Tag Archive for: Applause

Life Mirrors Art: Tavis Kordell Embodies Jerry/Daphne in Some Like It Hot

In 1959, the acclaimed Billy Wilder directed Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in the raucous caper of two men who, having witnessed a mob hit, take cover by posing as women in a traveling Jazz Age band. (Curtis came to Denver in 2002, starring in a different musical adaptation of the movie.) Sixty-three years later, […]

MAMMA MIA! – Success is Spelled ABBA

On Saturday April 6, 1974, in the English coastal town of Brighton, a group known in their native Sweden but unknown to the rest of the world, won the Eurovision Song Contest with a song entitled “Waterloo.” For Napoleon, Waterloo was big trouble. For this upstart singing group it was the start of something bigger […]

The Addams Family Reflects American Values in a Funhouse Mirror

The opening musical number of The Addams Family tells audiences just why the strange and macabre clan has stuck around for nearly a century. “When you’re an Addams, the standard answers don’t apply.” Wait, nearly a century? And they’re still relevant? Yes, it really has been that long – the comic strip by Charles Addams […]

Worthy of the Crown: The Hot Wing King Pits Family Against Fame

Royalty comes in many forms. A proud and gleaming crown. A leader, whether head of the household, a proud parent, or the coach of a team. Or even the playful banter between lovers, endearments of “Queen!” that make another person feel warm and shining from the inside out, worthy of love and devotion. This potent […]

Contrasting Doo-wop and Death in Little Shop of Horrors

Little Shop of Horrors, the 80s musical about a lowly flower shop clerk who makes a Faustian bargain with his man-eating plant, was an unexpected success that has now won the adoration of generations. The show has sci-fi roots in an early short story by H.G. Wells. “The Flowering of the Strange Orchid” about a […]

Seeing Yourself in The Wiz

Standing in the pastel-blue living room, hair in some incongruous “Broadway” style, an 8-year-old sings “Home,” wistfully crooning in her best Stephanie Mills style. Three years later, she and her friends choreograph a dizzying, spinning version of “Tornado” for the school dance show. That little white girl? She loved The Wiz, but she had no […]

Mean Girls Underlines Women-Centered Storytelling

From a pop culture phenomenon in the 2000s to a feminist shift in Broadway representation, Mean Girls always comes along at a time when we need it the most. Twenty- five years ago, the box office was dominated by action-packed fantasy film franchises; from pirates to wizards, superheroes to jedis – audiences couldn’t escape the […]

Puppeteers Bring Animals to Life in Life of Pi

The life of Pi has been long and fruitful, although full of challenges for the title character. The peregrinations of Piscine Molitor Patel began with the best-selling 2001 novel by Canadian author Yann Martel, continuing 11 years later with the Ang Lee film, which won four Academy Awards. In 2023, it moved to Broadway in […]

Finding Your Way Through The Reservoir

The presentation of The Reservoir by the Denver Center Theatre Company marks a full-circle return for a Colorado playwright who grew up at this theatre. Jake Brasch is coming home in multiple ways for the world premiere of The Reservoir, his deeply personal play about addiction, Alzheimer’s, and inter-generational connections, soon to be in production […]

The Suffragette’s Murder: A Mystery and More

The year is 1857. The locale is a boardinghouse on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. It’s a homey dwelling, run by an upstanding middle-aged couple. But behind its unremarkable façade lies a den of activists engaged in the fight for women’s suffrage — in an America where only men of property have the right […]