Tag Archives: Mad Cat Theatre Company

Nilsson The Obscure: The Anti-Theater of Mad Cat Theatre’s “Varry Harry”

Watching Mad Cat productions often feels less like consuming theater and more like eavesdropping on inside jokes. The arcane references,obscure titles, the inexplicable musical interludes and Brechtian distancing are never amateurish, but they are cultishly insular. To that end, Varry Harry, Mad Cat’s world-premiere tribute to a similarly idiosyncratic voice, is doggedly on-brand.

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Regional Theaters Are The Country’s Primary Incubator of New Plays – Including SoFla

Indisputably, regional theaters have been a significant wellspring for new plays reaching back 30 years. But a quickening sea change has occurred quietly but demonstrably over the past decade: Regional theaters – once reliant on warhorses and the latest New York hit — have become the primary incubator and showcase for new work in America

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Florida Sinks Under Water In Mad Cat’s Satirical Firemen

With Fireman Are Rarely Necessary, this world premiere of a socially satirical comedy falls solidly in the anarchic absurdist vibe with grunge icing championed by Mad Cat Theatre Company.

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Can It Happen Here? Mad Cat’s Surreal Take on Vaclav Havel Plays Will Unnerve Patrons

Mad Cat Theatre’s production of Vaclav Havel’s one acts Protest and Audience draw uncomfortably relevant visions of repressive totalitarian society.

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What Kind Of Year Was It? Our Critics’ “Best Of” 2016 Lists

Critics and award judges have been talking about it for weeks: The sheer amount of high quality work has made evaluating the last 12 months unusually challenging, but also an opportunity to remember one of the most rewarding calendar years in recent memory. So here’s a supremely subjective stab by all three critics here at Florida Theater On Stage at recognizing the shows and performances that stood out from a pack of productions.

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Why Not? With Nixon: A Navel-Gazing Comedy Best Suited For Mad Cat’s Cult Faithful

Why Not? With Richard Nixon is perhaps Mad Cat Theatre Company’s most Mad Catty show ever, a production for company insiders that is esoteric enough to reference another Mad Cat show in its text. If you feel invited to this self-contained world, you’ll have a blast; if not, you may feel you’re observing a bubble you can’t enter, looking at your watch and waiting for it to pop.

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Mad Cat’s The Flick Will Intrigue Some, Leave Others Unenthused

Sometimes critics use the words “ambitious” and “intriguing” as backhanded compliments or cowardly faint praise, but Mad Cat Theatre Company’s production of the Pulitzer-winning The Flick earns both adjectives as unironic compliments.

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Mad Cat Takes On Pulitzer-Winning Marathon: The Flick

The characters and themes of The Flick — the newest production opening at Mad Cat Theatre next week — were so fresh and crucial that it kept director Paul Tei from abandoning straight theater.

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Mad Cat’s Tones For Tales Dives Deep Into Bleak Beckett Land

The Mad Cat Theatre Company, which prides itself on experimenting with non-mainstream offerings, has collected three short Samuel Beckett plays under the umbrella title, Tones On Tales. Some people will find this evocative, highly-stylized pieces mesmerizing; others will run screaming for the exit.

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Not Your Grandma’s Theater: The 2015-2016 Season In SoFla

South Florida theaters still mount familiar warhorses, but the 2015-2016 season is proof that companies realize the future of theater is to attract pre-retirement audiences with shows steaming fresh out of Manhattan, edgy intellectually challenging works, imaginative takes on familiar titles, regional premieres of shows you only read about in The New York Times over the past few years and some shows you have never heard of, period.

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