Buntport Theater

show-35

blogspot.com- Marlowe’s Musings: A Knight To Remember

“A Knight to Remember” relates the tale of a young man who now 35 has never been as happy as he was in fourth grade. Brian Colonna’s autobiographical illumination of his memories of his fourth grade crush on a girl who didn’t know where to put her hands touches. Even the orthodontist from his childhood gets into the mix by way of a tee shirt bearing the inscription: “Stainless Steel Sex Appeal.”

Simplistic-seeming yet saucily savvy, Colonna’s script allows for the intervention of other cast members who take HUGE pleasure in deftly breaking all theatrical rules with childlike abandon. Only the audience takes more pleasure in their antics than they do! Examples of these are: When you don’t have lines you don’t talk. Or if you are not in the scene then you don’t stick your head out from the side curtain in view of the audience. “A Knight to Remember” is a return to childhood with reminiscences based on a book about “Knights.” It’s part “Fellini- Amarcord”(“I Remember”) and part The Marx Bros’ “A Knight at the Opera” … without a lot o’ Spam. (Sorry!) There is grandiose movie music that gives the auditory illusion of Hollywood chivalry at its most florid.

In one scene Sir Brian appears as Sirs Lionel, Sagramore, and Dinadan in projections of various lobby fotos of Vanessa Redgrave’s Guinevere singing “Take Me to the Fair.” As we listen to the voice over of Julie Andrews from the Broadway version of “Camelot” we get one of the most hilariously correct similes in the show. “Her voice is like a clean white shirt drying in the sun.” Beyond that there is an amazing suit of armor and a chivalric mount that will make the producers of “War Horse” weep.

A pencil experiment in which the adorable Hannah Duggan raps :”where’s my PENcil, where’s MY pencil, WHERE”S my pencil” while strutting around with a plush black chair pasted to her butt stuns. Duggan’s hilarious turn as the show’s onstage technical director for sound, lights and constantly changing and deliciously fluid set design is a hoot!

Erin Rollman is her usual brilliant self in numerous roles including both of Brian’s parents, his fourth grade teacher and his fourth grade squeeze as well as a thoroughly minimal and delightfully innovative Lady of the Lake.

Although I didn’t guffaw a whole lot in this one … even after the show I had to sternly tell my happy face to stop smiling because it was getting EXTREMELY painful and I was starting to fear that the tragic face of the critic would never again be mine. Happily the tragic has returned and all is in critical condition again.

To paraphrase the Bard’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream”: “The short and the long of it is – Buntport’s show is preferred.”

It’s comic caviar on crackers!

(“Not much of a cheese shop tho!”)

-David Marlowe, April 29, 2013, www.blogspot.com

A man sits on a wooden horse in a suit of armor carrying a large sword. A forest is projected on the wall behind him.

Denver Post- “A Knight to Remember” embarks on a slightly goofball quest

The title of Buntport Theater Company’s latest – “A Knight to Remember” – is a clever if mildly hazardous title. It teases a smirk at the pun, but also raises expectations of a theatrical experience that aren’t fully met in the company’s final show of the season.

The subtitle of the play is: “My quest to gallantly capture the past by Brian Colonna,” which gives more than a hint at its first-person ambitions. But Buntport being arguably the most inventive ensemble in town means Colonna is not alone on his journey to understand his boyhood.

Hannah Duggan, or “DJ Hannah Duggan,” as she’s credited, operates overhead projectors, lights and sound. She also makes absurd forays into the action.

Erin Rollman joins Colonna “as everyone else,” Though there comes a time when the deft, aware performer bristles cleverly at her place in this recounting of the life of Brian.

“A Knight to Remember” is, in part, about how things capture our imaginations, especially our young, hopeful, heated imaginations. An idea: about chivalry. An accessory: A shiny coat of armor. Another human: in this case, a girl who clasps her hands in the strangest way during one of those class portraits. You know the kind, the one where the teacher stands to the left and there are at least two risers of children, beaming or not.

Like many memory-oriented works, this one moves between details peculiar to the teller (the family trip to Germany, the serious orthodontics, the schoolboy crush) and those that bind us to a moment in time. Here, that would be the ’80s. There’s a funny bit about Colonna hijacking Rollman’s graduation year, because it was just a more interesting year.

Actually, there is a fair amount of onstage bickering about the very undertaking. And it is this notion of an ensemble performing a one-man show that provides the most Buntport-ian “in.” It is the type of meta-playfulness they do so darn well: taking on a simple (sometimes outlandish) idea and exposing layers existential and theatrical.

Alas, quests can be ragtag. (Just ask Don Quixote.) This outing is a bit ragged for a company whose work is more often fluid, funny and taut.

-Lisa Kennedy, April 27, 2013, Denver Post

A man stands in front of a white wall dressed in a suit of armor. He holds a large sword by his side.

Westword- The hilarious A Knight to Remember is a metaphor for its creators

Buntport Theater Company put several peculiar messages on Facebook before A Knight to Remember opened. These implied that the theater group – known for the creative synergy of its members – was divided on this piece about Brian Colonna’s childhood fantasies of knighthood. Erik Edborg would not be involved, the messages said, nor would SamAnTha Schmitz, Buntport’s off-stage tech impresario. We shouldn’t expect to see Evan Weissman, either – though he has had one foot out the door since founding the political-activist organization Warm Cookies of the Revolution. We learned that Hannah Duggan would be doing the tech, which she promised to mess up, and that Colonna himself would take tickets at the front desk. Did this imply a serious schism within the company?

But A Knight to Remember turns out to be a lighthearted, entertaining and thoroughly Buntportian evening of theater.

The tech consists of Duggan sitting on the floor wearing a gigantic bean bag strapped to her bum (why? Because sitting on the floor for an entire evening is hard) and slipping photos and sketches into a trio of the kind of overhead projectors teachers used in the tech-bereft olden days. But Duggan – as those of us who know and love her realized ahead of time – was never going to perform her services with selfless devotion. She bitches and kibbitzes as Colonna attempts to re-create his memories, which include bits of old books about chivalry, memories of a trip to the Renaissance Fair, and a crush on a classmate called Danielle. Required to take the role of a knightly opponent, she corners Colonna and won’t stop whacking him until the entire scene implodes into a welter of blows and childish recriminations.

Erin Rollman plays many figures, from teacher to squire to dentist, often in hyper-quick succession. Like Duggan, she has no compunction about interrupting the proceedings, particularly in a long segment where she demonstrates her versatility by going from the evil Ursula in The Little Mermaid to the Hunchback in Hunchback of Notre Dame and then complaining when she’s prevented from playing all the characters in the final scene of Fatal Attraction.

But funny and talented as these crazy ladies are, the evening belongs to Colonna as he acts out childhood scenes, attempts to eat a cup of noodles with his sword and informs Duggan that she’s supposed to shut up when she actually has no lines. His performance is honest, masterful, modest and just plain charming, with moments of genuine sweetness and nostalgia. Of course, the gleaming, clanking suit of armor he wears (courtesy of Chris Weed) is almost a character in itself, and certainly helps.

Though the script and basic structure were put in place ahead of time, the actors are making up a lot of the play as they go, feeling moments of real irritation, pushing each other to the limit, and periodically coming back and reconciling like kids who’ve been told sternly to stop fighting and get along. So I can’t tell you if what I saw on Saturday night will be anything like what you’ll see when you go. In fact, Rollman at one point informed us they were skipping a scene that had worked brilliantly the night before. This company really does invent with the kind of freshness and vitality you see in children playing games and just making up one thing after another as they go along; in this way, their work illustrates the creative process itself.

Knight also hints at the dynamics within the company. I have no doubt that Colonna – who often seems to take a back seat – got a bit pushy about his idea, and I imagine the others really did give him grief, with Duggan and Rollman perhaps agreeing to help more out of friendship than conviction. But if their on-stage balkiness is real, it also turns out to be hilarious theater. Rollman’s big monologue about how she loves the limelight is doubtless as true as it is self-mocking. So A Knight to Remember works as comedy, theater, an evocation of childhood hopes and dreams – and a metaphor for the company’s communal creativity. Perhaps it also works to explore and expiate some real tensions. And it definitely proves that the Buntport troupe can always bring things together in the end. Long may this quest continue.

-Juliet Wittman, April 18, 2013, Westword