Buntport Theater

Season 14

Denver Post- Buntport’s Middle Aged People Sitting in Boxes

It was — and fortunately remains — quite the weekend for intriguing theater.

I was going to say “unusual” theater. And although Buntport Theater’s latest original work “Middle Aged People Sitting in Boxes” is a quirky take on modern identity, doing playfully ruminative work is hardly unusual for this five-person company.

Four large rectangles draped with black fabric sit on the concrete floor of the theater. They are boxes big enough to hold a person; each has three sides and a ceiling of Plexiglass.

As promised, there are people already in these containers. And as the pre-performance music grows faint, each performer pulls at the curtain to reveal themselves.

In this show, the actors go by their own names, which doesn’t mean they aren’t characters. Over the course of the show, Erik Edborg’s box will get cluttered as he unpacks little cardboard cartons of stuff.

Erin Rollman, who’s maintaining the Facebook page for her 25th high school reunion, stands or leans or sits on a stool in her more vertical habitat.

A laptop often in her lap, Hannah Duggan sits typing away on the keyboard. Brian Colonna’s pen has a pile of laundry on its floor. He’s in boxer briefs, a phone in his hand.

There are holes cut into the Plexiglass that aren’t particularly noticeable until a character does something odd: like sidle up to another box or gather laundry from a clothesline stretched across the stage or plug a vacuum in to an extension cord to take a swipe at a rug.

Colonna doesn’t just have a land line, his old-school phone is tethered to a wall jack outside his box. That Muzak-like sound — diabolically imagined by frequent collaborator Adam Stone — is actually the punishing drone of being Colonna on hold.

Familiarity breeds contemplation in “Middle Aged People Sitting in Boxes.”

Rollman starts things off early with questions about what exactly constitutes “middle age”? It’s not a bad quandary in a society that half jest that “50 is the new 30” and so forth. What to make of one’s place on a spectrum between twenty-something and “elderly.”

That this quartet hardly seems “middle age” to this late Boomer is part of the point in this exploration of generational identity.

What are the indicators, the indices that define us? What boxes do we check to claim our space in a overly connected society? And how connected are these characters, really, in a world in which a comforting hug meets Plexiglass?

What are the account numbers and passwords that make a galling, if useful, claim on who we are? Until, that is, they’re misplaced and you must seek the compassion of some faceless, practiced customer service rep, as Colonna experiences in his looping purgatory of hold.

Central to the sly artistry of this ensemble are the offstage machinations of fellow Buntporter SamAnTha Schmitz, who applies layers of light and sound to what appears a stripped show. “Middle Aged People Sitting in Boxes” has deceptively spare staging.

And at times the characters’ riffs have the rhythmic pay-offs of stand-up routines. But four stand-ups weaving their acts is no easy feat. What seems cleverly conversational is highly orchestrated. The casual and flippant serves a philosophy of our quotidian, our daily lives shaped by memories and shot through with way too much information.

That mixture can be amusingly inane It can be magical. Occasionally it can be both.

-Lisa Kennedy, April 23, 2015 Denver Post

Close-up on an unhappy bearded man holding a telephone. He is behind plexiglass. In the distance are three other people sitting in large plexiglass boxes.

Boulder Magazine- Middle Aged People Sitting in Boxes

The Denver Post says that “at the top of their game, nobody does silly like Buntport Theatre Company.” And this show is at the absolute TOP of their game. As is often the case, their seemingly silly pieces of fluff makes you laugh while you are at the theatre and think about it more deeply as you drive home. This one causes you to question the whole concept of “middle aged.” What is the middle age and when are you in it? In my personal case, I wondered all the way home when did middle age end and “elderly” begin?

Taking their cue from Seinfield, a Buntport quartet of players (Erin, Hannah, Erik and Brian) indulge in a 90 minute discourse about … nothing. They ponder the purpose of their ‘jobs,’ the importance (or not) of high school reunions, how to pack to move, what makes up a ‘good’ neighborhood, how can you pay a bill when you aren’t in the system, do you really have to put on your socks before your pants, and on and on. But these are merely diversions as they try to find a solution to the initial problem of defining middle age. Is it when you have to get drunk to clean your living space? Is it when you have a crisis – by definition then, a midlife crisis? Is it when you have lost control of the chaos in your life? Or is it dependent on the mean life expectancy of people of your origins, hereditary background, lifestyle, etc? I’m happy to report that no concrete definition was ever found so we can all continue in the delusion that we are still in our middle years!!

One very interest concept was explored to great length. There is a subclass between the X and Y generations of people born in the late 80’s that are the last ones to use things that are now perceived as ‘old-fashioned.’ They are the group that knows what a telephone book is but has never used one. That remembers record players but never owned one. That used to use a map or a card catalog or a dictionary in book form to receive needed information. An interesting classification that they called “networld.”

The ‘boxes’ of the title are beautifully made plexiglass units on wheels with artfully placed feet and hand holes that allow the actors to move about (somewhat) and to reach outside the boxes (awkwardly) to grasp other things like the vacuum cleaner and the phone. One of the joys of each new Buntport show is watching how they stage it. Their sets are always simple but cleverly constructed with imaginative sound effects and lighting.

As usual, I’ll be thinking about this one for a long time. Isn’t that the whole purpose???

A WOW factor of 9!!

-Beki Pineda, April 20, 2015 Boulder Magazine (getboulder.com)

Two people talk to each other from inside plexiglass boxes. On the left is a man sitting crosslegged in a short, cluttered box. On the right is a woman sitting on a stool in a narrow box. Above is an empty clothing line.

Westword- Buntport Thinks Outside The Box With Middle Aged People Sitting in Boxes

A clothesline on which tops and bras are hung spans the stage. Other than that, the set consists of four shrouded forms that are eventually unshrouded to reveal four middle-aged people sitting in boxes — if you consider Buntport Theater Company’s Brian Colonna, Erin Rollman, Hannah Duggan and Erik Edborg middle-aged. But as Rollman points out, middle age is a shifting boundary, hard to define, and this is territory explored in the latest Buntport creation, Middle Aged People Sitting in Boxes.

The characters can hear and speak to each other, but they can’t touch each other through the plexiglass barriers of their boxes; they can also stand up and walk these boxes from place to place, creating interesting geometrical configurations. In the box on the right, Colonna struggles with that ubiquitous modern horror: trying to get something done by phone. He can’t access the site he needs online, because it no longer recognizes him. But when, after a long wait, he actually gets a human being named Angela on the phone, she can’t help him, either — because the system says he doesn’t exist. All of this is particularly hard to cope with because he’s tethered to a landline by a long, curly cord and is wearing no pants. Periodically, the others exhort him to please put them on, but he explains that he can’t until he finds his socks — because first socks and then pants is his rule for dressing.

In her box, Duggan occupies herself with her job, which involves classifying data. On the other side of her, Rollman organizes a 25-year high-school reunion on Facebook. And then there’s Edborg, who seems to have moved into a new place and is trying to organize his belongings. This is hard because he’s a hoarder and has also mislabeled his stuff: The box that says “cutlery,” for instance, contains an embroidered pillow. And another box that arrives in the mail labeled “spice rack” turns out to be something else entirely.

What is Middle Aged People Sitting in Boxes about? There are a lot of lists and a lot of attempts on the characters’ part to categorize. This passion for order takes an array of forms, from enumerating all the buildings and businesses in a particular neighborhood to Edborg’s musings about how to use a spice rack when he can name only three spices to how you’re defined by those quizzes that ask what historical personage you’d be or reveal how your favorite fruit exposes your personality. “You’re trying to control the chaos,” Duggan tells Edborg kindly. “That’s what middle-aged people do.”

The idea of order is all mixed up with the idea of data — how we acquire it as well as how we sort it — and that leads to talk about generations: X-ers and Y-ers and Networlders, all of whom view the world in different ways because of the different ways in which the world comes to them. There are references to the usual targets: people’s obsession with their gadgets, the proliferation of emoticons and selfies, the way one generation fails to understand another’s way of using technology — though the cast also points out that dividing human beings into generations with arbitrary cut-off points is deceptive in itself. But the dialogue isn’t obvious: The Buntport crew goes deeper, showing that there’s something profoundly mysterious about the way our brains work, and raising a slew of questions about the ubiquity of facts and the ease with which we can look them up: Does this make people dumber because they no longer know how to research, or smarter because they don’t have to waste time unearthing facts and can use the easily acquired information to deepen understanding?

Since this is a Buntport production, everything is hilariously askew, and the show is both filled with absurdities and dizzyingly clever. The performances are spot-on and the timing impeccable. Middle Aged People does communicate a sense of loss: These people are boxed in, after all, time is inexorably passing, and we’ll never know what’s happened to poor Angela or even if she really exists. Still, there’s a willingness to embrace the unknowable — and even magic in the shape of a little one-horned fairground goat passed off as a unicorn. It may have been just a sad, sickly animal, but there’s something about the idea of a unicorn and our willingness to accept it that transcends lists and data and frees the imagination — just as this play does.

-Juliet Wittman, April 16, 2015,Westword

A woman with short hair sits on a stool in a plexiglass box. She has one leg up on the school and has both hands above her head, holding onto the rim of a hole in the top of the box. Above the box is a clothing lines with only clothes pins on it.

North Denver Tribune- Buntport’s Latest is a Unique, Absurd Look at Who We Are

Buntport Theater’s latest original creation, Middle Aged People Sitting in Boxes, nails the absurdist comedy genre perfectly. While nothing of importance happens in the play, and it presents the “vast swaths of mundanity” that make up most of our reality, the dialogue is engaging, compelling, very funny, and even insightful at times. Many thought-provoking questions are asked, with perhaps the key question coming at the end of the show: “Is that all there is?” This clever, absurd, hilarious production will both challenge and entertain you, in classic Buntport style.

This is the story of four middle aged people (how exactly middle age is defined is the subject of some discourse) living their lives. One is on hold, trying to reach customers service. Another is planning a 25th High School Reunion. The third is checking the supplier websites for Fortune 500 companies and signing up as a WMBE. The last is unpacking after an apparent recent move. Oh, yes, and they are all in large plexiglass boxes on wheels. The four actors quickly establish that this odd environment is normal for them, just a part of life. The boxes function both as the obvious metaphor for isolation, but also a source for some brilliant comic moments.

The language is mundane, everyday stuff, but it is compelling nonetheless. As we watch, we want to know more, we want to know what will happen, even though we know that nothing earth-shattering will occur. Questions are asked and discussed, with much of the discussion about who we are, what labels apply to whom, and what the meaning of different labels is. The formal arrangement and movement of the boxes adds another dimension to the verbal sparring between the characters. Much of the language is delivered in parallel monologues, with the characters sometimes interacting and sometimes in their own worlds, nearly always doing something. The whole show has a lovely rhythm created by the level of conversation, the changes in focus and interaction, and the movement onstage.

The four actors play unique characters, each in their own world and their own reality. Erin Rollman is planning her High School Reunion, interacting with her former classmates via social media on her cell phone. She is flippantly judgmental about those asking questions, making comments that many of us have probably thought at times. Poor Brian Colonna is trying to talk with customer service about his account, but keeps getting stuck on hold. His frustration builds nicely, and he gets to perform most of the show without pants. Erik Edborg is unpacking boxes, genuinely surprised and a little bit amused that the contents don’t match the labels he himself wrote. Hannah Duggan is on her laptop the whole time, researching the websites of Fortune 500 companies. Her work is important to her, and she plugs on and on, without knowing exactly why she is doing it. This may seem very familiar to many of us.

The set, primarily consisting of the four different sized and shaped boxes, is an integral part of the play. The actors can move using the small holes in the bases, and they each have one or two ways to reach outside, but are otherwise trapped. The constraints of the boxes reinforce their separateness, but also create opportunities for wonderful pure silliness. The lighting is consistent and effective, and is used to highlight each nicely in succession during the culmination of the show. Since they are in boxes, the actors use microphones, an element that is necessary and effective. Adam Stone’s sound design includes the notification beeps on Erin’s cell phone, and all the hold music, recorded voices, and customer service reps for Brian.

The four characters are all believable as people, but are in an unrealistic environment (sitting in boxes), doing things that are not completely normal. But we can all relate to what they are doing and who they are. As we watch, we connect with how they feel in their interactions with each other and the world. We laugh both at the craziness of what they are going through (which is really, really funny), but also because we understand and know their experiences. We connect, we laugh, we think, and we are entertained. What more can we ask from theater?

-Craig Williamson, April 16, 2015,North Denver Tribune

North Denver Tribune- Buntport Revives Tommy Lee Jones Goes to the Opera Alone

Only Buntport Theater could create a tight, complete, meaningful, and funny production where the lead actor is a nearly-full-sized puppet of Tommy Lee Jones, operated and voiced by four members of the company, sitting in a diner having a piece of pie. No other company could even conceive of this idea, let alone build the puppet, develop the skills to operate it, and write a script that interlaces a serious conversation about art and performance with comic bits and surprises that no audience member could possibly anticipate. This is a revival of one of Buntport’s most popular shows from the last several years, the brilliant and successful Tommy Lee Jones Goes to the Opera Alone. Several of the shows have sold out, so don’t wait to make a reservation and go see this brilliant and unique production.

Tommy Lee is a puppet, sitting at a table in a diner. As the show opens, the puppet sits alone and lifeless, but soon Erin Rollman, Evan Weissman, Brian Colonna, and Erik Edborg wander in to bring the puppet to life. But first, they turn the convention of “invisible puppeteers” on its head. These are characters in their own right, and in the first moments of the play we learn that Weissman, Rollman, and Colonna, who operate the right hand, left hand, and head of Tommy Lee, are in a love triangle. But just as soon as we meet them, they zip up and are completely covered in black, and the puppet comes to life. Edborg sits at the table with the puppet, ensconced in black like the others, speaking the voice of the puppet. Hannah Duggan plays Jane, the (actual human) waitress that talks with the puppet, brings him pie and coffee, and discusses art, opera, and how Puccini’s opera Turandot “should” have ended. As we watch the remarkably expressive puppet, we are paradoxically impressed with how he is brought to life and frequently reminded that the puppeteers are not invisible, as they silently interact with each other and even the puppet himself. This is all exquisitely and impossibly consistent, and in and of itself is wonderful, but is just the medium that delivers the story.

The five onstage members of Buntport, along with the always-offstage SamAnTha Schmitz, create their productions as an integrated whole. The script writing is not separate from the directing or designing, which results in a remarkably cohesive production. That said, the show is very well directed – the puppeteers step out just enough, creating surprise and intrigue as they do, without overusing the device. The staging is simple, but direct and effective.

The acting, both by the actors and by the puppet, is wonderful. Edborg captures the iconic Texas drawl that we all know so well from many films. The mechanics of the operation of the puppet are fascinating, with the hands, fingers, eyebrows, and eyelids moving and grasping, showing expression and emotion. But the technical functioning of the puppet doesn’t dominate things more than necessary. It is enough to impress and intrigue the audience, but it is still there to deliver the story. Duggan’s Jane is completely natural as she talks with the puppet, and becomes very animated explaining alternate endings to Turandot. And while we do not see their faces very much, Weissman, Rollman, and Colonna clearly communicate the situation and emotions in silence.

The set is simple yet appropriate. The table and chairs capture a diner perfectly. The floor is Formica tiles that blend to black at the edges, with individual tiles hanging in space. The lighting sets the mood well. The costumes include an accurate diner waitress uniform, and neutral black coverings for the four puppeteers, which are used to both conceal them and highlight the moments when their characters are revealed. The sound is effectively integrated as well, with some fun lip-syncing, and the truly lovely music of Puccini integrated throughout.

Tommy Lee Jones (the puppet) states at one point that “art may be the saving grace of our civilization.” Buntport Theater’s production of Tommy Lee Jones Goes to the Opera Alone is a brilliant mix of puppetry, comedy, convention-bashing, grand opera, and thoughtful discussion of art. The play starts by talking about art and opera, and then transforms itself into grand opera. The medium that is used to deliver this story is clever, but it is only the start – the story, the interaction, the exposition, and the climax all combine to make this both meaningful and comic genius.

-Craig Williamson, January 21, 2015, North Denver Tribune

A life-size puppet of Tommy Lee Jones sits at a diner table that is surrounded by a yellow and white checkered floor surrounded by darkness. A waitress stands next to the table as if she is about to take his order.

Tommy Lee Jones Goes To Opera Alone

TIME FOR PIE

A near life-size version of Tommy Lee Jones waxes poetic about cowboy boots, his life as a movie star and his love of opera – particularly Puccini’s Turandot.

(more…)

A man stands with his head back singing or yelling, perhaps. He wears a suit on the top and stockings and high heels on the bottom. Behind him, two people are seated on a pink couch. One is a man in a yellow shirt talking excitedly. The other is a woman in a blue t-shirt looking on a cell phone looking annoyed.

Denver Post- Frisky business afoot in Buntport’s “Naughty Bits”

The Buntport Theater Company’s erudite cut-ups are at it again. And nearly at their best with their latest, collaboratively wrought play, “Naughty Bits,” running through Oct. 4.

Aided by an Art Historian, a Romance Novelist and a well-to-do couple straight out of an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel, this nimble comedy ponders bodies and their parts, gender and class, and, most pointedly, the disappearance of a certain appendage from the Lansdowne Herakles.

That’s Hercules to you.

For more than a century, the Roman homage to the Greek hero resided at the Lansdowne House in London. In 1951, J. Paul Getty bought the stone demigod — lion skin hanging by his side, club resting on his shoulder. It holds a prominent place at the Getty Villa in Malibu, Calif.

You’ll learn much of this as the play’s distinct characters begin to inch toward one another across eras.

The laughs can be brainy and broad, physically deft and metaphysically agile. Think Lucille Ball by way of Jacques Derrida — after a chocolate edible.

Wait, did the Romance Novelist just mention Marcel Duchamp? Of course she did.

Erin Rollman and Brian Colonna are terrific as Jenny and Harry, the 1920s couple, more insouciant and frisky than roaring.

As the Art Historian, Erik Edborg allows his hands to flit and his voice to flutter as he projects slides of the sculpture in question.

“He’s got magnetism, even for marble,” he says nervously.

Hannah Duggan’s turn as the Romance Novelist on a writing vacation — and often on the phone to her editor — hits heady and populist notes.

About the company’s fifth member: SamAnTha Schmitz. Much like the Herakles’ missing part — the cause of so much contemplation — her absence is potent.

Operating lights and sound, she cues actors and audience to shifts in time and mood. We have her to thank as the action nails an absurdly touching (and groping) vibe, reminiscent of Studio 54 during its heyday.

-Lisa Kennedy, September 27, 2014, Denver Post

A man from the 1950's stands at a projector screen gesturing to an image of a statue of Herakles. Behind him, a woman from today stands on a pink carpet talking on a cell phone. Behind her, a woman from the 1920's sit on a couch looking into a cosmetic mirror.

Westword- Buntport’s New Show Is Naughty But Very Nice

When the members of Buntport Theater Company are at the top of their form, wonderful things happen. And with Naughty Bits, they’re at their peak both in terms of performance and — since this company creates all its plays collaboratively — in terms of the humor, flow and inventiveness of the script, which happens to focus on a missing member.

Naughty Bits tells three related stories, all surrounding the figure of the famous Landsdowne Hercules, or Heracles, a Roman statue of the mythic hero holding a club over his left shoulder and the skin of the Nemean Lion he killed as his first great labor in his right hand. The statue was restored in the eighteenth century — except for its broken-off penis. In one of the three stories, set in the 1920s, an inconceivably wealthy fellow called Harry conducts an extended flirtation with his witty and seductive mistress, Jenny. She’s teasingly scornful of the Hercules statue — which he’s purchased — and all the other great artworks on his English estate, also recently purchased. Then there’s the 1950s Art Historian, insanely passionate about his work, fumbling with his slides and projector as he expatiates on the wonders of the statue, its missing part and his thoughts about art in general to us, the audience. The contemporary Romance Novelist, meanwhile, having done some research into the Landsdowne Hercules, is pitching a book proposal to her editor. She wants to put the statue in the home of one Lady Louisa, who will fall in love with it, missing genitalia and all. As she munches on hot dogs and spins her torrid, silly, soulful plot, the Novelist’s relationship with the distant male editor is revealed as more and more complicated.

The three segments may be separate, with each protagonist in his or her own reality, but they gradually come together over the course of the evening, and the last line of dialogue in almost every scene leads suggestively into the next, until the ideas meld together to form a kind of whole, a meditation on love, sex, art, history, power, money and gender that ends with a fleshy (sort of), outrageous and snortingly funny climax. Naughty Bits illustrates the way a work of art travels through time, changing both physically and in the way it’s interpreted, taking on different colorations and significances in different eras and in individual imaginations. This Hercules is a paradox — a hero, a love god, the epitome of male beauty — but lacking the essential male appendage. So he represents — at least to the Novelist — both male and female or neither, a kind of coming together in peace and mutual understanding.

Naughty Bits also plays with the assumed gulf between high and low art. Of course a connoisseur’s interest in a naked statue has a touch of low prurience, and this is certainly true of the Art Historian, who both thrills to the statue’s aesthetics and is rendered inarticulate by his distress and excitement at the whole genital issue. Meanwhile the Romance Novelist, while conceding her usual work is smut, is clearly reaching for something new here; she’s in the puzzled, open and exploratory state of anyone absorbed in genuine artistic creation. Buntport has illustrated this dichotomy in previous work, demystifying high art and taking down artistic pretension while still treating great works with profound respect. In Tommy Lee Jones Goes to Opera Alone, for example, a waitress beefs up the plot for La Boheme and sings happily along with the arias. (Tommy Lee Jones will return in January.)

Erin Rollman’s Jenny is a comic masterpiece, elegantly slutty, a parody of a 1920s movie siren. Brian Colonna is crazy funny as her suave lover, Harry. Erik Edborg has made a practice of creating outlandish characters and inhabiting them so fully that you absolutely believe in them, and he does it here with the deliciously mannered Art Historian. The inimitable Hannah Duggan brings all kinds of passionate, angry, vulnerable conviction to the Romance Novelist, along with a strong dash of feminist rage.

But Naughty Bits is anything but dense or polemical. It’s a dazzling, skillfully structured, swift-moving and original comedy, filled with insane imaginings, daring bits and hilarious bons mots. And when those deeper currents surface, they sparkle and flash, too.

-Juliet Wittman, September 24, 2014, Westword

A down shot of a woman sitting at a desk, talking on the phone. She has a pad of paper in front of her. Behind, out-of-focus, in the distance, a woman and a man sit on a pink couch. She has her legs crossed over his.

North Denver Tribune- Buntport blends tapestry of stories in comic Naughty Bits

Several times a year, the five members of Buntport Theater embark on a creative process that results in a new, unique, frequently brilliant, usually hilarious, and always completely original production. Their latest offering is Naughty Bits, inspired by the conspicuously missing penis on the otherwise fully restored Roman statue known as the Lansdowne Hercules. Brian Colonna, Erin Rollman, Erik Edborg, Hannah Duggan, and SamAnTha Schmitz of Buntport could not resist creating a play based on this curious situation. Their comedy is an intertwining of three separate storylines from three separate time periods, all related to the statue, that blend and interact in clever and very funny ways, then finally boil over into hilarious craziness.

The three storylines include a couple in the 1920s who acquire the statue when they purchase an English manor home; an Art Historian making a presentation about the statue in the 1950s; and a present day Romance Novelist trying to write a story involving the statue. The writing is clever and funny, filled with many double entendres (natch), perfectly timed transitions between the stories, visual sight gags, and suggestions of connections left partially to imagination. The construction of the play is intricate and brilliant — the three stories start separate, then begin to blend and merge, finally colliding together in a verbal and visual cacophony.

With Buntport, it is difficult to separate out “direction” from playwriting and acting, but there are elements worth noting. The instantaneous transitions between the storylines are clear and sharp, with the scene being left continuing without sound. All three are simultaneously going on for nearly all of the play, with the characters moving in and out of each other’s space in a carefully choreographed dance. This approach allows for contrasting the three stories, clearly illustrating the commonalities and the differences, and enables some incredibly funny bits.

As actors, the Buntporters are at their best with comedy, but also able to add an edge of meaning. Erik Edborg is hilariously idiosyncratic as the Art Historian, with wonderful expressiveness and great mannerisms. Hannah Duggan is the brusque and forthright Romance Novelist, explicitly describing things in her story, as well as ridiculing herself and romance novels in general. As the couple, Brian Colonna and Erin Rollman seem comfortable together, and surprisingly natural as they begin cross-dressing in their 1920s costumes. The four work in tight coordination throughout, and especially as the stories begin to blend and merge, and finally in the climactic conclusion.

The set is simple, with elegant Victorian furniture appropriate for Lansdowne House, and a nice 1950s-era slide projector and screen. The lighting is a key element to this production, with different colors for each of the three stories helping to highlight the transitions, without sacrificing the basic need for illumination of the scenes. The control and coordination tying the light cues to the dialogue is notable. The costumes were spot on, placing the characters in their appropriate time frames, and near the end, adding an over-the-top comic element as well.

After some more serious productions recently, with Naughty Bits, Buntport returns their focus to comedy. There are some bits of social commentary here, but mostly, this is pure comedy, clever and creative, done as only Buntport can. They have pushed themselves beyond their own comfort zones in some ways, and in doing so, will challenge your expectations. Finally, they will surprise you with a hilarious and remarkably consistent ending to a clever, interesting, and funny play.

-Craig Williamson, September 18, 2014, North Denver Tribune