​The Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company is presenting Shipwrecked! An Entertainment. The Amazing Adventures of Louis de Rougemont (as Told by Himself) through February 25 at the Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company. Juliet Wittman caught the production last weekend; here's her review:

We're all fascinated by talented fakers. I once foolishly allowed a convict to parole to my house, and she turned out to have an amazing capacity for lying. Her lies were pretty mundane: She said she had a job when she didn't, that she'd kicked the drug habit when she hadn't, that she needed money to buy my daughter a birthday present -- and would pay it back. That kind of thing. But she lied with such emotion, charm and conviction that she upended my sense of reality and made me doubt the evidence of my own senses. Of course she hadn't stolen checks from my checkbook, she explained. Another woman she'd known in prison had sneaked in and done it -- leaving that hypodermic needle in the pocket of my apron at the same time. Fixing her luminous, beautiful eyes on my face, Joanna explained to me once how you beat a lie detector test: You just have to believe -- really believe -- that everything you're saying is true. Which she always managed to do.

Perhaps if I could have seen her fabrications as a kind of art form, as narrative pure and simple -- and if they hadn't upended my life -- I'd have actually enjoyed them.

The lies that intrigued playwright Donald Margulies were those of a nineteenth-century con man. His Shipwrecked! An Entertainment--The Amazing Adventures of Louise de Rougemont (As Told by Himself) is a ninety-minute yarn about adventures on the high seas, based on serialized articles the real-life de Rougemont wrote for Wild World Magazine in London.

More >>

Tom Alan Robbins in The Whale.

​Samuel D. Hunter's The Whale, which began as a reading at the Denver Center's New Play Summit in 2011, and was given a world premiere by the company this year -- to glowing reviews (here's mine) -- has been selected by Playwrights Horizons in New York, a theater dedicated to the work of new playwrights, as part of that company's upcoming season.

More >>

Tom Alan Robbins in The Whale.

​The American Theatre Critics' Association had chosen the New Play Summit at the Denver Center Theatre Company as the site of its winter meeting, and a group of critics compared notes one morning. We had all seen the same plays; on some we agreed; now and then someone pointed out something that others had missed. And periodically our opinions diverged sharply: "You loved that play? I didn't think it worked at all."

It was an important reminder of the subjectivity of criticism. We talked about how much critics can learn from reading each other, and just how urgent it is -- at a time when newspapers are shrinking their arts coverage -- to retain more than one critical voice in any given town. A poet or novelist can work in solitude, but a playwright requires collaboration. She needs to hear how her words sound in an actor's mouth, and to learn from a director and tech people just how the work fares on a stage.

More >>

Sweet! Gabriella Cavallero

​Here's a tempting pre-Valentine's Day possibility: sipping wine while being serenaded by some of Denver's best musicians and most appealing actors. Rachel Fowler, Jeff Roark, Leigh Miller, Gabriella Cavallero, Mark Rubald, Jim Ruberto and the recently married Mare Trevathan and Eryc Eyl will perform scenes, songs and poems about love in Drown Me in Your Kisses, a benefit for Modern Muse Theatre Company.

Cavallero and Stephen J. Lavezza formed Modern Muse in 2004 and put on several first-rate and fully-staged productions, but in the last couple of years the company has changed focus. "We wanted to stop fighting the search for performance spaces as a gypsy company," says Cavallero, "and do more intimate pieces in intimate settings. I'm really interested in working with the actor, figuring out what theater is at the bare bones."

More >>

​It's ten at night, and the Jones Theatre is thronged with bodies, and smells of beer, wine and popcorn as the Playwrights' Slam -- a regular part of the Denver Center Theatre Company's Colorado New Play Summit -- is about to begin.

"My woman wants your head to make a soup."

This is from a play about the migration of African Americans from Florida to Oklahoma in 1850 by Marcus Gardley.

More >>

​
Whether they want to wow women with their poetic prowess, find the perfect insult to highlight their intelligence or tame an unruly "shrew," people have long been adapting Shakespeare's stories to their own lives. And, of course, savvy marketers have been retooling the playwright's classic plots to create their own commercial hits:

"Brush up your Shakespeare/ start quotin' him now/ Brush up your Shakespeare/ and the women you will wow!" (Kiss Me, Kate!)

"I know that you're a fan of Shakespeare"
"More than a fan... We're involved." (10 Things I Hate About You)

The Taming of the Shrew, in particular, has spun off popular cultural icons. With the play now in production at the Denver Center Theater Company -- and offering deals for the Valentine's Day performance -- we decided to take a look at some of the cultural tributes that keep this sixteenth-century comedy thoroughly modern.

More >>

Terry Shapiro

Tom Alan Robbins in The Whale.

​Fat people are an entertainment staple these days, from The Biggest Loser to the Food Network's new offering, Fat Chef. Still, you wouldn't really expect a play about a 600-pound man slowly dying in his own living room to garner a whole lot of attention, especially when it's textured and literate and has nothing to do with sweaty workouts, blubbery self-pity and yelling coaches.

But Samuel D. Hunter's The Whale has received such enthusiastic audience responses -- and such terrific reviews (here's ours) -- that the Denver Center Theatre Company has added four extra performances.

More >>

Katherine McPhee stars in Smash.

​There's huge buzz around Smash, a television show premiering at 9 p.m. tonight on NBC. A procedural drama depicting the creation of a musical about Marilyn Monroe, Smash features such big-name acting talent as Anjelica Huston and Debra Messing, as well as American Idol Katherine McPhee; Uma Thurman appears in a future storyline. Steven Spielberg is among the producers, and the songs are by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, composers for Hairspray.

The names of a couple of the writers for Smash will be familiar to Denver audiences: Theresa Rebeck and Jason Grote met through readings at the New Play Summit at the Denver Center Theater Company; her Our House and his 1001 both received full productions in 2008. "I remember looking at Theresa in the audience during 1001, and hoping she'd laugh at the jokes," says Grote. "She did."

More >>

Ethel and the Crippens.

​What is it that makes us find Victorian murders so juicy, fascinating and macabre? And also so irresistibly funny? The Catamounts, a relatively new company, has resurrected yet another Victorian murder story with The Three Faces of Doctor Crippen; judging by this lively, cheeky production, the company will be a very welcome addition to the scene.

More >>

Meghan Ralph

The cast of new local play Casual Encounters/Missed Connections takes on eleven real-life Craigslist stories.

​Craigslist can be a scary, scary place, but that doesn't make any of us visit it any less. When Spark Theater playwright Sean Paul Mahoney decided to write a play about the website's role in Internet and pop culture, he spent hours scouring its Casual Encounters and Missed Connections sections for the best eleven entries to inspire vignettes in his play, the aptly titled Casual Encounters/Missed Connections. About half of these come from Denver, while the rest span a range of cities up to but not including Las Vegas. (The Vegas posts are so intense thatnobody would even believe they're real, Mahoney says.)

But what about the stories that didn't make the cut? Below, Westword uncovers five Missed Connections posted this week alone that could easily take a turn on the stage or screen with a little help and a happy ending.

More >>