Craven Monkey

Posted March 5th, 2010 by Sean Williams

At the end of the show last night, Jordana turned to me and said, “This is one of the best shows I’ve seen in a long, long time.”

You will get what they are advertising. You will get hilarious over-the-top Simian characters, and fantastical story-telling. You will get to laugh and be inside the joke, you will get to be amazed at how ridiculous monkeys are and how fun a theater piece featuring nothing but monkeys can be.

But you won’t be prepared for the fact that what you’re watching is essentially a ballet. What you won’t expect are the epic themes and the incredible mythic creations. This piece is a self-mocking epic poem full of dirty jokes. I mean, it’s funny when your uncle does his monkey face, and it’s even funnier when a group of actors dress up and roll around like monkeys – but when’s the last time you saw a theater piece where an actress flies around the room like a hornet, or the main character is attacked by an eight foot octopus? Honestly, I have to go back to “Seascape” on Broadway to remember the last time my breath was taken away simply by a character’s entrance.

The choreography, fight and otherwise, is meticulous and pitched perfectly, the music is incredible. The entire piece exists in a world before language, so every moment is danced or fought or physicalized, and the company creates something that’s more organic than kabuki but more sublime than mime. There is a narrator, but I almost wonder if they could have done the piece without the narration. It wouldn’t have been as funny, and it might have been twenty minutes longer, but I would have *loved* twenty more minutes of this show.

I’m writing this on stolen time, my freelance work beckons on the other side of my kids’ pantleg-pulling, so I can’t go into the specific incredible work by so many of those involved. I just don’t have the time and it’s killing me. I can only tell you this, when Jordana said it was the best show she’d seen in some time, I turned back to her and said, “I would be so incredibly proud to have produced this. These guys are just fantastic.”

This is their website