but not ideal for a musical where we’re hanging on every word.

This is a stew, all right – ideologically, philosophically and musically. And it’s just like Buntport to leave audiences both dazed and amazed.

-John Moore, May 28, 2010, Denver Post

A magician and his disembodied arm strike a pose. A woman dressed as the magician’s assistant but wearing mechanic’s pants sits on a television looking angry. A red bicycle and two televisions hover above her.

Westword- Buntport Theater creates a hare-raising musical with Jugged Rabbit Stew

You have to wonder at the sheer gutsiness of the Buntport Theater Company, whose members took an absurd idea and then – instead of playing around a bit, giggling and letting it go – decided to carry the concept forward, step by step, moment by moment, to its logical and intensely illogical ending, trusting that others would willingly give themselves up to this phantasmagorical universe. Jugged Rabbit Stew is an original musical whose sunnily innocent surface carries a darker underlay, an underlay involving blood, dismemberment, the way humanity destroys its gods, predation and carnivorousness – which takes on a whole new dimension when the meat in question not only walks and talks like a man, but can perform astounding feats of magic. All of this is pounded home by Adam Stone’s inspired rock songs, some hilarious, some carrying a thumping portentousness reminiscent of Andrew Lloyd Webber.

The plot concerns Snowball (Erik Edborg), a giant rabbit who works with a magician called Alec the Amazing and All-Powerful (Evan Weissman). At his best, Alec can pull off only the simplest and most obvious sleights of hand; Snowball is the genuine magical power behind the act. This bunny is anything but sweet and fluffy, however. He’s a miserable, scruffy creature who looks a little like the ugly, ragged-toothed White Rabbit in Jan Svankmajer’s film Alice and who likes stealing things that others value and are useless to him, simply to make as many people as possible miserable: the VHS tape of a graduation ceremony, a gravy boat, an old-fashioned gramophone. All of these objects hover below the ceiling throughout the action. Snowball has confiscated the legs of magician’s assistant Mystical Marla (Hannah Duggan), replacing them with those of a middle-aged workman so that she can no longer dance; he took away Alec’s right arm. Despite the depredations he’s wrought on their bodies, both Marla and Alec are in love with him. Also dangling from the ceiling, seated, is Woman (Erin Rollman), a regular audience member whom Snowball loved until he spotted her one evening in the company of another rabbit. A chatty, cheerful person in pink ruffled shoes, remarkably unfazed by her predicament, Woman eventually falls in love with Alec’s disembodied arm, played by Brian Colonna, and the two enact a Hollywood fantasy in which she is the gutsy ranch owner and he the traveling farm hand (pun most definitely intended) who’ll save her land.

This is not the only place where the production underlines its own artificiality, satirizing magic shows and theatrical conventions in general (a character standing in the distinct spotlight that universally signifies a soliloquy overhears another in a similar spotlight, to the latter’s great irritation), and looking at the ways we use language to create story and propel action. They niggle over usage: the fact that a rabbit is not a hare (unfortunately, “hare” works much better for song lyrics) and whether the potatoes in TV dinners are whipped or mashed. Woman is a chattering ninny most of the time, but Snowball had originally imagined her as an intellectual and, toward the play’s end, she becomes the figure he’d imagined, lapsing into erudition and discussing his role as tragic hero: Is he the classical noble-but-with-a-fatal-flaw model, the romantic Byronic type in rebellion against convention, or a twentieth-century anti-hero?

Edborg’s crazed energy somehow shines through the face-obscuring bunny mask, and Colonna also manages to surmount a smothering black costume that covers everything but his right arm and delivers a sizzling performance. Duggan is by turns cynical, angry and pathetic as lovelorn Marla; Rollman makes Woman as appealing as she is fluff-headed. Weissman has tended to play the quieter and more sensitive Buntport roles in the past, but here he lets loose with a brilliant cascade of tics and tricks, and a balls-out singing style that parodies every dopey, mannered vocalist you could ever imagine.

With its truly startling originality, Jugged Rabbit Stew is one of the deepest, weirdest, funniest and most assured things Buntport has done in its decade of amazing theater. It also testifies to the fruitfulness of the collaboration with Stone, as the Buntporters take on the musical form, bow to its conventions, then twist it every which way and back until it becomes their own. Don’t miss this production.

-Juliet Wittman, May 27, 2010, Westword

A wooden ladder is set up in the middle of an empty stage covered with newspaper. Suspended from the ceiling are various objects including a woman in a rocking chair.

Littleton Independent- ‘Stew’ introduces magical characters

Once upon a time there was a magician named Alec the Amazing and All-Powerful. And, he had an assistant called Mystical Marla. As magicians are inclined to do, Alec had a white rabbit he pulled from a hat in each show.

Until one day the rabbit, smitten by a sweet lady in the audience, became surly and took over, decreeing “no more magic shows!”

Soon, a pair of accidental characters became part of the action. Readers probably need to see this production to comprehend it, but we’ll try.

“Jugged Rabbit Stew” is a new musical written by the always-inventive crew at Buntport Theater with music and lyrics by Adam Stone, who was also composer for last season’s “Seal. Stamp. Send. Bang.”

Lights go up on a living room of sorts, with newspapers covering the floor and draped objects hanging from the ceiling. On one side is an overstuffed chair and several TV sets. A tall creature with rabbit ears and mask and white furry paws, wearing rumpled pajamas and robe staggers in and plops down in the chair, turning on a show about wild rabbits (home movies).

It’s Snowball (Erik Edborg), the magician’s rabbit with a fondness for the bottle, who, we learn, has stolen all the objects hanging from the ceiling and has a reason to justify each one. “I collect, not steal” he explains to Mystical Marla (the comical Hannah Duggan), who walks with a peculiar gait because Snowball once sawed her in half and gave her the “hairy man-legs” of a local mechanic instead, complete with smelly feet.

Enter next the red-clad magician (Evan Weissman) looking for his coin he uses for a sleight of hand trick. His right arm is missing, we learn, because the rabbit made him disappear and sent the right arm out to get Ding Dongs, while he made the rest of Alec return to the scene. That would, logically of course, lead to a mysterious black figure with one red arm and a western drawl entering the room – Arm (Brian Colonna).

Among the objects hanging from the ceiling is a rocking chair, which turns out to hold a sweet Woman (Erin Rollman) whom Snowball stole after making eye contact with her during a show – it was at this point that Snowball refused to perform any more.

Woman and Arm make a connection.

Throughout, songs burst forth, telling more stories.

Snowball maintains he’s a tragic hero and hoped to have intellectual conversations about Kepler and Galileo with the Woman, although she was at the show with another rabbit. Hanging over it all is Snowball’s fear that people will want to eat him – in jugged rabbit stew, a fate that befell his parents… Assorted story lines unroll as things get sorted out.

Buntport’s ingenious staging has microphones appearing from on high and a suspended Victrola that functions. Delightful, clever – what more can you ask? Perhaps a bit more polish on the musical delivery.

-Sonya Ellingboe, May 27, 2010, Littleton Independent