There is no world where setting “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” in Denver in 2024 makes any dramaturgical sense. Not unless the actor playing the gender-fluid kid who came of age as the Berlin Wall was coming down is now 60 years old.

(Clark Destin Jones is not 60 years old.)

We could talk for days about why time and place so inexorably matter in telling this particular story. But for the first time in my life, I heeded the words of Queen Elsa and just … let it go.

Because at the end of the night I attended Give 5 Productions’ full-bore staging of Mitchell’s genderqueer, counter-culture classic, the crowd at a swanky new LoDo event space called The Arch was screaming in full-throated adulation, so clearly moved by the experience in the way that every theatermaker dreams of moving an audience.

I noticed one particular nonbinary teenager in the back standing on a chair, screaming their appreciation as if they were at a Slayer concert – while perhaps for the first time feeling whole and fully seen.

Nothing else mattered.

The cast was perfect. The band was sizzling. The costumes, light, and sound were fire.

Give 5 Productions’ “Hedwig,” directed by Kelly Van Oosbree and willed into existence by independent theater producer Julia Tobey, was the definition of high-impact theater. And so, as I slipped out into the nearby Walnut Room for a late-night slice, I had my come-to-Jesus as a former theater critic. When a show evokes that kind of response, night after night, you just have to hand them their flowers and shut up about it.

“Hedwig” was one of a strong field of musicals staged by Colorado theater companies that packed a powerful emotional punch in 2024. Two (and, it could be argued – four) were mounted by the Littleton Town Hall Arts Center, which I have been covering pretty much since it opened in the 1980s. And I can’t recall a stronger year there by a country mile, led by “Urinetown” and “Jersey Boys,” along with a little-known musical adaptation of “A Raisin in the Sun” and perhaps the single funnest night at any theater of the past calendar year: Trey Parker’s “Cannibal the Musical.” Noses snorted.

Actor Anne Terze-Schwarz had such a monster year that we dedicated an entire day of the Denver Gazette’s True West Awards coverage to talk about it. Further evidence: Of the seven shows that made our subjective list of high-impact musicals in 2024, Terze-Schwarz played a leading role in three of them: “Urinetown,” “Hedwig” and the Arvada Center’s “Waitress.” The chameleonic Jake Bell starred in two.

In addition to “Hedwig,” here is our list of high-impact musicals from the year, listed alphabetically by title. I sure wouldn’t want to have to choose a best musical in a field this strong:

Phamaly’s “A Chorus Line”

There was just one way for me to describe what it felt like when the disability-affirmative Phamaly Theatre Company’s audacious production of “A Chorus Line” came to its magnificent end:

Phamaly felt like Phamaly again.

Ben Raanan’s production, which daringly moved dancers with disabilities from the back of the line to the front of “A Chorus Line,” achieved what Phamaly, at its best, has been doing since 1989 but not so regularly in recent years: Upending conventional narratives.

Still, c’mon: Taking on the ultimate show-biz tale revealing the razor-thin “line” between Broadway-perfect dancers and the casting trash heap – and doing it with actors with mobility and other physically limiting issues? That’s gutsy even by Phamaly standards.

“I will say straight out that the idea of Phamaly makes no logical sense in the first place – a bunch of disabled folks doing musicals that were not written for them, that were not thought of for them, and that actively work against their bodies,” Raanan said. “It would be so much easier for all of us to go home at the end of the day and take that time to recharge in the evening. But instead, I’ve got a cast of 30 who are going, ‘You know what? I’m going to go to rehearsal and give my already hurt body an opportunity to dance that no one else has afforded me.”

Don’t tell them they don’t deserve a spot on the line.

To Raanan, the climax of “A Chorus Line” is not the announcement of who does and does not get cast in the Broadway show they’ve all been auditioning for. That takes eight seconds flat, and it’s over. To Raanan, it’s the opening song, “I Hope I Get it,” and the penultimate song, “What I Did for Love.”

“These are people who have an immense amount of joy and need to be on that stage,” he said. So when they sing “Dear God, I really need this,” they mean Phamaly.

“This idea of, ‘I need to be here’ has been palpable throughout 35 years of Phamaly’s existence,” said Raanan, who became Phamaly’s artistic director in 2021. But he truly arrived last summer, with “A Chorus Line.”

Town Hall Arts Center’s ‘Jersey Boys’

Town Hall knew who to turn to when it scheduled the latest of many local stagings of “Jersey Boys”: Littleton’s own Matthew Dailey, who himself logged nearly 1,000 performances with the Broadway touring production about the making of the Four Seasons. He knows this material – and how to make it play on stage.

Dailey’s considerable challenge was largely accomplished with his impeccable casting of Jake Bell as Frankie Valli, Elton J. Tanega as tough-guy narrator Tommy DeVito, Caleb Wenger as Bob Gaudio and Brandon Jesus Lopez as Nick Massi. Bell nailing that Valli falsetto?? Fuhgeddaboudit it. Pure butter.

Arvada Center’s ‘Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812’

The Arvada Center took a huge creative risk in 2024 by staging this most unusual Josh Groban Broadway electro-pop musical, a rowdy adaptation of a 70-page segment from Leo Tolstoy’s 1869 novel “War and Peace.” In it, the actors sing through the story while playing their own instruments and wandering all around and even behind the audience in a 360-degree configuration.

That artistic challenge seemed to infuse Arvada Center’s actors and creatives with fresh vitality, led by the ever-extraordinary Brett Ambler as the unhappily married Pierre. But the real star of this show, hands down, was resident scenic designer Brian Mallgrave.

As Alice Kaderlan wrote for Onstage Colorado: “Mallgrave’s scarlet red jewel box of a set, which encircles the theater with immersive seating, creates the ultimate 19^th century Russian drawing room festooned with golden sconces, glittering crystal chandeliers and hanging portraits of dignitaries. (In this case, they were the cast members, wink wink).”

Third Side Theatre’s “The Old Man and the Old Moon”

The pleasant surprise of the decade was wandering into the People’s Building to see this purely magical nautical Irish musical by a first-time company called Third Side Theatre (though largely a remount of an apparently purely magical effort by the Evergreen Players a few years back).

Not to steal any thunder from my beloved Avett Brothers, but I was fully “swept away” by this debut effort from a group self-described as “a troupe of vagabond storytellers crafting unconventional theater in and around Denver.”

This truly lovely piece of family-friendly musical storytelling, created by New York’s PigPen Theatre Co. (which is both a band and a theater company), is an epic tale of an old man who must abandon his duties of filling the moon back up with liquid light to cross the seas in search of his missing wife. What follows is an imaginative seafaring epic told with the tenderness and playfulness of a bedtime story – with the actors playing their own musical instruments.

Town Hall Arts Center’s ‘Urinetown’

Sometimes (metaphorical) politics and musical showtunes actually mix just perfectly. This clever cautionary musical satire manages to lambast capitalism, environmental collapse and star-crossed love – all with a delicious wink.

It’s set in a crumbling urban metropolis where drought has ruled for 20 years and the impoverished masses must pay to pee. Wait. “What kind of a musical is this?” the adorable Little Sally asks in exasperation. Not a happy one. Just a hilarious one. (Directed by Robert Michael Sanders and again featuring Bell and Terze-Schwarz.)

Arvada Center’s ‘Waitress’ 

“Waitress” is a problematic musical based on a problematic indie film, but the stage adaptation telling the story of an abused yet charmingly flawed wife trying to start over caught lightning in a bottle when its creators partnered up with pop star Sara Bareilles on the music. The Arvada Center’s regional premiere, perfectly cast by director Lynne Collins, rode Terze-Schwarz’s palpable likeability and golden voice along with a number of strong supporting performances to crowd-pleasing heights. I haven’t heard from a single person who didn’t love it, and believe me: That never happens.

Honorable mention: Other 2024 impact musicals of note

Alphabetical by title

• Platte Valley Players’ “Cabaret”
• Town Hall Arts Center’s “Cannibal the Musical”
• Candlelight Dinner Playhouse’s “Crazy For You”
• Vintage Theatre’s “Fun Home”
• Parker Arts’ “Legally Blonde”
• Magic Moments’ “A Midwinter Night’s Dream”
• Lone Tree Arts Center’s “Million Dollar Quartet”
• Town Hall Arts Center’s “Raisin”
• Beehive Productions’ “The Rocky Horror Show”
• Veritas Productions’ “School of Rock”

Note: The True West Awards, now in their 24th year, began as the Denver Post Ovation Awards in 2001. Denver Gazette Senior Arts Journalist John Moore celebrates the Colorado theater community by revisiting 30 good stories from the past year without categories or nominations.

Unsung heroes of the day

Live theater productions are now commonly enhanced with contemporary storytelling tools, which has put a greater emphasis on the need for capable video and projection designs.

Deb Flomberg-Rollins stepped into that role for an unusual Firehouse Theater Company offering called “Othello 2024,” which faithfully adhered to Shakespeare’s story and language while presenting the ultimate tale of ambition and revenge with present-day characters and settings. (That and it makes Iago a woman who’s as mad as hell and she’s not going to fake it anymore.)

Director Andrew Uhlenhopp’s production heavily relied on transitional, pre-recorded scenes he and Flomberg-Rollins filmed on location, including in a car, on a TV news set and elsewhere. Flomberg-Rollins turned one room in area theater producer and filmmaker Susan Lyles’ basement into a hotel room. Flomberg-Rollins edited the video together and Rick Reid got the projections beamed onto the stage.

The trio’s contributions “modernized the show, gave it great pacing, and allowed us to tell pieces of the story in a much more efficient and engaging way,” said Firehouse Artistic Director Helen Hand.