We’re always excited to hear that a great show is sticking around for a while. And if you had a chance to read Geoffrey Paddy Johnson’s review of Samuel & Alasdair: A Personal History of the Robot War you know that it was a great show. (If you DIDN’T get a chance to read it, go ahead and click the link above. We’ll be right here when you get back).
So I’m sure Paddy would be the first in line to celebrate the announcement tha the New Ohio Theatre is extending the Manhattan Premiere of The Mad Ones’ critically acclaimed Samuel & Alasdair: A Personal History of the Robot War for two additional weeks.
The extension runs from February 9 – 18.
Samuel & Alasdair: A Personal History of the Robot War is a sci-fi surrealist War of the Worlds meets A Prairie Home Companion examination of American nostalgia that combines 1950s radio drama, vintage country music and Soviet science.
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Samuel & Alasdair: A Personal History of the Robot War
Produced by The Mad Ones
Text by Marc Bovino & Joe Curnutte
Co-Conceived & Directed by Lila Neugebauer
Co-Created by the Ensemble
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New Ohio Theatre
154 Christopher Street
NYC
Click Here for tickets
In a late hour email before I attended the first night performance of The Mad Ones‘ Samuel & Alasdair: A Personal History of the Robot War at the New Ohio Theatre, I was notified that Con Edison were currently addressing a problem with the theatre’s heating system and I should consider dressing in a thick sweater. I grumbled a bit putting on my thick sweater as I headed out, but was actually entirely comfortable in my seat for the duration of the performance. Thinking about it now, it is not inconceivable that this alert may have been part of the very clever, meticulously thoughtful and imaginative production team’s idea at generating a theatrical reality for their play. How very 1950s to deploy a thick sweater while attending a theatre in wintertime, be it in the U.S.S.R. or the U.S.A. The production might have been dressing the audience for their performance.
The reason I am left with this speculation is because it seems there is nothing, quite simply nothing, that this production has not given some sharp thought to in their dramatization; sharp thought and imaginative response to. The thoroughness with which the team at The Mad Ones have undertaken this self-authored work is as impressive as it is deeply satisfying. Originally premiered at Brooklyn’s The Brick in 2010 – a production that garnered them a deal of notice and a clutch of NY Innovative Theatre awards and nominations – the play, allegedly, has undergone some minor tinkering and some extra polish since then. The result is a real gift for theatre lovers.
