Ready To Go

Theater and politics live by the creed that the show must go on.

In politics, the people charged with making that happen are Vice Presidents and Lieutenant Governors, who have many years of boredom, punctuated by rare, but not as rare as one might expect, moments of supreme importance.

As opening night a couple of weeks ago in Denver's performance of The Color Purple showed, understudies for lead characters are sometimes called upon to turn the crisis of unavailable lead actors into triumph.

In both cases, the backup plan often works surprisingly well.