Christi Esterle - Page 3

Theatreworks sure knows how to set a scene. Last season, Everyman on a Bus had audiences boarding a charter for a literal and allegorical journey around the Colorado Springs downtown area. Now comes Venus in Fur, staged in an abandoned building on Tejon Street with blacked-out windows and a 'For Lease' sign over the door. Just walking into the space feels like taking part in clandestine activity.

The performance on Thursday evening carried more than the usual share of preview jitters: lines were stumbled over, cues missed, and overall the performance did not attain the level of professionalism that the FAC is capable of providing...But in spite of this I was captivated, inspired both by the performance I saw and by what it had the potential to become. Because when Agnes of God works (and it did, more often than not) it's a thrilling mystery and an engrossing parable about faith, skepticism, and the psychology behind our deeply held beliefs. Encompassed by Christopher L Sheley's beautifully minimalist halo of a set, Levy and his cast take the audience on a journey into the dark uncharted territory of the human soul.

tend to prefer Shakespeare's comic heroines to his tragic ones. Beatrice, Katherine, and Viola always seemed more lively, active, and interesting, while Juliet, Ophelia, and Desdemona mostly made pretty speeches while waiting for fate to buffet them towards their inevitable messy ends.

It's getting harder and harder to separate Woody Allen's professional work from the rumors of his personal life. Just hours before I attended the Fine Arts Center's production of Play it Again, Sam I read Dylan Farrow's open letter to the New York Times, where she graphically describes being sexually abused by Allen when she was seven years old. The 1993 investigation into these claims proved inconclusive; the truth will probably never be known. But Farrow's harrowing confession is not something that can be lightly brushed aside.

Conor McPherson's The Weir is all about the atmosphere, and Theatreworks certainly has it. Scenic designer Jonathan Wentz has built a cozy rural Irish pub with mismatched chairs, a turf fire, and Guinness on tap. The floorboards of the stage come right up to the front row of seats; you feel like you could walk right up to the bar and order yourself a pint (in fact, the audience is invited to do just that at the performance's conclusion). This is a small-town watering hole, a place where everybody knows everybody's business and men fresh from a hard day's work gossip like old ladies over beer and whiskey.

How odd that Theatreworks should follow up Death of a Salesman, arguably the most brutal portrait of disappointed ambition, with It's a Wonderful Life, another tale of a man who suffers a series of unrealized ambitions and missed opportunities but who is held up not as a tragedy but an exemplar of a well-lived existence. If Willy Loman is the embodiment of the dark side of the American Dream, then George Bailey is the assurance that dream can be lived in simple and unexpected ways.

Never let it be said that Springs Ensemble Theatre is afraid to defy convention. At a time of year most production companies devote to family-friendly musicals and traditional favorites, they have elected to mount a limited run of One for the Road, Harold Pinter's unsettling portrait of human rights violations.

Two men, a table, and two chairs comprise the entirety of A Steady Rain's stage picture at Springs Ensemble Theater. The play feels larger than that. Keith Huff's words paint a picture as violent, harrowing, and human as any film noir.

Whether you've been acting professionally for years or just have fond memories of high school drama club, Noises Off is sure to inspire gales of knowing laughter. Michael Frayn's theatrical comedy reads like a compilation of every onstage mishap, backstage drama, snide director, temperamental star, exhausted techie, and general theatrical disaster you've ever experienced or heard about.

Theatreworks is presenting Seven Guitars in conjunction with next month's Death of a Salesman as part of a miniseries entitled 'America's Backyards.' Both productions are set in 1948 outside ordinary homes and revolve around ordinary lives. The synchronicity invites further comparisons between August Wilson's portrait of black blues musicians and Arthur Miller's masterwork. Both plays share a theme of hope against desperate odds, of reaching for the better life that The American Dream claims everyone is entitled to. Both plays feature a man who pursues that dream in defiance of everything against him, and both end in tragedy.

Cymbeline is well worth a trip-though you'll have to decide for yourself whether that trip is down the tree-lined path at Rock Ledge Ranch, or within a smoke-hazed mind. This play, in the end, is mostly what you make of it.

Tucked away in a storefront not too far from the Senior Center, the Funky Little Theater Company is the sort of daring, grassroots company I had not expected to find in Colorado Springs. Yet here Chris Medina's brainchild is, and in choosing Neil LaBute's In a Dark, Dark, House for its debut show, FLTC declares its intention to sail bravely into dark dramatic territory.

If there's one thing Colorado Springs could use right now (apart from help rebuilding after yet another devastating wildfire), it's a little catharsis. So while the timeliness of Fine Arts Center's Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris certainly wasn't intentional, it's nonetheless welcome, as Brel's clever, cynical ballads are just the sort of thing to vent all that pent up frustration and clear away some room for hope.

'I hate the theater; it's so disappointing,' may be the most ironic opening line in recent memory. The Drowsy Chaperone, is nothing less than a celebration of musical comedy in all its beautiful and frequently absurd glory, and the Fine Arts Center's production of it is as entertaining an experience as you can find in the region right now.

Starting today, the Fine Arts Center is delivering a love letter to musical comedy with The Drowsy Chaperone, a show the New York Times praised as 'a revved-up spoof of a 1920s song-and-dance frolic.' At a recent dress rehearsal I was able to sit down with several members of the cast and crew, beginning with Scott RC Levy, director of the Fine Arts Center who is making his Colorado acting debut as Man in Chair, the character guides the audience through the cast recording of the titular Jazz Age musical.

In his director's notes for The Wild Duck, Murray Ross suggests Henrik Ibsen's play isn't produced often in America because of its bleak cynicism, resolving in a 'stunning black hole' of despair. He's probably right.

A father goes on an errand to the laundromat, with his pre-verbal daughter in tow. The laundry gets put into the machine but alas, so does the daughter's beloved stuffed bunny. Unable to communicate the loss, the child throws a tantrum, frustrating her father until they get home and mom identifies the crisis. The family races back to the laundromat and fish bunny from the suds. Dad is relieved, the little girl says her first words, and everybody's happy.

The stage may be unconventional-and uncomfortable-but Theatreworks' new interpretation of Everyman is worth the trip.

But as the romance between solid, nondescript Peter and nervous insomniac Rita blossoms and takes its extraordinary detours, the production develops into a charming parable on the nature of life and love that's engaging and unexpectedly moving