Lean forward fare: Lolita Chakrabarti and Yann Martel’s “Life of Pi” with Pi and Richard Parker the tiger An Iranian son channels his mother — robes of lamé fabric and all. A high school student wrestles with parental and cultural expectations after her sister’s death. A murderer hides amid a boarding house full of suffragettes. A native son of Colorado awakens near Cherry Creek Reservoir after a bender and, thanks to two sets of grandparents, begins a reckoning.
Whenever a Broadway hit such as “Book of Mormon,” “Frozen” or “Kimberly Akimbo” launches a national tour in Denver, intriguing questions arise. What about this city and its audiences is a draw to producers? Is there something special about us? And, if so,It’s terrain that executive directors and artistic directors like the Broadway division’s John Ekeberg and the theater company’s Chris Coleman navigate as they put together seasons.
“& Juliet,” about life after Romeo, might have you leaning in for its play on Shakespeare’s tragedy, and leaning back for the pop-pleasures of a jukebox musical brimming with Swedish rocker Max Martin’s hits. Returning was a concern for Broadway as well as regional theaters. Yet, the Denver Center has weathered the ongoing tumult set in motion by the COVID pandemic
In one of the great traditions of the theater company, the season’s two world premieres come out of 2022’s Colorado New Play Summit. There’s the screwball, deceptively easy romp “The Suffragette’s Murder,” which Coleman calls a “unique beast that is unapologetic about the laugh machine it’s building, but then also reveals a more serious, political interest underneath.”