AROUND TOWN
The inaugural Big Wonderful at Stanley Marketplace 12 to 8 p.m., May 21, Stanley Marketplace, 2501 Dallas St. Tickets are $5 – $15. Visit thebigwonderful.ticketfly.com for more information.
We’re not sure, but we’re pretty sure, that Aurora is becoming a whole lot cooler this weekend. Saturday, May 21, marks the first local incarnation of The Big Wonderful, the metro area’s grooviest, hipsteriest block party, at the city’s buzzing, but still forthcoming, Stanley Marketplace. The event will feature food, drinks (it’s sponsored by Modelo Especial) and plenty of live music compliments of local acts Euforquestra, Whitewater Ramble and Selasee and the Fafa Family. The event will be one of the first large-scale gatherings at the Stanley building, which will soon house more than 50 new businesses that offer everything from craft suds to flower arrangements, since the Cherry Arts Festival last fall. Rotating across five locations across the metro area for the first time this year, The Big Wonderful will be making bimonthly stops at Stanley through Sept. 3 — the same weekend the 100,000-square-foot market will officially open for business.
The Great Run 8 a.m., May 21, Aurora Municipal Center 10551 E. Alameda Pkwy. Adult registration is $35; kid’s fun run is free. Visit runningguru.com for more information.
The city of Aurora is doubling down on galvanizing ties with its Sister City of Adama, Ethiopia this month, following a new Ethiopian-centric exhibit at the Aurora History Museum with a local running of a popular Ethiopian road race. Slated for Saturday, May 21, The Great Run, or The Great Ethiopian Run, will feature a 4.5-mile course around the Aurora Municipal Complex and surrounding area. The race is formatted after a similar, 10-kilometer race that takes place in Addis Adaba each November and regularly features some of the fastest runners in the world. Proceeds from the race in Aurora will benefit Aurora Sister Cities International, which works in cooperation with city officials to bolster Aurora’s existing global relationships and create new ones. Food and music will be featured at the finish line.
ONSTAGE
The Wild Party Curtains at 7:30 p.m. May 20 & 21, The Armory Performing Arts Center, 300 Strong St., Brighton.Tickets start at $28. Call 866-811-4111 or visit ignitetheatre.com for more information about performances at both locations.
Same party, different venue. Ignite Theatre’s spring production of “The Wild Party” is ditching The Aurora Fox and heading to Brighton for its final pair of shows this weekend. Penned by Andrew Lippa, the production is a rambunctious musical set in prohibition era Manhattan. Based on a 1928 poem by Jospeh Moncure March, the ostentatious musical centers on a love triangle that collapses in on itself after jealousy is exposed and bullets are unleashed. It’s unrestrained, tense and a whole lot of entertainment. Shelby Varra, Keith Rabin Jr. and Alex Burse star; Reace Daniel directs and choreographs.
The Realish Housewives of Cherry Creek 7: 30 p.m. May 19 – 22 with additional performances at 2 p.m. May 21 & 22. The Garner Galleria Theatre at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. Running time: 80 minutes plus a 15-to-20-minute intermission. Tickets start at $29. Call 800-641-1222 or visit www.denvercenter.org for more information.
Unless you’ve been living under a bottle of Botox for the past decade, you know that this show currently running at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts is based on Bravo’s breakout reality television nightmare, “The Real Housewives of [Fill in the Blank Hive of Wealth].” Mirroring its on-screen counterpart, the stage production centers on a quintet of reality show archetypes: The ditz, the political power-monger, the tycoon, the puppeteer and the “normal”-ish one. Audience members get pummeled by the character’s zingy egos from the get-go, gleaning snipes during “on-air sit-downs” and grimacing during flashback vignettes that depict former verbal melees. Bursting with fellow Second City-ites, the six-person cast (and one verbose audience member who, frankly, stole a bit of the show on opening night) is a powerful, new-age brat pack, brimming with personages whose quest for attention is only eclipsed by the sheen radiating from their Pantene-kissed coiffures.
The Stone Coat Woman: An Iroquois Tale 11 a.m. & 1 p.m. May 21-22, at The BiTSY Stage, 1137 S. Huron St., Denver. For more information, call 720-328-5294 or visit www.bitsystage.com.
It’s not often that a metro-area production boasts a ticket price of $0. And it’s even less often that a free show is as pertinent as this one, which offers a particularly anti-xenophobic thesis. Timely. Patti Murtha directs.