‘The Sandman’ is not Wonderbound’s first rodeo

Though this revival loses some of its emotional heft, The Sandman still thrills.

There a moment early on in Clay Rose & Garrett Ammon’s The Sandman (A New Fangled Western) that articulates just how much is going on with the staging. After Aidan O’Leary and Roan Zaragoza’s characters lose their wives while giving birth, both men are framed by movable wooden panels backlit with light, casting their shadows in “cages” as the music swells, trapping them inside a devastating situation with no easy way out.

It’s a visually dynamic, slightly jarring and deeply melancholic scene that lingers long after the show’s kinetic action has concluded. And that sequence is just one of the show’s many high points in this stirring modern Western.

Inspired by the song “Santa Maria (And the Sand Man)” by Rose, The Sandman follows two couples whose wives both die during childbirth, leaving the fathers, The Sandman (O’Leary) and Adam (Zaragoza), to care for their young children. Unfortunately for their kids, Rose (Danielle Lieberman) and Jesse (Ezra Schenck), neither man is up to the challenge. O’Leary turns to heavy drinking, while Zaragoza buries himself in religion, leaving Rose and Jesse to fend for themselves.

As fate would have it, the two men meet along the road. Adam sees that The Sandman is sad, broken and lonely, just like him, and tries to embrace him, but The Sandman rejects his kindness and kills him. Meanwhile, their kids enter into a whirlwind romance. The Sandman attempts to keep them apart, but the young lovers desperately keep pursuing each other, culminating in a gunslinging showdown between The Sandman and Jesse (with an assist from Rose).

Wonderbound in Clay Rose & Garrett Ammon’s The Sandman (A Newfangled Western). | Photo: Amanda Tipton Photography

Overall, the production looks polished and professional, which makes sense. The Sandman is now on its third major staging following its 2020 premiere and a 2023 remount that helped christen Wonderbound’s current Denver warehouse space.

You can feel that history embedded in the production. Ammon’s choreography moves with confidence through sprawling ensemble passages, intimate duets and bursts of violence that land with startling force. When combined with Rose’s gritty Americana score, performed live onstage by Gasoline Lollipops, the piece feels like a haunted frontier myth unfolding in real time.

Even when the narrative occasionally drags in the first act, the production remains deeply watchable because nearly every technical element is operating at such a high level. The movable wooden slats constantly reshape the world around the dancers. Andrew McDaniels’ lighting design cuts through the darkness with stark silhouettes, pools of blood-red light and sharp side-lighting that gives the performers a near-cinematic texture.

Ezra Schenck in The Sandman (A Newfangled Western). | Photo: Amanda Tipton Photography

A revival shaped by different performers

Having seen the 2023 production, it’s impossible not to notice how different casting choices subtly reshape the emotional center of the piece.

The largest shift comes through Danielle Lieberman’s interpretation of Rose. Lieberman plays the character with an openness and buoyancy that changes the tone of several early scenes. In contrast to Josie Watson’s portrayal of Rose in 2023, which emphasized her exhaustion and cynicism, this version allows for more light to shine through.

At times, that works beautifully. You more clearly see the life Rose might have had if The Sandman had chosen care over self-destruction. But the approach also softens some of the story’s sharper edges. Despite the brutality of her circumstances, Lieberman appears surprisingly sunny in the restaurant scenes and the first couple scenes with her father. The result slightly muddies the stakes early on and contributes to some pacing issues during the first act.

Ezra Schenck and Danielle Lieberman in Clay Rose & Garrett Ammon’s The Sandman (A Newfangled Western). | Photo: Amanda Tipton Photography

The romance between Lieberman and Ezra Schenck’s Jesse also never fully ignites. Their partnering is technically polished, but several extended duets lack the electric chemistry needed to carry the story’s middle stretch. Because the production hinges so heavily on the idea that these two young people are willing to risk everything for each other, that missing spark becomes noticeable.

Still, there is extraordinary work happening elsewhere onstage. Aidan O’Leary, reprising his role as The Sandman, remains magnetic, bringing a dangerous physical intensity to every scene he enters. Whether drunkenly staggering across the stage, exploding into violence or dancing opposite a projection of himself onto the wooden slats, O’Leary gives the production its volatile pulse.

Morgan Sicklick and Rachael Dean, who appear throughout the show as spectral echoes of the deceased mothers, perform some of the evening’s most graceful movements, particularly when dancing with their respective children.

Rachael Dean and Roan Zaragoza in Clay Rose & Garrett Ammon’s The Sandman (A Newfangled Western). | Photo: Amanda Tipton Photography

Wonderbound’s place in the American dance landscape

What ultimately makes The Sandman stick is not the violence, the romance or even the impressive technical craft. It’s the way the production understands grief as something physical that reshapes every relationship around it.

Nobody in this story escapes untouched. The dead mothers continue haunting the stage long after they are gone. The Sandman’s inability to process loss curdles into abuse and isolation. Rose and Jesse inherit baggage from their family, which they spend the entire evening attempting to outrun.

By the final showdown, the ballet becomes less about good versus evil than about whether cycles of damage can actually be broken. Rose and Jesse’s escape comes at enormous cost, and the production wisely refuses to pretend otherwise. Even their victory carries fresh trauma with it and that complexity gives the piece its weight.

Morgan Sicklick in Clay Rose & Garrett Ammon’s The Sandman (A Newfangled Western). | Photo: Amanda Tipton Photography

It also speaks to what Wonderbound consistently does better than almost anyone else in American contemporary dance right now. While many companies focus on abstraction or atmosphere, Ammon continues to create large-scale narrative dance works featuring deeply flawed but identifiable human characters.

The Sandman is full of big theatrical gestures, but beneath all the dust, blood and live music is a surprisingly intimate story about children trying not to become their parents.

Fortunately, Wonderbound shows no signs of slowing down. The company’s newly announced 2026-27 season includes The Witching Hour, a spooky fable created with the Clay Rose Band; Rollin’ & Tumblin’, a blues-infused collaboration with Lionel Young; Beloved Betrayal with folk-rock group The River Arkansas; and Sam & Delilah, a remount of the company’s 2024 take on the biblical story set in 1977 Texas during the Equal Rights Amendment fight.

So yes, even when The Sandman occasionally drags or loses some of the sharpness of earlier iterations, it still stands as a reminder that nobody else in Denver — and frankly, very few companies nationally — are making dance quite like this.