Denver

Reviewed by Holly Bartges

The Denver Repertory Theatre presents the world premiere of local playwright Jonson Kuhn’s play Denver at the John Hand Theatre through April 7.

Jude Moran and Tamara Todres star in Denver, the new production by The Denver Repertory Theatre.

Directed by david c. riley, The Denver Rep tapped into new Denver talent for this exaggerated absurd play leaving room for plenty of laughs and mind tickling thoughts all at the same time.

Although within the context of the play, there is no reference to Denver, Kuhn lives in Denver, and likes the idea of a one-word title. The idea of the play sprang out of his immediate life situation at the time he began writing it.

Responsibility to society vs. dreaming, that was the issue. Where is the fine line between paying the phone bill, doing what is expected, while being true to oneself? Is it possible one can do both? Or does one have to make a choice?

Set in a shack somewhere in the Denver area, Kuhn molds his ideas through the lives of two young people caught in the whirl of want and expectation, representing two extreme points of view.

Susan Bell designed the complicated set of Baby Boy and Nag’s ramshackled house with boards and windows boarded up, unkempt, trash everywhere, clothes strewn about, and beds consisting of blankets spread out on the floor.

The boards are Baby Boy’s idea to keep the bad people out.

Jude Moran plays Baby Boy with youthful enthusiasm, pent up anger, translating into fear, confusion, with a tinge of awe. A simple uneducated fellow endowed with an extraordinary gift of being able to dream and giving back the ability to dream to those who have lost it. He doesn’t know where the gift came from. He doesn’t understand it. He just knows he has it, and he knows he is one of the last people in the city to possess it. Living in secret, he finds himself in great demand. Because he has to live in secret, he is difficult to locate. To find him, people who are desperate need to be diligent and willing to crawl through a secret passageway.

Balancing his gift and keeping away from the bad guys becomes a difficult and overwhelming tight rope for Baby Boy to manage. Boarding up the door and windows he thinks helps, along with six-shooters and a rifle. This young confused rattled young man bellows with pride he is not afraid to take down the bad guys.

It is by design the two main characters carry the names Baby Boy and Nag. A baby boy he is, an emotional psychological child attempting to cope in an adult world, with child-like fantasies. Spaghetti Westerns handled their bad guys with six-shooters. So does he.

Nag stands in the opposite end of the spectrum piling the bills under a table, in cabinets, on chairs, in drawers wherever they can’t be seen. Tamara Todres ensures Nag lives up to her name.

And just who are the bad guys threatening their life existence? Ironically, the Milk Man for one. Played by Paul Packer, the Milk Man isn’t about to be deterred by a boarded up door or window. It’s a set after all, something Baby Boy does not take into consideration. While Baby Boy stands guarding the boarded up door with guns in hand, the Milk Man climbs over the set onto the refrigerator, to the counter, to the floor behind him. He just wants to be paid for delivering the milk. For his ingenuity, he gets shot.

A new client is expected. Baby Boy considers himself to be a professional dreamer, but to Nag’s irritated disgust, he refuses to charge for his gift.

Nag may be a pragmatic we-have-to-pay-the-bills sort of person, but her credibility comes into question. Not too bright, a constant source of irritation to the dreamer, vulnerable to Baby Boy’s verbal outbursts, she prides herself on being a stripper.

There are key moments when Todres melds into the Nag character, other times the actor looks uncomfortable in her role with stiff arms. There are moments when she appears to not know what to do, where to go, how to react. Nag’s expressions don’t always come easy to Todres. When Baby Boy finally digs up the courage to tell her he loves her, not an easy thing for this conflicted man-child, the warm smile she falls into could melt an iceberg. There are sharp moments when Todres and Nag embrace each other, and equal moments when Todres walks away leaving Nag to fend for herself.

Having had opportunity to read the script before the opening night performance, I was struck by the over-use of swearing by Baby Boy. During the performance, the use of the infamous “F” word stuck out like a sore thumb. In a later conversation with Kuhn, he only laughed when I mentioned it. This was adlib by the nervous actor on opening night. Moran needs to know he has the character wrapped up with deliberate charm, and exaggerated reasoning without clutching additional opportunity to buy time. There is no question there are moments in a staged production, no other word expresses the emotion as that one does. However, when used in excess, it quickly becomes a stumbling block to the sequence of the play, the character, and the playwright’s intent.

One of the elements of the play found disturbing comes when the Milk Man first knocks at the door. Baby Boy tells Nag to hide under the table. When she comes from under the table, she wants to know what he wanted. Unrealistic to think she couldn’t hear the conversation when she was only a few feet away. Baby Boy doesn’t bother to answer the question. He just needs to lie down. Since he doesn’t answer, the question doesn’t need to be asked.

It takes courage for a theatre to mount a new play. It takes double courage for a theatre re-claiming its once strong status back into the Denver theatre community. riley has wanted to do Denver ever since he read it two years ago, claiming Kuhn to be the next Sam Shepard.

Kuhn isn’t completely unknown in Denver. The Clockwork Theatre, now The Playwright, produced his Cowgirls Blame It On Monday, as did the Federal Theatre.

Originally from Kansas, Kuhn moved here with his family in 1996. In Lafayette, he started “messing” around with writing at age 14 with friends. In college in Grand Junction, he recognized his gift, beginning to take it seriously. Now he has seven plays under his belt, which have been read and produced in Grand Junction, Manhattan, Seattle, and Denver.

During a time when he was attempting to go back to school full time and working full time, he was invited to write a one-act with two characters for a new play festival. Denver as a one-act began to take form coming straight out of his own life experience.

Not only has Shepard influenced him, but also his mother, an avid Spaghetti Western fan. Shepard and the spaghetti western influence stand highly visible in Denver. However, becoming the next Shepard doesn’t stand high on his priority list of goals. He wants to find his own voice. Currently a new play has begun to tickle his imagination. With a three-year-old son in Delta, he has no intention of going anywhere any time soon.

A quiet, intelligent, sensitive, perceptive young man, Kuhn has as many question as an interviewer does. A sense of humor bordering on the bizarre, the obvious, the absurd definitely hangs out with Baby Boy and Nag in their over exaggerated self-made predicament.

Strangely enough, it is Baby Boy who finds hope when offered a job up north on a cattle ranch. Nag is the one who remains leery. Centered in a Bible belt, how would the people react to a stripper? The dreamer Baby Boy flashes an immediate pragmatic answer.

Crawling through the secret passage, Amy Adams plays Gail, a woman whose only child died, losing also her ability to dream. Covered in mud, hair askew, nervous, and uncertain what to expect, at times almost incoherent, Adams does a grand job creating this frazzled character.

Mark Mechlberg takes on the role of Doc Wentworth a kindly caring gentleman who finds his way into the torn apart house through a hole in the wall. H just wants to know if everything is OK. Although Baby Boy has been shot, he calmly tells Wentworth “there’s no trouble. We’re still alive.” Wentworth explained the city found out he was aiding dreamers and closed him down. Once “he had a head full of dreams and a mouthful of ideas, but he can’t dream anymore.” After he leaves, Nag sighs, “He was nice.” Wentworth does return, but not in the same way he left. Mechlberg gives a credible performance as Wentworth. Wentworth’s frightening persona doesn’t lie with whom he really is; rather he has the capacity to deceive because somewhere along the way he lost the ability to feed his dreams. He may indeed be the one character to spark provocative thoughts.

When Denver lay on the pages as a one-act, Kuhn wasn’t happy with it, not knowing how to end it. Someone suggested he turn it into a two-act, and then he saw it for what it was. Leaving the play open-ended drives the audience to think about the significance of Baby Boy and Nag, and aye, perchance to think through the underlying issues of Denver swirling under the absurd exaggeration playing out on stage, advocating one can’t live in the clouds all of the time. The time comes when the Milk Man has to be paid.

Very aware there are many of his peers whom aren’t theatre people. These are the people Kuhn wants to target with his own brand of experimentation. Kuhn’s dreams are paying off, as long he remembers to pay the Milk Man.

Baby Boy and some of his bad guys use the guns liberally. No matter what the guns look like, they are actually cap pistols, loud cap pistols. If anyone is sensitive to loud noises, red lights facing the audience warn the audience just before the guns fire, giving sensitive ears time to be covered.

This production should definitely be seen. It will tickle the brain with questions, which is the whole idea behind the play. These actors definitely have talent, riley has done an admirable job directing, and Kuhn deserves attention as a playwright.

On first sight, the play may appear superficial and juvenile. Considering the characters, it has to be on one level. On other levels the basic underlying questions peek through, and the open-ended climax makes for grand drinks-after-the-show conversation. Did Baby Boy and Nag find their growing up in the cattle ranch in the sky, or up North?