THE SMELL IS THE SOCK
Join the oddballs George, Julius and Harold as they present their interpretation of Hamlet. Using a packed trunk, the shirts on their backs and the socks on their hands, these three men hope to bring Shakespeare to the people. Why? Well, they are in disagreement about that.
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3 out of 4 stars
There’s a wily conceit running through “Coyote. Badger. Rattlesnake”– Buntport Theater’s entertaining original production. Cecily the coyote — one third of a museum diorama’s fauna trio — has been sent out for a makeover. Some pests scavenged her and her return, while vital, is not clearly imminent.
Glenn and Carroll work side by side in the diorama, which is also getting a revamp. They craft fake grasses, create a protruding rock formation that adds dimension to the museum display, and arrange the aforementioned badger and rattler in their ersatz habitat.
Theirs is not the most collegial of partnerships. Hannah Duggan and Brian Colonna portray the bickering coworkers. Carroll’s wound a bit tight. She’s prone to anxious huffing (“Cecily is missing a good portion of her face!”) and loud disquisitions on taxidermy, for instance. Glenn’s genial if a little lax on details. Was his snack the invitation nibbling vermin needed to enter the diorama?
Created in collaboration with local playwright Ellen K. Graham, “Coyote. Badger. Rattlesnake” is composed of 14 seriocomic vignettes separated by 14 pauses, a dimming of the lights and minuscule set changes. The turning down of the lights is part of the show’s genius. It adds emphasis to Glenn’s or Carroll’s final word or gesture — be it absurd, ruminative or both. If you are gleaning a “Godot” vibe in the set-up, that’s likely OK.
During those breaks, two workers arrive in the not-quite-darkness to add tile-size chunks of set to the floor in front of the diorama’s beckoning backdrop of mountains and sky, prairie grasses and scrub. (Company member Erik Edborg is responsible for the lovely canvas that hangs from the rafters.)
Played by Erin Rollman and Edborg, the duo appear in the show’s credits as “Stagehands.” Consider this further evidence of Buntport’s rather meta-antics. Yes, they’re stagehands. They’re also characters in a play about the staging of the “fake-real.” Stealthily, they add props, rearrange them or accidentally tip something over and rush off. Like Glenn and Carroll, they chat and disagree. Over the course of the play (there is no intermission), their interstitial philosophizing demands more and more of the audience’s attention.
Wit, deft timing and twists — physical and linguistic — are signature stuff at Buntport. “Coyote. Badger. Rattlesnake” has an abundance. It also has a few choice things to say — or at least I was vaguely aware it did — about “real fakeness” and “fake realness” as the show’s program teasingly puts it.
So, a word about the audience. The ensemble composed of the four performers and company mainstay SamAnTha Schmitz is in its 19th year and has garnered a deserved and appreciative following. Almost as soon as Colonna and Duggan arrived on stage opening night, they were met with titters and guffaws, which continued to punctuate not only the amusing riffs but at times the more thoughtful interludes. I’m not one to judge people for their pleasures, but I couldn’t help but wonder if this made newcomers to Buntport feel like they weren’t quite in on a joke. The ensemble’s agile wit is often outright funny. Just as often, there’s something more nuanced at play in their askew vision of things. The balance in “Coyote. Badger. Rattlesnake” proved slightly elusive.
It would be churlish to complain about Buntport’s steadfast craft and reliable cleverness. Their work is oh-so-canny — with the occasional burst of brilliance. And this show is swift and entertaining. I’d just hate to see the company trapped in a lovely diorama of its own making.
Lisa Kennedy, December 6, 2018 The Denver Post
There’s no point trying to make linear or literal sense of Buntport Theater’s latest offering, Coyote. Badger. Rattlesnake. While that’s true of many of the troupe’s plays, this one skitters even more blithely than usual into absurdist territory and beyond into the ether.
The action takes place in and around a museum diorama featuring the landscape of North America’s Great Plains. Dead center on the set is a large, flat, square picture; on the floor in front of it are puzzle pieces of the same terrain, holding dry grass, rocks and pebbles, along with a rearing rattlesnake and a badger. The badger’s name is Mitchell. The coyote, Cecily, isn’t immediately in evidence, though she shows up later. Sort of.
Glenn and Carroll, played by Brian Colonna and Hannah Duggan, respectively, are in charge of maintaining the exhibit. They have feelings about the taxidermied wildlife, as well as philosophical thoughts about the nature of reality, the way we live in reality and the ways we mimic it. They deplore the fact that nature and animal life are reduced to dioramas like the one they’re working on, with labels and notes that don’t begin to convey the wonder and complexity of the real thing — though I don’t think either of them would use the words “wonder” and “complexity.” They don’t necessarily agree on any of those concepts, and they disagree particularly over anything that smacks of anthropomorphism. Because the badger and the coyote hunt together, Glenn thinks of them as “buddies.” Carroll rebukes him for that word, though her own feelings about Cecily are strong and complex.
Erin Rollman and Erik Edborg are the stagehands: Not museum employees, but Buntport’s stagehands, which means they occupy a different reality entirely from that of Glenn and Carroll. They put pieces of the exhibit in place, sometimes messing things up, and they, too, are engaged in philosophical argument.
Watching, I couldn’t help comparing the Buntporters’ eccentric, sometimes blade-sharp humor with other recent and less successful attempts at comedy where you could see the actors working for their laughs. The four performers here are at the top of their game, functioning brilliantly as an ensemble, and also — and I think this is crucial — never trying to be funny because they’re so immersed in the (unreal) reality of the events they’re living through.
At the beginning of the play, for example, Carroll is very angry. She believes Glenn brought in the bagel from which rose an insect infestation that destroyed much of Cecily’s face. Duggan has proved many times that she’s a genius at every kind of rage: repressed or volcanic, sullen or explosive, but this role allows her greater range than she’s had before. The character is not just terrifying, she’s also vulnerable and complicated; she feels the crazy things she feels very deeply, and there are hints now and then of a passionate empathy — if not for actual humans, then at least for the mummified animals of the diorama. Colonna’s Glenn isn’t cowed, however. His responses are perfect, whether he’s wry, puzzled, momentarily defensive, tuned out or, in a fantastical re-enactment, describing the sad death of Mitchell the badger. Rollman and Edborg hold their own, even though they’re working in half-darkness a lot of the time. Rollman bustles around and uses bits of scientific knowledge to boss Edborg and put him down while he, tall, quiet and kindly, holds the moral high ground.
For this production, the Buntport five (the fifth is SamAnTha Schmitz, who helps create the plays and takes care of tech during performances) worked with an outside artist, playwright Ellen K. Graham. I’ve seen absurdism in Graham’s previous work, though perhaps nothing quite as fanciful as this, and I tried to recognize her influence here, to figure out if there was some difference with Coyote. Badger. Rattlesnake. from Buntport’s usual tone and focus. I thought I sensed a bit more briskness and sharpness to the dialogue, perhaps less repetition — a kind of whizzing quality — but all of that can also be seen as Buntportian. It would have been so much fun to be a fly on the wall and watch these astonishing talents lay out their collective vision and somehow fuse it. But as it is, just sitting in the audience for this hilarious, ridiculous and brilliant piece of theater is enough.
Juliet Wittman, December 4, 2018, Westword
Just as the characters in the newest original Buntport offering were tasked with restoring a damaged diorama in a Natural History Museum, I am now tasked with explaining a Buntport show. Both are nearly impossible. The five members of the Buntport troop create each new piece from scratch based on a subject matter that interests them, an unusual news item, an unexplored or unexplained event in history, or some other random thing that catches their fancy. For Boulder readers who have yet to discover this creative and inspirational group, you have REALLY been missing out. They are as accomplished and honored as the Denver Center, Curious, BETC or CSF . . . but in an entirely different way. Their creativity and humor knows no bounds; they are not afraid to do or say anything to make their point (either for the joke or to express a philosophy); they use primarily the four acting members of the group (the fifth Samantha takes care of all the brilliant technical stuff) with only occasional guest artists. No two shows are even remotely alike. You never know what you’re going to get when you attend a new show. It could be fall-out-of-your-chair funny or it could have you leaving the theatre with a I-never-thought-of-it-that-way frown on your face. The one absolute given is that you can’t wait for the next pearl to drop out of their creative collective thought.
COYOTE. BADGER. RATTLESNAKE. is their newest offering and has only two weekends remaining. It is, as stated above, an involved conversation played out over several weeks between two museum artisans tasked with repairing and restoring a damaged diorama using those three animals. It depicts the coyote (fondly named Cecily) and the badger (Mitchell) working together to make a lunch out of the rattlesnake (Langston). It seems that somehow insects got into the diorama and destroyed part of Cecily’s face and snout. Carroll (Hannah Duggan) blames Glenn (Brian Colonna) for the damage; he had the audacity to bring a bagel into the museum. Not sure what that has to do with anything; neither does Glenn. Over the days that they are working together on putting the prairie grass sections into the new floor of the diorama, we get to know them, their little idiosyncrasies, and their relationship as fellow workers through their comical discussions of the mundane. But who could have thought that someone could get so upset because the badger couldn’t possibly see the rattlesnake when it was misplaced. Or that one might get a little tipsy and come into the museum at night to talk to the badger.
During the blackouts between scenes, two other “real” workers – stagehands – bring on the new sections of the flooring in order to indicate the passage of time. At first working in silence, they place the flooring pieces and quickly move back out of sight before the “players” return for the next scene. But after about the third blackout, a can of pebbles gets accidentally kicked over and left on stage where it shouldn’t be. But there isn’t time to pick them up before Glenn and Carroll return. It all goes downhill from there for the stagehands. They too start bringing their backstage conversations on stage in view of the audience, blaming one another for the small mistakes that keep being made. Their conversations too become more philosophical and focus on the mundane in their lives – which makes the breaks between scenes longer and longer until they are almost caught on stage when the “players” return. Glenn and Carroll notice that things are moved around and knocked over, but can’t figure out how it keeps happening.
And that’s all I’m going to tell you, because the ending is so freaking funny, I don’t want to spoil it for you. This is one of the “laugh out loud” brand of their shows. The technical aspects of their shows are always impeccably appointed (also all done by the troop) and beautifully lit. Their sound design is clever and appropriate. Your attention is captured from the moment they start; no opportunity for a nap in any of these shows. You can’t wait to see what’s going to happen next. The logical yet illogical playing out of their stories captivates from start to finish.
Just also wanted to let you know that occasionally they bring back a show for a second or third time “by popular demand” as the saying goes. In February, they are remounting “The Rembrandt Room” which was one of the most truly miraculous one woman shows ever seen. Erin Rollman plays a security guard before a huge painting in an art museum who takes it upon herself to explain the picture to a group of visitors, along with her personal relationship with the picture. Comedy Works cannot supply you with more laughs . . . or more thoughtful discourse. Look for it in February. You won’t be sorry.
A WOW factor of 9.5!!
Beki Pineda, December 15, 2018
In conjunction with Colorado Gives Day, come enjoy all the awkwardness of an office party. Special guests and one-night only performances by Buntport. Power point, comedy, cookies, and refreshments!
A new program by Buntport. A talk show mixed with a talk back mixed with behind-the-“music”.
Tickets $8
A new program by Buntport. A talk show mixed with a talk back mixed with behind-the-“music”.
Tickets $8 online. $10 at the door.
A special fundraising event. Gourmet food by Chef Andrew, one-night only entertainment, cocktail hour, recipe demo, and lots of special surprises. Be served by and eat with the Buntport ensemble in their theater. Very limited seating!
Cocktail hour starts 5:00. Dinner and entertainment to follow.
(Please leave any dietary needs in the ticket notes)
In the spirit of the many television shows that are returning after ending years ago, we are bringing back our first live sit-com, Magnets on the Fridge! It’s time to catch up with the old gang and their shenanigans as they try to navigate “new Denver”. Whether you are a long-time fan of Magnets on the Fridge or a total newbie, this is for you! 5 episodes in 2020 (no episode in March) come hang out with the now 40-somethings as they attempt to deal with the new normal.
Tickets $10
A new program by Buntport. A talk show mixed with a talk back mixed with behind-the-“music”. Nestled in the middle of the run of each full-length play, you can learn more about the production with this ‘side dish’.