Hybrid event- Both in-person at Buntport and on Zoom/Facebook Live.
On Dec 2nd join Artemisia and Nathan as they sing impromptu songs. Maybe another special guest will show up. You’ll have to tune in to find out. This is in conjunction with our end-of-season fundraiser. Any amount helps!
The play digs into a big bag of ideas, jokes, images, pop culture knick-knacks and historical archives
It doesn’t seem fair or smart or particularly nimble to write that the folks at Buntport are at it again. And yet: The folks at Buntport are at it again with their latest original play, “Best Town.” By “it” I mean digging into a big bag of ideas, jokes, images, pop culture knick-knacks and historical archives to craft a witty, intellectually omnivorous bit of business that dares to be silly, too.
It’s hard not to detect an echo of Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” in the title of this larky, post-pandemic dive into the subjects of loneliness and connection — and, oh yeah, libraries, Olivia Newton-John and Thomas Pynchon. Only the burg here, Kitsault, is an abandoned mining town in Canada, about 17 hours northeast via the Cariboo Highway from Vancouver, B.C. And its denizens are a goofy little trio of caretakers: groundskeeper Dodge (Brian Colonnacq), interior-buildings steward Stanley (Erik Edborg), and emergency go-to Hilary (Erin Rollman), who has decided to be the town’s videographer and marketer.
Somewhere nearby they’ve spied another person, and refer to her as Number Four. Hannah Duggan plays the mine monitor, whose lonely gig has been rendered lonelier with the closing of the mine. Will they actually connect? And if so, how?
Some of the show is factual. There is a Kitsault. It was a molybdenum mining town but the market for the elemental mineral took a hit and the mine and town shuttered in 1982 after only 18 months. A Canadian businessman bought the ghost town with its libraries, mall and bowling alley in 2004 and later closed it to a public no doubt clamoring to gain access.
“Best Town” covers this history, the pronunciation of molybdenum and so much more. It also spends a great of time at the town’s library, via projections on a screen or by visiting a charming little replica of the library. A “time capsule,” Stanley says of the library, its replica and the town early in the play. And so, Aussie hit-maker Newton-John is something of a patron saint to the tale of Kitsault; her hit single “Physical” provides the achy soundtrack for these isolated souls. Thomas Pynchon’s easy reading “Gravity’s Rainbow” provides the punchline. While that tome was published in the early 1970s, it was still very much on the list of greatest novels when the mine closed.
Buntport’s choice of theme mineral seems hardly coincidental: Colorado has two molybdenum mines. But then, the play is punctuated with intertitles that read like hints and rebuffs simultaneously. So, is it intentional? “An opening. But probably not the beginning of anything,” one states playfully at the start.
“Everything is connected but does that mean everything is meaningful?” nudges another. Leave it to the folks at Buntport to provide a query that might be asked (and wryly answered) of this zany work.
-Lisa Kennedy, June 1, 2023, Denver Post
Coloradans are perhaps more familiar with the element molybdenum than other because we have one of the largest moly mines in the world up at Climax, near Leadville. Another big moly mine is located in a remote area of British Columbia about 550 miles north of Vancouver, and in the late 1970s, Amax Canada built a town nearby for mine workers. They named it Kitsault, and as a way to retain workers, they built up an entire infrastructure of modernity in the wilderness including a mall, a library, rec center and hospital.
Opening in 1980, Kitsault was only inhabited for about 18 months when the price of molybdenum — which is used in steel production — crashed and all 1,200 workers abandoned the town. What they left behind was a near-pristine ghost town, an early-’80s mini-city frozen in time with books still on the shelves of the library and stuff on the shelves of the grocery store. (This video shows it in detail.)
That’s the backdrop for the new play Best Town from Buntport Theater Company, with a script imagining what it’d be like to live in such a place. As with all Buntport shows, this is an original play created by the five members of the ensemble and acted by Brian Colonna, Erik Edborg, Erin Rollman and Hannag Duggan (the fifth member, SamAnTha Schmitz manages off-stage tech and other stuff.)
In creating the show, the Bunportians wanted to show as much of the town as they could, and to do so without creating a bunch of alternating sets, they hit upon the clever device of using models with cameras. The set is equipped with a variety of screens of different sizes, and models are wheeled out on cars while the characters poke a live video cam into its nooks and crannies.
Even before the show starts, Best Town leans heavily into the ’80s, with a pre-show mix of some of the most execrable pop hits of the time (“Eye of the Tiger,” “Don’t Stop Believin’” and the like). Olivia Newton John figures prominently in places, and Rollman’s character Hilary enjoys wearing leg warmers and headbands. Colonna plays Dodge, who spends a fair amount of time on a riding mower, and Edborg is super-nerdy Stan. The fourth character, known only as Number Four, is played by the feisty Duggan, although her usually over-the-top persona is tempered somewhat in this show to that of an almost-sweet mine worker with a lot of philosophical questions.
Loneliness and isolation are dominant themes in Best Town, and although it’s got a few laughs throughout, the play is more somber than many of Buntport’s productions. The four characters are in the same boat, trying to make sense of who and where they are and there’s not a lot of conflict to drive the action. As such, Best Town seems adrift in places, not entirely sure where it wants to go and taking a long time to get there. Repeated gags, like Dodge’s “Little Man” residing in his injured hand and an endless fascination with Thomas Pynchon’s unreadable 1973 novel “Gravity’s Rainbow” seem untethered from the action and don’t always land.
Best Town may not be Buntport’s best in terms of a fully realized story, but it does have quite a few of the troupe’s signature quirky humor scattered throughout — alongside winning performances from the four actors. We may not have much of a plot to cling to, but there are plenty of nice moments where life’s big questions are distilled into focused discussions around minutiae. And what better place than an abandoned town where life was abruptly suspended to contemplate the meaning of “it all?”
-Alex Miller, May 28, 2023, Onstage Colorado
A new play about stars, isolation, the magic of libraries, and Laura Ashley curtains.
Masks are recommended but not required at this performance.
A new play about stars, isolation, the magic of libraries, and Laura Ashley curtains.
Masks are recommended but not required at this performance.
A new play about stars, isolation, the magic of libraries, and Laura Ashley curtains.
Masks are recommended but not required at this performance.
A new play about stars, isolation, the magic of libraries, and Laura Ashley curtains.
Masks are recommended but not required at this performance.
A new play about stars, isolation, the magic of libraries, and Laura Ashley curtains.
Masks are recommended but not required at this performance.
A new play about stars, isolation, the magic of libraries, and Laura Ashley curtains.
Masks are recommended but not required at this performance.
A new play about stars, isolation, the magic of libraries, and Laura Ashley curtains.
Masks are recommended but not required at this performance.