Durang's nightmare was a theatergoer's dream | Arts news

Playwright Christopher Durang made a career of writing comic variations on that primal, universal dream so many of us had in college. You know the one: You show up for a final exam not having attended a single class. Your deepest dread was always to his audiences’ greatest delight.

Durang took people's darkest fears and confirmed them, exploited them and exponentiated them to such an extent that you would either want to laugh – or never leave the house again.

Lack the courage to jump into internet dating? Imagine regularly rewriting your advert – yet always attracting the same annoying mate. Need counseling, but just can't put your trust in a stranger? Imagine getting a shrink who's far loopier than you are.

Still burdened by repressed memories from grade-school gym class? Meet militaristic Mr. Orlando, who leads his seventh-grade class in dodgeball using bowling balls to inflict maximum physical damage. (Didn’t we all have a gym teacher who screamed at us: “Deodorant is for fairies!"?)

Durang, who died Tuesday at age 75, was nothing if not wacky. Journalists, often at a loss for how best to crystallize his uniquely black sense of humor, most regularly fell back on "absurdist.”

He broke big in 1980 with “Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All,” which started him on a 45-year path of yanking on America's rosaries. (One of my faves: "Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them.")

Durang’s greatest commercial triumph was "Beyond Therapy," the story of two eccentric New Yorkers seeking to strengthen their relationship with the assistance of deeply damaged therapists.

That play and playwright were favorites of John Ashton and Bob Wells, who opened the now long-gone late Avenue Theater in 1987 with their own staging of “Beyond Therapy.” The play opens with perhaps the funniest first scene I’ve ever seen – one showing a freakish couple meeting at a restaurant on an arranged first date.

In a 2006 staging, also at The Avenue Theater, local actors Elgin Kelley and Kevin Hart executed it to comic perfection. At the time, I wrote this for The Denver Post:

“In retrospect, there is something sweetly innocent and yet darkly prophetic about Durang's comic look at the New York singles life, coming as it does in the naive 1981 predawn of AIDS. Though it's profane, it's just a sweet and funny tale reminding us of the need to stay emotionally open to love.”

(I remember being stalked for months by a deranged reader after reviewing that play. It just seemed right for the material.)

But the Durang play that struck closest to (my) home was "The Actor's Nightmare." Even if you don’t know the play, you have probably heard of it: An actor is thrown into a play he’s never rehearsed.

No one was safe from Durang’s satire. His Southern sendup "Not My Fault" was his gleeful retaliation on Tennessee Williams' pomposity. To see a Durang play was not to somehow connect with your own lost empathy. It was to check your empathy at the door.

The moral to Durang’s story? Antagonize a writer, and prepare to one day see yourself ridiculed on a stage.

Is this it for Bonfils/Lowenstein?

Who knows the ultimate fate of the flagship Tattered Cover book store on East Colfax now that its owners have put Denver’s signature independent chain up for sale.

The news has some asking – gasp – could Tattered Cover no longer be locally owned?

I’m the kind of person who goes all the way to the dark side, which has me asking – gasp – could this be the end of the Tattered Cover, period? And, if so, the eventual end of what remains of the Bonfils Theatre, which lives on only as the literal shell of the flagship Tattered Cover at Colfax and Elizabeth Street?

The news has Josh Lowenstein concerned. He’s a son of the legendary producer Henry Lowenstein, after whom the theater was renamed just before it closed for good in 1986. It then sat empty and abandoned until the Tattered Cover took over in 2006, rescuing about all that was left of Denver’s once-greatest theater at the time – its facade.

“I can tell you that when I attended the opening of the book store, my heart soared with joy,” Josh Lowenstein said. “This place that was so much of my life had been restored into a very respectful testament to my family.”

But while the Tattered Cover was the salvation of the theater’s shell – that shell is a terrible match for a bookstore. You can't use the wall height effectively, so almost all of its space is wasted. Not like the tall, narrow, four-story Cherry Creek store that could fill every inch of its walls with books.

Whatever comes next, Lowenstein will remain ever-grateful to the late Joyce Meskis and the Tattered Cover family for preserving his father’s memory. “It was done with love,” he said. Which is much more than could be said of Denver Center founder Donald Seawell, who had left Helen Bonfils’ crown jewel to rot.

“My memories of the old Bonfils Theatre are fond,” Lowenstein said, rattling off a dozen names – even that of “Frank, The Trap Room Ghost.”

His dream remains for all the ghosts of Bonfils to be raised one day in the form of (living) local actor flash mobs popping up to do five-minute excerpts of classic Bonfils plays at unexpected times throughout the Tattered Cover.

Denver Art Museum welcomes ‘Volcanoes’

The Denver Art Museum has just opened a new exhibit called Sandra Vásquez de la Horra: The Awake Volcanoes.” This is the Chilean artist’s first solo show in any U.S. museum. In her work, she explores fantasy, desire, fear and pleasure to explore the relationship between the human body and the world around it.

Her drawings, the museum says, often include symbols from different cultures, and her female figures perform contrasting roles in narratives that deal with freedom, spirituality and nature. The exhibit includes 200 drawings and prints, and runs through July 21. Info at denverartmuseum.org.

Har Mar booked for HQ

Har Mar Superstar (aka Sean Tilmann) has a concert scheduled for May 25 at HQ Denver in the Baker neighborhood, and the Reddit community is already up in arms about it.

Tillmann publicly apologized in 2021 after accusations of sexual assault and harassment were made by three women, according to his hometown newspaper, the Minneapolis Star Tribune. The alleged misconduct occurred between 2014-17. Tillman eventually posted an apology calling his accusers brave and admitting that his behavior was “harmful, abusive and selfish.”

As Har Mar Superstar, Tillman is known to strip down to his underwear during his sets. “But the issue isn't what he did on stage,” one Reddit poster said, “it's the serial sexual assaults he committed offstage.” Another poster said they were forwarding their complaint about the upcoming Denver date to HQ Denver management.