Buntport Theater

show-38

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

Four people stand on a pink carpet. Their bodies are pixelated out so only their faces and bare or socked feet are showing.

Naughty Bits

HERACLES, WITHOUT A MEMBER

Three story-lines are brought together through their connection to a Roman marble statue of Hercules. (more…)