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“Cherry Docs” opens with a sickeningly seductive skinhead, barely 20, sitting in a jail cell holding up his foot. He’s explaining to us reflexology — an Eastern philosophy that says your foot is a map to your overall health, from your eyeballs to your organs.

But it can’t explain how Mike Downey could use that same foot to kill. It can’t diagnose the racist disease infecting his mind or explain the mystery of evil’s origin.

David Gow’s thoughtful play should leave you feeling like you’ve been kicked squarely in the gut with those same steel-toed Doc Martens combat boots referenced in the title. Like the curb-stomp beatdown Edward Norton delivers in the far more disturbing film “American History X.”

But while the Bas Bleu Theatre’s new staging in Fort Collins makes an impact, it’s more of a glancing blow, one that’s shaken off a little easier than perhaps it should be.

This is a two-man character study of opposites colliding, and inevitably changing. The question is, how? Legal Aid attorney Danny Dunkelman is a liberal Jew living an idyllically assimilated and multicultural life in Toronto. Until he’s assigned to defend neo-Nazi skinhead Mike, who beat a Pakistani so brutally that he died three weeks later.

Preparing the defense that Mike is guaranteed by law will, of course, put Danny’s liberal tolerance to the test, considering his client advocates for the annihilation of his people. And now this thug is happy to exploit his liberalism to save his own hide.

This play is an actor’s dream, and director Brittany Heileman coaxes compelling performances from the understated Tomas Herrera as the lawyer, and Michael Mallard as the scum-bag tool of the larger Aryan movement. Mallard’s skinhead is funny, feral and, most unnerving, completely at ease with his crime. The believability of their dance ebbs and flows, but as it goes on, you can see the tumult growing in Mallard’s eyes; you can feel it in Herrera’s gut.

But plays of this sort are inherently burdened by our preconceived expectations. There is only one, opposite direction for each character to go. And this is theater, so you presume some inevitable Hallmark moment of mutual understanding. Without it, the play might feel unfulfilling. Delivered, it might feel predetermined.

And much of the play is delivered in the safety of monologue, which makes it too pensive and ruminative to reach maximum emotional impact.

And while you can’t see a play these days without some sort of multimedia integration, it doesn’t help the storytelling or its rhythm here. Scene transitions are drawn out by video tangents that are too abrupt to make much impact, and do little to further our understanding of the play or its context. The words do well enough.

The question this play asks is not why the Aryan movement exists and feeds on itself — history teaches us what happens whenever those with little education and no real prospects come together in packs. It asks why it exists in this one lost boy, and how it turned Mike into this sneering, sad little monster?

What’s most discombobulating is Mike’s ability to make us at least partly understand. When he calmly lays the blame for his lack of opportunity on open immigration and affirmative action, his arguments sound like a lot of stump speeches making the rounds this election season. Only he’s taken civil dialogue and twisted it into violence.

The play ends by asking the audience, “Is this your problem?” There is the statistical answer: The number of hate crimes across Colorado increased 25 percent in 2009, to 218. There is the geographical answer: Fort Collins is just 65 miles from the fence where Matthew Shepard was tortured and killed.

And there’s the rhetorical answer: Next time you come across some white-trash punk like Mike Downey, Gow’s play suggests, consider: If you don’t reach out and get to him — then someone with a swastika tattooed on his forearm surely will.

John Moore: 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com

To see more “Cherry Docs” production photos, scroll to the bottom of this page.

“Cherry Docs” **1/2 (out of four stars)

Drama. Presented by Bas Bleu Theatre, 401 Pine St., Fort Collins. Written by David Gow. Through Oct. 24. 100 minutes, no intermission. 7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays; 2:30 p.m. Sundays. $12-$22. 970-498-8949 or

Best bet: “Angels in America: Part 1”

Denver’s little Vintage Theatre — capacity 63 — is taking on one of the most sweeping of plays: Tony Kushner’s two-part, six-hour treatise on life and death in the 1980s. The story follows two couples: Louis Ironson, who is living with his AIDS-stricken lover, Prior Walter; and Joe Pitt, a Republican law clerk living with his Valium-addicted, agoraphobic wife, Harper. Starring Haley Johnson, Kurt Brighton, James O’Hagan-Murphy and Vintage artistic director Craig Bond. Part 1, “Millennium Approaches,” plays 7:30 p.m. Fridays and 2:30 p.m. Saturdays, starting tonight. Part 2, “Perestroika,” plays 7:30 p.m. Saturdays and 2:30 p.m. Sundays beginning Oct. 9. $18-$23 ($30 for both when purchased together). Through Nov. 6. 2119 E. 17th Ave., 303-839-1361 or

Best bet: “Night of the Living Dead”

Flesh-eating zombies return to the Bug Theatre for a third consecutive Halloween season as George Romero’s 1968 classic film “The Night of the Living Dead” is told like it was never meant to be seen: live and on stage. Seven people find themselves trapped in a farmhouse surrounded by flesh-eating ghouls. A unique aspect of the live staging is that all the action taking place inside the farmhouse is on the stage, while the action outside the house is projected onto an overhead screen. 8 p.m. Fridays through Sundays. $12-$15. $3 off if dressed in full zombie makeup and costume. Through Oct. 31.Bug Theatre, 3654 Navajo St., 303-477-9984 or .

This weekend’s theater openings

“Always … Patsy Cline” This ubiquitous little musical revue chronicles the true-life friendship between Patsy Cline and a Houston housewife who meets the star at a concert, then corresponds with her until Cline’s untimely death. Songs include “Walkin’ After Midnight” and “Crazy.” Through Nov. 7. Union Colony Dinner Theatre, 802 9th Ave., Greeley, 970-352-2900 or

“Apparition Palestine” Now in their 10th year, the Allied Witches stage a political tragedy each October to mark the beginning of winter. Through Oct. 31. Mercury Cafe, 2199 California St., 303-294-9258 or

“Bang Bang, You are Dead” William Mastrosimone (“Extremities”) wrote this examination of the culture of school shootings in the wake of four successive tragedies from Colorado to Arkansas. He wrote the first draft after his son’s classmate wrote a message on a chalkboard threatening to kill his teacher and fellow students. Through Nov. 7. 73rd Avenue Theatre, 7287 Lowell Blvd., Westminster, 720-276-6936 or the73rdavenuetheatre

“The Clean House” Thunder River opens its 16th season with Sarah Ruhl’s uncommon comedy about a maid who hates cleaning and dreams instead of creating the perfect joke. And a doctor who leaves his heart inside one of his cancer patients. And a woman who keeps her house in order, but whose life is a mess. Through Oct. 15. 67 Promenade, Carbondale, 970-963-8200 or

“Doubt” Sister Aloysius, a 1960s Bronx school principal played by Elizabeth Dowd, takes matters into her own hands when she suspects young Father Flynn (Stephen Weitz) of improper relations with one of her male students. Winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. By John Patrick Shanley. Through Oct. 23. Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company at the Dairy Center for the Arts, 2590 Walnut St., Boulder, 303-440-7826 or

“Something Wicked This Way Comes” Ray Bradbury adapted his award-winning novel into this live fantasy thriller that explores the conflicting natures of good and evil, modesty and vanity, need and want. Two 13-year old boys, rebelling against the constraints of youth, have a harowing adventure when a nightmarish traveling carnival comes to their Midwestern town just before Halloween. The carnival’s leader is the mysterious “Mr. Dark” (played by Jude Moran), who bears a tattoo for each person he has lured into a deadly devotion to the circus. Aurora Fox, 9900 E. Colfax Ave., 303-739-1970 or and here’s