Brush up your Shakespeare in Pagosa this summer. You will not regret it.
A one-hour drive from Durango, the Pagosa Springs Center for the Arts has launched its repertory season. With “Something Rotten,” it’s got a winner.
The rollicking 2015 Broadway musical has inspired a local, high-energy match under the direction of Dennis Elkins. The Equity actor and director built a Durango following when he chaired the Fort Lewis College Drama Department. Elkins not only introduced cutting-edge new works like “Spring Awakening,” he also revived classics such as Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Pirates of Penzance.” Now, he is a creative force in Pagosa, and his humor and high jinks are all over this production.
If you go
WHAT: “Something Rotten,” by Thingamajig Theatre Company, Directed by Dennis Elkins.
WHERE: Pagosa Springs Center for the Arts, 2313 Eagle Drive, Pagosa Springs.
WHEN: Matinees and evening performances through Aug. 30.
TICKETS: $44 adults. Packages and discounts available.
MORE INFORMATION: Visit www.pagosacenter.org or call (970) 731-7469.
“Something Rotten” owes its high-octane sense of fun to Shakespeare, G&S and contemporary American musical theater. The work, with music and lyrics by the Kirkpatrick brothers, book by Karey Kirkpatrick and John O’Farrell, stirs G&S plot silliness into a hilarious Shakespearean stew with a spritzy, contemporary, tongue-in-cheek vibe. Bardian quotations abound, beginning with the title, an offish reference to “Hamlet” that gets translated into “Omelet.” You know you’re in for a crackling spoof when dancers show up in white egg costumes and eight bars later open yellow umbrellas.
In the Thingamajig-Pagosa-Elkins production, there are so many text, visual, melodic and even choreographic quotations from other musicals, you can’t keep track. Just laugh, move on and maybe drive back to Pagosa for a second serving.
It’s 1595 and two goofy brothers, Nigel and Nick Bottom (a wistful André Spathelf-Sanders and a winning Evan Hoefer), desperately compete with Shakespeare – London’s flamboyant celebrity du jour (the brilliantly smarmy, self-aggrandizing Jesse Kortus). The driving questions is: How do two young writers catch a break?
The opening number, “Welcome to the Renaissance,” sets a high energy bar that miraculously sustains the rest of the show. A few smaller, quieter scenes advance the plot and two subplots, but this is a big musical full of showstoppers.
A narrator-minstrel (the deliciously charming Dan Morrison) lightly guides the audience through to a surprising and perfect conclusion. A gaggle of characters propel the action from Bea Bottom, a gutsy wife in search of a second income (the delightfully brazen Alicia Osborn); Portia, Nigel’s enraptured girlfriend (an engagingly sweet Catie Leonard); and an ersatz Nostradamus, who outrageously plots a path for the Bottom brothers (unforgettably overacted with relish by Tim Moore).
Credit Elkins for a supercharged ensemble and a creative team for the comical set, spot-on sound and pitch-perfect lighting. Credit Dominic Girolami for music direction and Pia Wyatt for her imaginative, ever-changing and ever-surprising choreography.
“Rotten” garnered 10 Tony nominations in 2015, and Broadway actor Christian Borle won a Tony Award for his role as Shakespeare. The musical went on tour here and abroad, and has been translated into German, Swedish and Korean. When COVID-19 interrupted its international run, the work vanished like so many others. But in 2024, the show opened again in London and in Canada’s Stratford Festival. How lucky we are that now “Rotten” has come to Southwest Colorado.
PSCA is easy to find on the way to Pagosa – on a left frontage road well before you even get to Pagosa. It is a one-hour drive from Durango, and there’s plenty of free parking.
Judith Reynolds is an arts journalist and member of the American Theatre Critics Association.
