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Directing: Reviews
What the members of the media have had to say...
Macbeth (Berkeley, CA)
"However great his literary legacy, Shakespeare was always an entertainer first. Which is why Subterranean Shakespeare's production of "Macbeth," which opened Thursday at the Berkeley Art Center, is such a joy to watch. What director Jeremy Cole somehow manages to do is overcome the obstacles standing in the way of success to create something far more entertaining than it has any right to be ... Credit also goes to Cole for creating a play that understands our need for action: There is always at least one actor present and no time off for scene changes..."- Steven Simunic, The Daily Californian
"It seems as though director Jeremy Cole considers both fate and choice in his fast-paced production of Macbeth by way of the Weird Sisters. The witches, played by Martha Stookey, Carrie Smith, and Molly Holcomb, are Shakespeare's representation of the past, present, and future, not necessarily in that order. They are Destiny; they are the Fates. On this stage, the witches are not only omnipotent and omniscient; they are also omnipresent, onstage even when “off.” This omnipresence leads one to question whether the Sisters are truly omniscient, or if they are just calling it like they see it, and providing Macbeth with choices. What do I mean by this? The Weird Sisters do their usual cackle, brew, and conjure, and well, at that; but they also take on other roles without completely stepping out of their original, witchy characters. For instance, the play begins; the witches meet; fair is foul and foul is fair, and with a wave of her red cape, witch three becomes a bleeding Captain, telling of Macbeth's heroic exploits on the battlefield. No costume change, no scene change, just a turn and a flow into character. More vividly, Stookey, plays the head-witch, and takes on the role of the Scottish thane, Lennox. Stookey delivers her lines as Lennox with all the look and intonation of her omniscient doppelganger, leaving the audience to question who is whom, and who knows what. My only problem with this tactic is that it can be confusing for someone who is relatively unfamiliar with the play. I can imagine that some of my audience members were trying to figure out why one of the witches was hanging out at court, but it is also the most brilliant part of Cole's production, and luckily it weaves in and out of the play from beginning to end."
- Denise Battista, PlayShakespeare.com
"Subterranean Shakespeare's sharp production of Macbeth at the Berkeley Arts Center in Live Oak Park, with Jeremy Cole's fast-paced and nimble, intimate staging, brings the drama to the fore, the story into focus, dissolving the hoary encrustations without losing the genuine strangeness of the tale, its eerie reverberations of willfulness and destiny, character and autosuggestive magic.
...The real power of this seeming potboiler that exposes a brave man's ambition as murder, a loving marriage as the breeding ground of resentment and the pinnacle of success as weary cynicism, is made more direct with syncopated, overlapping scenes, crowded moments succeeded by solitary soul-baring and the fluid motion of the cast in eye-to-eye proximity to the audience—a power that is palpable, that connects with a spectator's fleeting thoughts and emotions, rather than a vague sense of menace."
- Ken Bullock, The Berkeley Daily Planet
Richard III
"(Richard) seduces the contemptuous Lady Anne in a hot and twisted tęte-ŕ-tęte that tests director Jeremy Cole's mettle at blocking a nasty yet amorous duel for mastery of the other, with torrid results ... in this active, lucid show, there's dynamics aplenty, especially in the quiet, agonizing moments. The cast is deployed skillfully ... The audience visibly hangs on every sublime - if barbed - word. It's a worthy effort, as is shown by this solid show, featuring the Bay Area debut of an estimable director..."- Ken Bullock, The Berkeley Daily Planet
"Director Jeremy Cole promises his audience an intimate encounter with Shakespeare, and he delivers in more ways than one. Sub Shake's Richard III is staged at the Berkeley Art Center, a space that provides an excellent set for entrances and exits with its perfectly placed partitions hiding a welcoming violinist who accompanies the performance."
- Denise Battista, The Shakespeare Revue
Metamorphoses
“... Cole has given us theater at its essence, the practice of human beings handing their stories to one another like precious gifts from the gods.”- Lisa Bornstein, The Rocky Mountain News
"Director Jeremy Cole's brazen interpretation is uproariously funny in ways creator Mary Zimmerman never would have considered appropriate... Cole smartly plays Ovid's most powerful moments with respect... Cole has not only assembled one of the finest young ensembles in memory, he has handed them that rarest of gifts - material worth of their abilities. Cole's production is a triumphant amalgam of light, props and sound, creating striking visual moments of dramatic clarity: Myrrha dissolving in a shower of her own tears; Hunger portrayed as a puppet clinging to the neck of Erysichthon; floating candles symbolizing a banquet feast; even the god of Sleep wearing SpongeBob SquarePants boxer shorts. If catharsis is the thing theater is supposed to be about, then Metamorphoses is what theatre is supposed to be."
- John Moore, The Denver Post
Bent
“Twenty-four years after its debut, Martin Sherman's Bent retains much of its visceral power; even when the script becomes predictable, the action manages to stun.The Hunger Artists production also reminds audiences that Breckenridge's gain was Denver's loss. Jeremy Cole, now the artistic director for Backstage Theatre just off the ski slopes, came back to Denver to direct a production that bests many of the area's so-called "semi-professional" outlets.
He takes the LIDA Project Theatre, a large warehouse that has stymied many lesser directors, and reduces its space to a size that intensifies the drama of this tale of gay men in the Holocaust.
Sherman's play provides multiple opportunities for nervous laughter or melodrama, but Cole and his cast are so sure-footed they consistently hit their targets."
- Lisa Bornstein, The Rocky Mountain News
"...at the end of the Hunger Artists' gut-eviscerating new production of Bent, all that can be heard is silence, followed by a groundswell of weeping, from the right and left ... when a play ends with weeping in stereo, you have to give it up to those involved and say, "Bravo." Nothing I've seen of late has so affected its audience, and for my money, that makes Bent the best play of the year. That this blindside comes from the Hunger Artists, who have been largely dormant the past year, only magnifies the feat.
...director Jeremy Cole has remarkable control over the tone of his piece (and ditching the accents was brilliant)."
- John Moore, The Denver Post
"I didn't want to see Bent. I've seen it before, and I knew what it was about. I didn't want to explore that thing again, that image of ragged clothes, discarded shoes, hanks of hair, rotting flesh, that great stinking black mound of history towering over and defining the twentieth century. Particularly in a political atmosphere as charged and threatening as the one in which we're currently living, with the threat of unending wars overseas and the undercurrents of racism, homophobia and repression at home. [but] Jeremy Cole's is a thoughtful, heartfelt production, devastating at moments."
- Juliet Wittman, Westword
The Kentucky Cycle
"Director Jeremy Cole proves himself an alchemist with the Hunger Artists production of The Kentucky Cycle, in which a few dollars and 29 actors are spun into a sprawling, mythic epic of American history.
Cole masterfully directs this massive undertaking. Long passages of Cherokee dialogue are fluidly rendered, and dance permeates Morning Star's scenes. Each moment reflects an eye for composition, making great use of the large mainstage theater at Denver Civic Theatre."
- Lisa Bornstein, The Rocky Mountain News
"Beautifully directed by Jeremy Cole, the powerful material is well-served by Hunger Artists Ensemble Theatre's riveting regional premiere at the Denver Civic Theatre."
- Dianne Zuckerman, The Denver Post
"Kevin Stephens and director Cole provide a spare, platform-and-burlap setting in which noble emotions find a place alongside their ignoble cousins; lighting designers Steven J. Deidel and Anna R. Kaltenbach bathe the stage with an evocative array of color and shadow; and the costumes are effectively coordinated by a team of four company members. Above all, though, Cole and company triumph where it matters most: uncovering each play's unique flavor, each person's particular humanity and each time period's overriding sweep -- all while remaining true to a story that, in the end, says more about our national character than any of us might care to admit."
- Jim Lillie, Westword
Eye of God
"Credit director Jeremy Cole for wielding a gentle touch in shaping what could easily have been a redneck clunker. There's every opportunity to overplay this familiar hand, yet Cole never does. He allows for a natural rhythm, coaxing performances from his cast that run from charming to astonishing.
Eye of God asks hard questions about love, religion and family. Then it answers them with a confidence that leaves you on the edge of your seat."
- Mike Pearson, The Rocky Mountain News
The Dead
"As is evident in the Hunger Artists Theater Ensemble's enchanting production of Joyce's short story The Dead, the Irishman's fabled prose packs an impressive theatrical wallop. Now on stage at the LIDA Project Experimental Theatre, the near-two-hour play is smartly directed by Jeremy Cole, who has adapted Joyce's entertaining tale into a seamless, wholly engrossing reader's-theater-style piece for seven voices.Cole and company's minimalist version enhances and personalizes the suggestive power of Joyce's incomparable imagery -- augmented throughout by several of the director's well-chosen musical selections -- in a splendid style that would be the envy of many a multi-media-minded auteur.
Cole elicits several understated portrayals from his solid cast of actors. Far from being hampered by the constraints of the small stage or hemmed in by the conventions of reader's theater itself (each actor reads from a black-bound script and rarely strays far from his or her chair), most of the performers seem liberated as they employ subtle glances, smallish gestures and slight vocal inflections to convey Joyce's soaring lyricism.
Cole's sensitive approach serves as a fitting tribute to both the author's enjoyable yarn -- Joyce was fond of referring to the sketches in Dubliners as "epiphanies," for their insights into life -- and the ensemble's accomplished interpretation. Indeed, as the play concludes, our souls swoon with Gabriel's as he stares out an imaginary window and observes, with Ibsenesque aplomb, the "snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."
- Jim Lillie, Westword
"Jeremy Cole's adaption is a skillful one. The actors each take on one or two specific characters; they speak the passages describing or concerning these people in their regular American accents, switching to Irish dialect for lines of direct dialogue. Each characterization is fully realized, but the actors also slip from one character to another with the ease of someone shrugging on a shawl. You get the sense that these performers genuinely venerate the text and that each is willing to subsume him or herself to its demands. And -- in a familiar paradox -- the text gives back fourfold: With Joyce's words in their mouths, these actors transcend themselves.
...Cole's direction here achieves perfect pitch. Though Joyce describes Gabriel touching Gretta and putting his arm around her, the actors don't do these things. They just stand facing each other, and their restraint functions like silence in music or white space in art; there's something extraordinarily moving about it."
- Juliet Wittman, Westword
In the Heart of America
"Hatred is a shape shifter in Naomi Wallace's In the Heart of America playing through Dec. 19 at the Oedipus Complex. One minute it's the wholesale vilification of an entire people, the next, it's sister hating brother. Hatred is both global and intimate.
One of the most challenging scripts now showing in Denver, In the Heart of America conflates time and space, crumples death and love in one large wad, and collects states of consciousness like charms.
Tender (a breathtaking moment where Augustus Truhn as Remzi teaches Josh Hartwell's Craver to eat a fig with "purpose and a sense of pride") and brutal (Lue Ming's rape scene), Heart is a study of bigotry, evil and how love and hatred can coexist. Directed by Jeremy Cole, this is an active enterprise that demands not just rapt attention, but a dynamic relationship between the viewer and what is viewed. We hold love and hatred in our hands like running water. And we make meaning out of souls so lost they find no respite even in hell.”
- Leslie Petrovski, Denver.Sidewalk.Com
A Ritual for Returning
"Under the direction of Jeremy Cole, Hubbard's A Ritual for Returning, now being produced by the Backstage Theatre in Breckenridge, comes alive as a bright, brisk dreamscape on wheels."
- Bob Bowes, Colorado Drama
"...the play is superbly directed by Jeremy Cole, artfully designed by Cole and Doug Peterson, and well-acted by an ensemble of veteran performers.
To his credit, Cole wisely keeps the action moving at a breakneck clip, effectively mitigating the undertow of a few of the playwright's more static scenes. As played against Peterson's Romper Room-like set, Cole's inventive approach to Hubbard's script underscores Kendra's overriding wish to view the world with a preschooler's innate gift for make-believe...
Dramaturgical problems aside, Cole manages to elicit several outstanding portrayals from his cast. Leading the company is Carr, with an ebullient portrait of the mantra-muttering Kendra. Cohen imbues his delightful collection of vagrants and wackos with lurching commentaries on what passes for normalcy these days, while Katt's long-suffering husband is a model for hordes of contemporary Sisyphuses who daily burn the proverbial candle at both ends.
Coupled with Cole's directing skills and Peterson's design contributions, such high-quality acting is a healthy sign that Hubbard is only a step or two from fashioning a play as mature in its character development as this early effort is precocious in its outlook."
- Jim Lillie, Westword
The Lady from Dubuque
"Jeremy Cole has directed Albee's The Lady from Dubuque with the cold clear eye of a surgeon and inspiring compassion. It is the best work I have seen him do, and it is thrilling that the play warrants it."
- David Marlowe, Out Front
"Directed by Jeremy Cole, The Lady from Dubuque showcases some white-hot performances, especially Lisa Mumpton as Jo, who is not about to go gently into this good night, and the wonderful Joan Staniunas as Carol, the unsophisticate who sees."
- Kyle Parrett, Denver Sidewalk
"The Hunger Artists production, smoothly directed by Jeremy Cole, benefits from an interesting cast and strong staging as it deals with impending death, marital discord, alienation and loss."
- Sandra Brooks-Dillard, The Denver Post
Good
"Director Jeremy Cole has a meticulous eye for detail and a painter's sense of design; looking at any of his shows is a visual treat. Throughout the evening, Cole artfully "Freeze-frames" certain characters so Johnny can comment on them for the audience. At other times he trots out the whole cast and arranges them in luscious poses against the back wall of the stage.
Taylor has written his play as a musical drama, and Cole has his singers artfully re-create period music, often with a touch of parody. When Marlene Dietrich emerges to sing the fabulous "Falling in Love Again" from the 1930 film The Blue Angel, Cole underscores the sexism of the day by having Johnny's frumpy wife and his young mistress mimic Marlene's sexed-up motions like a pair of back-up singers. It's very amusing and also very subversive."
- M.S. Mason, Westword
"Good is a subtle and insidious drama told from the point of view of a German intellectual who slowly enmeshed himself in the Nazi regime. It builds to a chilling final image.
Directed with precision and forethought by Jeremy Cole, "Good" makes an even greater impact through moments of unexpected humor and fantasy."
- Sandra Brooks-Dillard, The Denver Post
"Jeremy Cole, one of our most talented local directors, fluently blends a gifted cast led by Curt Pesicka as Professor Halder. Pesika masters the soggy reasoning that allows nations to blind themselves to the terror they inflict on others. This play is not obviously just about one particular holocaust, lest we forget the world's deaf ear to Tibet, Somalia, the Amazon, Bosnia, or your backyard. You name it."
- Bob Bows, ColoradoDrama.com
The Baltimore Waltz
"A small black stage. A few white props. Three people. And it's theater with a capital T. Since its 1991 New York premiere, The Baltimore Waltz has earned kudos everywhere. It's easy to see why from the sensitive, imaginative production directed by Jeremy Cole."
- Dianne Zuckerman, The Boulder Daily Camera
"Director Jeremy Cole has pulled every trick in the book to give a stiff Waltz some clever dips and turns. His timing is excellent. Stage business is inventive and funny. The single hospital bed is used artfully as the central prop, symbol and scenery -- a place of comfort, pleasure or horror as needed. Cole's sleek, smart design for the show -- all black and white -- contributes elegance and sophistication to the production.”
- M.S. Mason, Westword
Beirut
"What lifts this production above that level [of 'just another consciousness-raising AIDS metaphor'] are Jeremy Cole's strong, imaginative direction and the confident performances of Phillip Luna and Rebekah Buric -- it is to the credit of all three that this drama never falls into the sensationalist trap that it so easily could... ...Cole very effectively uses the whole environmental space: the central room in which Torch's grimy mattress is placed within grim, graffiti-covered walls, a stairway, a second space with a cutout service window-like area and even the fully functional toilet and sink down the hall."
- Sandra Dillard-Rosen, The Denver Post
"Rebekah Buric and Phillip Luna as Blue and Torch perform alone and undressed and unafraid on stage. The sexual struggles of the two are explicit. Jeremy Cole is their amazing director."
- Jackie Campbell, The Rocky Mountain News
The Investigation
"Weiss pared back the words of both the victims and the perpetrators to the essential horror, and director Jeremy Cole's spartan approach likewise eschews all excess: a bare black stage, with all the actors barefoot and dressed in identical white costumes (vaguely resembling hospital uniforms), and all ten on stage throughout the action. Cole, however, spares us nothing emotionally. His ingenious staging, particularly the way he balances each actor's performance style against the others in the purest ensemble style, is calculated not to overwhelm but to elicit empathy and to give us time to think.
And Cole goes further: He has cast his horrendous tale gender-blind -- women sometimes take men's roles and men sometimes take women's. The effect is devastating, because the usual stereotypes about male aggression and female victimization undergo a strange transformation: Vulnerability is pan-human. The male victim is no less manly for having been victimized and, of course, no more defenseless than the female. Nor is the female victim seen to be weaker or more subject to fear than the male. Both male and female have been violated."
- M.S. Mason, Westword
"In one particulary effective case, Joseph Miller provides an impressive portrayal of a woman testifying against the accused man played by Ellen Orloff. Miller cries, "He (the accused) went over to the boy, picked him up and smashed him against the wall. Afterward, he told me to clean it up." Orloff's frigid response of denial evokes emotional exhaustion from the victim.
Cole brilliantly molded the original script of court reports into a work of art, using the actors as props and set pieces. Cole also incorporated his dance training into the play. In the "Song of the Possibility of Survival," actor Kevin Stephens reminds us that outside the camps the world was still dancing and having a great time. Cole choreographed an Andrews-Sisters lip-sync to "Bei Mir Bist du Schoen," performed by actresses Orloff, Martin and Freeland. Behind their sweet and smiling faces loom frozen scenes of torture, fear and death."
- Chari Greenberg, Boulder Weekly
"Jeremy Cole's fine direction of this piece takes one deep into the human race consciousness. Six men and four women, barefoot and dressed in crisp, clean white GI's, take turns as victim and villain, judge and jury.
...Our savior is Cole's direction. His clean, unwaveringly intelligent approach lets us for the space of the play's staging time remain relatively unaffected emotionally. The next morning, your head will be full of a memory that will not be shaken easily. Your eyes will fill and your heart will affirm that this will never happen again. Cole's core concept that personal responsibility and a code of ethics are as important in war as in peace time slams home with the force of absolute truth."
- David Marlowe, Out Front
Playing with Fire (after Frankenstein)
"Director Jeremy Cole once again brings more to the production than the script he's been given truly warrants. Cole has a remarkable talent for investing lesser work with aesthetic vitality, and he breaks through Field's walls of rhetoric to find the life behind her arguments. You never feel cheated by his insights; the moment of the creature's birth and the moment of his bride's demise radiate a strange power."
- M.S. Mason, Westword
"Taken simply as a piece of theater, the version of Playing With Fire by Hunger Artists is a thrilling gothic drama. The play passes like a dream, with a group of extraordinary actors playing pale and dreamlike people who come and go between dark curtains. Director Jeremy Cole has taken a tale tarnished by pop culture parodies and cloaked it in mystery and meaning. This one excels in every feature. In clarity and depth, it sparkles like a dark jewel."
- Jackie Campbell, The Rocky Mountain News
"(unlike most film versions) Barbara Fields' adaptation, Playing with Fire (after Frankenstein) now being given an absorbing, well-acted staging by Hunger Artists, takes on the story's deeper themes.
In the process, Playing with Fire becomes a more faithful rendition of Shelley's classic, with its probing questions about death, loneliness, immortality and responsibility for one's acts.
Director Jeremy Cole's perceptive staging makes Shelley's points without making either the scientist or his creation the farcically mad figures associated with most "Frankenstein" flicks."
- Dianne Zuckerman, The Boulder Daily Camera
Macbeth
"Purists may blanch at director Jeremy Cole's adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth, but the adventurous revision has much to say to us...
...but it's Lady Macbeth, not her husband, who goes insane and then commits suicide. And here is where Cole's adaptation gets most interesting -- he gives Lady Macbeth ample reason to go crazy. Without adding a single line to the play, he has her react in dismay to Macbeth's assassination orders. Then, disguised as a messenger, she herself warns Lady Macduff. When the murders take place anyway, they prey on her mind; a woman who tried to fill herself up with "direst cruelty," it turns out, is not cruel enough to survive her conscience. Cole's elegant little device works very, very well.
Through it all, Cole does no real violence to the spirit of the play. He simply brings out different nuances, and his grasp of this great work is fresh and intelligent... It's not the most profound vision of Macbeth's devolution, but like the rest of Cole's interpretation, it's still powerful, beautifully performed and memorable: a Macbeth for the Nineties."
- M.S. Mason, Westword
The Mound Builders
"...this is a masterful production of a work that bristles with brittle, sarcastic, often humorous dialogue as it raises some important contemporary issues.
Director Jeremy Cole has assembled an effective cast, led by superb performances from Martha Greenberg as the dissolute but highly observant D.K. and Matt Cohen as Chad, a seething backwoodsman teetering on the verge of explosion."
- Sandra Dillard-Rosen, The Denver Post
The play is a joy to watch, primarily because of Jeremy Cole's directorial genius. His taut pacing perfectly accentuates the climax and his lighting design creates the ideal mood. He brilliantly orchestrates overlapping dialogue and has assembled a superb cast."
- Cha Snyder, On Stage
"For actors, getting a good role is like receiving a gift, one they can pass on to audiences through a good performance.
It's an apt analogy for Boulder actress Martha Greenberg's work in the highly praised The Mound Builders, at the Theater at Muddy's in Denver.
"This is one of those roles that was handed to me," Greenberg says, diving enthusiastically into a discussion about performing in Lanford Wilson's drama set on an archaeological dig.
Director Jeremy Cole, who remembered Greenberg from a previous audition, asked her to come to call-backs for The Mound Builders, where, Greenberg recalls with a laugh, "there was no one else there for the part."
Greenberg was delighted to be cast because she had wanted to work with Cole for a long time. "In the grapevine among actors, he's very, very highly considered.
"Actually, I probably would have done any play just to work with him," Greenberg says. "As it turns out, I think it's a great play. It's a stellar role for me. And it's been one of the best experiences I've had, because of the strong quality of the cast."
- Dianne Zuckerman, The Boulder Daily Camera
The Adding Machine
"Innovation has its price, and the liberties Denver director Jeremy Cole has taken with The Adding Machine, Elmer Rice's famous 1923 experiment in expressionism, may not please purists entirely. But you have to hand it to Cole; he has found exciting ways to translate the dated designs of expressionism into contemporary and utterly scathing terms. His outrageous welding of electronic media and theater reflects trends in performance art, and his use of classic film clips to expand and illustrate the play's ideas is ingenious. ...
...Of course, the adding machine is a primitive tool compared with the computer, and while Rice's essential message is still relevant, Cole had to find a new way of delivering it. A large video screen and several small monitors dot the theater. A particularly amusing computer console has been set up with arms and multiple screens to represent a technology beyond the grave. And to underscore just how lost the play's protagonist is, Cole incorporates poetry by modern masters to express what is best in the human spirit. The contrast is sometimes stunning and always engaging."
- M.S. Mason, Westword
"In a new production of The Adding Machine at the Guild Theater in Boulder, however, the political issues are largely eclipsed by a more contemplative approach to the play's ideas. This free-wheeling adaptation by director Jeremy Cole, is augmented by poems from W.H. Auden, Robert Frost and others and video images from (among others) The Wizard of Oz and Metropolis.
The result: The play is as much about Jeremy Cole as Elmer Rice. This is not a problem. A writer, director and designer, Cole is one of the most prodigiously talented people in Denver-area theater. His thoughts on our soulless society are both challenging and profound, all the more so, since he communicates them through the very media he sees as corrupting us.
The short evening contains a dizzying mix of audio and video technology, and live characters interact with artificial ones as if no one can tell the difference anymore."
- Alan Dumas, The Rocky Mountain News
"Filled with memorable moments, Jeremy Cole's multimedia production of The Adding Machine is complex and provocative. It is brilliantly thought out, creatively staged theater that is thoroughly absorbing. There is little doubt that Cole is one of the most imaginatively creative directors currently working in Boulder and Denver."
- David Marlowe, Boulder Planet
"Given a decidedly late Twentieth Century twist by director Jeremy Cole through the use of multiple television monitors, and video and audio playback, including taped appearances by many of metro Denver's finest actors, The Adding Machine reminds us of just how paltry our efforts have been to loosen the tyranny of capital and technology over human affairs. "
- Bob Bows, ColoradoDrama.com
Death of a Salesman
"Materialism is destructive, especially when its false ideals lodge in the breast of a man who is too good for them. In director Jeremy Cole's beautifully realized staging of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, Willy Loman's wrenching descent into madness and death speaks eloquently to the "winners and losers" mentality of American culture in the Nineties -- and convincingly denounces it. Cole's production at the Town Hall Arts Center in features several fine performances and a thoughtful, poignant interpretation of what is arguably Miller's greatest play...
...The death that Willy suffers, many have suffered. The love he feels but fails to express, many more have failed to show their children. As Cole delicately reveals, this is Biff's tragedy as much as Willy's: Sometimes it's easier to love one's enemies than it is to love one's friends."
- M.S. Mason, Westword
"Jeremy Cole succeeds in bringing Miller's battle cry to end man's inhumanity to man into clear focus with his direction. Don't go expecting to be entertained. Go to be put in complete awe of what, in my opinion, is arguably the best American play to date."
- David Marlowe, Out Front
Pterodactyls
"Brilliantly directed by Jeremy Cole and enacted by a talented cast, it is an acid-humored play whose laughs, unfortunately, depend on some sickening lampoons."
- Jackie Campbell, The Rocky Mountain News
Talley & Son
"The bickering family in Talley & Son may not be the kind of folks you'd want in your living room, but they're absorbing company in the production Jeremy Cole has staged for Hunger Artists...
...There's a terrible sense of irony throughout, as the fresh-faced Timmy, unseen by the others, navigates the troubled family waters, beaming sweetly at the mention of his name. And it's a credit to Cole's deft staging that one moment we're aware of Timmy's presence, then suddenly, he's melted away unobserved, as the focus shifts to an intrusive telegram."
- Dianne Zuckerman, The Boulder Daily Camera
for colored girls...
"Masterfully directed by Jeremy Cole, "for colored girls..." is spellbinding and emotionally charged as the magnificent cast of women grace the stage in a rainbow of color."
- Madeline Gallegos, The Urban Spectrum
"Sensitively and powerfully directed by Jeremy Cole, "for colored girls" is painful, true, funny and often devastating. It also contains moments that are sometimes so private we feel as if we should turn our eyes away."
- Sandra Dillard-Rosen, The Denver Post
The Search for Signs...
"As ridiculous, pitiable and egocentric as most of them are, each of the characters has a full-blown humanity, though we know comparatively little about them. That is partly because Clifton was born to the role and because director Jeremy Cole is particularly adept at creating striking visual imagery from peculiar behavior - even on a gray stage with no props."
- M.S. Mason, Westword
Unidentified Human Remains...
"Inventive staging and lighting, sharply honed performances and excellent background music mark the steamy thriller Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love, in which two roommates look for love while a serial killer is on the loose.
The story, as directed for maximum impact by Jeremy Cole at the Theatre at Jack's, fascinates even as it repels..."
- Sandra Brooks-Dillard, The Denver Post
"There is much to recommend in watching Cole's handling of the script. A gifted and inventive director, he has marshalled the disparate resources before him into a production that, in lesser hands, would have had little shape or form at all."
- Jim Lillie, The Colorado Daily
"Written by Brad Fraser, this erotic thriller is enhanced by the direction of Jeremy Cole. Cole uses an air of mystery throughout the production, with creative lighting and haunting music to draw the audience into the world of the play."
- Diane Beckoff, Time Out