Theater lights are again burning bright at the historic Elitch Gardens. Hooray. Bright enough to sear your optic nerves to smithereens. Harumph.
It will be two years (and another $5 million) before the 116-year-old Elitch Theatre re-opens for live theater. In the meantime, the new Center for American Theatre is staging the first play on these hallowed grounds in 17 years.
The nearby Carousel Pavilion makes an idyllic setting for a play titled “The Pavilion.” Seriously, how great is it to hear an impassioned actor talking about how “our pavilion is a cathedral of memories that must be saved” just a few yards from the same rickety boards where Grace Kelly, Sarah Bernhardt and Douglas Fairbanks once trod?
Having worked at Elitch’s for six years, I proclaim any summer evening watching quality theater under the Carousel Pavilion to be as quintessentially Colorado as any at Red Rocks. Unfortunately, after those portable halogen spotlights get waved in your face a few times, you might think you’re at a concert at Red Rocks.
Outdoor theater is inherently, thrillingly unpredictable. So what if actors have to hold for both laugh lines and motorcycles revving along West 38th Avenue? Or that intimate conversations must be shouted to be heard? That the johns are portable or the echoing acoustics swallow half the dialogue? I can live with that. But I’m still seeing spots from those spots.
Director Michael French and his great crew from Boulder’s Theatre 13 have built a high, square platform to play on, with seating on all four sides (but sit in the front row – the floor, of course, slopes slightly down from the carousel’s center).
After a spate of metaphysical cosmic jargon from our freaky-deaky narrator, we meet Peter and Kari, former small-town Minnesota sweethearts colliding at their 20th reunion (of a class with an inordinately high number of graduates now dead).
Peter (Kevin Causey, whose day job is saving the Elitch Theatre) left home at 17 but has come back to try again with the girl he left behind. Let’s just say this relationship ended badly. That, and Kari (Rebecca Brown Adelman) still carries a mighty grudge.
A heroic Judson Webb plays more than a dozen classmates (the guy who runs the for-profit suicide hotline is the best). But when he’s the new-age narrator, those diabolical twin high beams turn on and follow him, transforming every program in his path into a visor. The shame is that it’s a wholly unnecessary effect. We know when Webb is being the narrator – because he’s narrating!
The play is exquisitely acted, but it has its rough spots. Like the awkward moment when Peter sings the sappy acoustic love song that begins Kari’s thaw. I wondered why the director would place Peter as far from the audience as humanly possible – until I noticed that the guy who was really playing guitar was standing on the opposite side of the pavilion.
The play, written by lauded theater and TV scribe Craig Wright (“Recent Tragic Events”) is unabashedly narcissistic. These two have been trapped all their lives in that infantile phase where you believe the universe exists only as far as your own field of vision. If they set up a swear jar, only someone throws in every time someone mentions “time” or “the universe,” I swear they’d have that theater paid for by July.
This is a verbally bloated script that wants to have it all: the whimsy of “The Fantasticks” interfacing with the cold, emotional brutality of Albee. Stripped of its eye-rolling metaphysicality, this is actually a pretty grounded and wrenching love story just about anyone can identify with. Except maybe for those four people who’ve never been hurt.
The central question here is, “If you could change your past, would you?” Who among us wouldn’t want to go back and do one thing different with a lover that might change our destiny? And in the wake of a failed love, who hasn’t turned into the ambulatory paralyzed – those who move on without ever moving forward, like a functioning, emotional alcoholic?
You can’t go back – but you can start over. Wright’s great success is in how he makes you root for both of his ex-lovers to find their way out of the darkness and sadness and hurt they have burrowed into one another. Not necessarily together.
But this is a play that refuses to end. If only Wright trusted for his closing line to be the one you’ll just have to witness to believe in its sweetness:
“The universe,” we’re told, “will tear you apart.”
Theater critic John Moore can be reached at 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com.
“The Pavilion”
DRAMA|Center for American Theatre| Written by Craig Wright|Directed by Michael French|Starring Rebecca Brown Adelman, Kevin Causey and Judson Webb|THROUGH JULY 1 |Carousel Pavilion at Historic Elitch Gardens, 38th Avenue and Tennyson Street|Dusk (approximately 8:30 p.m.) Thursdays-Sundays|2 hours, 10 minutes|$5-$15 (discount for neighborhood residents)|720-985-7938 or
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“MY HUSBAND’S WILD DESIRES ALMOST DROVE ME MAD” John Tobias’ British comedy takes the absurdity of sex – and pop-psychology sex books – to their comic limits. 7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays through July 21 at the Victorian Playhouse, 4201 Hooker St. $18-$20 (303-433-4343,).
“A YEAR WITH FROG AND TOAD” The Aurora Fox presents the hit Broadway musical with a big-time cast. The charming Frog and the worry-wart Toad wake from a long winter hibernation for a fun-filled year. 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays through July 22 at 9900 E. Colfax Ave. $22-$26 (303-739-1970, aurorafox.org).
–John Moore
EXCLUSIVE PODCAST
BOULDER’S DINNER THEATER HONORS COUNTRY DINNER PLAYHOUSE: BDT treated a full house of former CDP patrons to a free performance of “The Sound of Music” Tuesday – with a surprise appearance by the cast of CDP’s “Evita” – the show they had bought tickets for.
