The promising new play “Denver” is at once a frontier and futuristic “Gunfight at the OK Corral,” an apocalyptic showdown rooted in Old West mythology and Orwellian caution. This is cowboys vs. Indians, only the cowboys here are dreamers; the Indians an assortment of savage tax collectors, bill collectors … even milkmen.
In creating this foreign yet familiar world, daring Jonson Kuhn displays a rare confidence and inventiveness for a writer just 23. His conflict isn’t new, but the way he presents it certainly is.
Baby Boy is a heroic gunslinger who is part John Wayne, part James Dean and part Jesus. His stalker is the Tax Man, a man in black who walks the night, feeding off the souls of those who dream. He’s part Johnny Cash, part Lone Biker of the Apocalypse (“Raising Arizona”).
Tortured Baby Boy is cursed with an archetypal gift, much like Ben Hawkins in “Carnivàle”: As Hawkins can bring life, Baby Boy has the power to unblock people’s dreams. In this stark world, that makes him the ultimate threat.
Baby Boy (a riveting Jude Moran) is the last remaining dreamer within 500 miles. He’s holed up in a boarded-up urban tenement with his gal, a sweet and simple stripper named Nag (Tamara Todres). They withstand attacks in waves, starting with a lone milkman who climbs down through the ceiling; and climaxing in a Tarantino-like arcade-gallery shootout.
“Denver” is getting a solid first staging by the Denver Repertory Theatre under the direction of David C. Riley. Moran is such a perfect personification of Baby Boy, he veritably leaps from page to stage. Todres is greener but still haunting, the sad, vulnerable kind of Hal Hartley character you still worry about days later.
Kuhn’s strengths are his originality; his infusions of humor; his loveliness in soliloquy (“Dreamin’ is only half the battle. Livin’ ’em’s the victory”); and his adherance to the Western mythology that informs all this.
But Riley does Kuhn no favors by relentlessly promoting “Denver” as equal to Sam Shepard. It’s promising, sure, but not perfect. Kuhn smartly keeps his specific politics vague, but his play could use some ideological clarification. There are points of confusion, a few dramaturgical incongruities.
Most puzzling is whether Kuhn intended a digestible metaphor for governments and corporations that crush the rights – and the life – out of individual American Dreams … or a manifesto the Unabomber would cheer. There’s evidence for the latter.
After all, the first intruder Baby Boy pops is a man he simply owes money. This is not a corrupt pharisee – it’s a milkman! If Kuhn is advocating the murder of anyone owed money for services rendered, he ought to just have Baby Boy cap the paperboy as well. What kind of society is he advocating?
Also a bit puzzling is what “a dreamer” really is: While that’s what Baby Boy is called, he’s really more a clairvoyant, a carny or a shrink. The one customer we see who comes to him is the mother of a dead child seeking relief from her grief. That doesn’t make Baby Boy a dreamer. Certainly not the Victor Hugo kind of rebel dreamer who leads the masses to revolt. If Baby Boy brings peace to grieving moms, it’s hard to see why he constitutes a threat.
Rather, it could be argued Baby Boy is really just a Peter Pan with a gun – and that dilutes his impact as an iconic Western hero.
More small quibbles: Baby Boy is your basic uneducated, monosyllabic cowboy, until he starts talking about his love for Nag, when he transforms into Cyrano. And a structural oddity I just couldn’t get past: The dead child’s mom arrives and exits through a secret passageway. Later, when Baby Boy and Nag are surrounded, we’re told there’s no way out.
Nits aside, “Denver” is an inventive, thought-provoking and moving experience, a cut far above most small stagings of untested plays by local writers. Kuhn’s no Shepard – yet. But “Denver” just might be the kind of play we look back at a few decades from now for evidence of the genius to come.
Theater critic John Moore can be reached at 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com.
“Denver” | *** RATING
DRAMA | Denver Repertory Theatre | Written by Jonson Kuhn | Directed by David C. Riley | Starring Jude Moran and Tamara Todres | THROUGH APRIL 7 | At John Hand Theatre, 7653 E. First Place (Lowry) | 8 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays | 2 hours | $12-$15 | 303-803-0456 or ticketweb.com | More online: Listen to an interview with playwright Jonson Kuhn; read a five page sample of his script. denverpost.com/theater
