Since not a single critic would dare come see Kama Sutra, here is the closest thing to a review we could get!

“Only Pagans Play with their Clitorises, and Democrats”: Notes on Kama Sutra

The clitoris is the sole organ in the human anatomy that exists for pleasure alone. Being that I find myself more male than not, I enjoy pondering the clitoris and how best I could suit its needs—should I meet one. In fact, I will go as far as to say that the clitoris excites me more than the gigantic bundle of nerve endings that is theatre; the boldest of statements if you get to know me personally. Imagine my glee on the night I am invited to take in a performance of Kama Sutra. Surely, I'm bound to run across mention of a clitoris or two! Plus, I could use something different like this; to see a different show in a different theatre. So many are springing up, yet so many more are dying. The more shows I can see, the more it means this wished-well pipe dream of mine is not, in fact, drying up. This is live theatre, the mirror of the masses, I'm eager to meet those crazies out there fighting the same fight.

Of course, as luck would have it, the night before I can get anywhere near all this dramatic clitoral revelation, the kid composing a score for me gets pinched by law for an insignificant little “failure to appear”, and I spend the morning with the rest of the crew bailing him out. Any time your music, sound, or light man lands in a hole, it's worth it to spring him over training someone to fill in on the fly. By the time the boy is back in the booth, I'm on Federal heading south toward the show and there is more than the customary share of bumper to bumper. I sit, frantic to make a good impression on these, my theatrical fellows, yet lost in the muck of Sunday morning crosstown commuter-ship. I hate missing a curtain. There's no way to enter a theatre both politely and late. So there goes the great impression, right out the window onto the interstate. And worse yet to think I might arrive too late for all the grand and glorious clit-wit. But this isn't just any theatre now is it. Dangerous is literally its middle name. Maybe my tardiness will go under-noticed.

Entering, I note that it's not the neighborhood that lends this playhouse its danger. No, it emanates from within, it's the soul, hiding hushed in the walls of the space. Perhaps it represents danger to the current pretenses of theatre? A danger for those who snob noses up at theatre's working class?

Denver's Dangerous likes to show off how well it does without all that equitable attention. The production is small and charged with an organic energy; humble and honest with plenty of heart. Much like my favorite female friendly-switch, this building and all the souls within form a nucleus of nerves and tissues that pulses with nothing but sheer and unapologetic pleasure. The actors (one of whom owns this most daring of Denver's theatres) deliver quotes and quips of a love-life lacking lust. Stiff jokes and moist humor take a playful romp through the pages of the torrid Hindi tome, mistaken by the wifey character for an Indian book of cookery. The audience feasts from the performers palms as we are rolled through the blankets and sheets of sexual awakening, however late in life it comes. As I guffaw in the audience, free edibles in hand, I suddenly realize that the lady at the jailhouse who just took bond money to release my friend reminds me quite a lot of one of these women. You know the sort: May have gone to Catholic school where a scary nun in funeral garb told her, “Only pagans play with their clitorises, and Democrats!”, thus she spends her life never grasping the irony that she should end up with a desk job in the penile system.

With unabashedly small scale equipment, Dangerous makes good on the notion that “it's not the size of the boat but the motion of the ocean” that makes good art. They make no bones about talking directly to us, the spectator, and that's the ticket isn't it?: In the scene of Denver's underground theatre, he (or she) who makes us feel best about sitting up close to a companies growth and engorgement is the one that wins the returning throngs.

I leave with my fill of clitty crack-ups, fed by the gracious table of the House Manager, and warmed to see that the mirror of the masses is still held high. Held by companies like Dangerous who keep it clean (or not so much) and polished for those of us unimpressed with the budgets and ballyhoo of the boring old board of directors.

J Murray d'Armand