BETC's new season kicks off with laughs
Thursday, September 15, 2016
From:
Boulder Daily Camera
By:
A.H. Goldstein
Read the original:
Theater doesn't always have to offer solutions to humanity's great woes.
The stage offers a powerful way to address social ills, political strife and the deepest questions about life's ultimate meaning. Shakespeare pondered the value of our mortal coil via Hamlet's soliloquy. Arthur Miller used the Salem witch trials as a vehicle to denounce McCarthyism in The Crucible. Questions of racism, assimilation and culture helped make Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun a towering cultural achievement.
But there's also something to be said for old-fashioned entertainment.
BETC's production of the show about two retirement-home residents engaged in a battle of wits aims for belly laughs, Remaly insists, even amid themes that touch on uncomfortable topics ranging from domestic abuse to mortality. Lindsay-Abaire draws on pratfalls, pithy dialogue and a steady stream of gags to keep the laughs flowing and lighten the weightier themes. Ripcord is situational comedy at its best."Sometimes it's better to have a play that's not trying to solve the world's problems, or speak truth to power, or be edgy," said Rebecca Remaly, who's directing the Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company's production of David Lindsay-Abaire's comedy Ripcord, which kicks off this weekend at the newly revamped Dairy Arts Center. "Sometimes it's great just to have a really good time."
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