Book and Drawings: Ben Katchor
Music: Mark Mulcahy
Directed by: Bob McGrath.
Synopsis: The show is set in and around Manhattan and on a tropical factory-island of exploited workers. Katchor was inspired by the tradition of the "picture reciter," a form of live entertainment from 17th-century India. Updating and exploring this tradition, he has created original, hand-drawn still and animated sequences which complement Mulcahy's indie-rock score.
NEW YORK TIMES:
"The live actors who wander among the animated landscapes that fill the Vineyard stage seem transformed into brave new hybrids of flesh and ink. They’re so insistently subsumed by the drawings that surround them that we, by extension, are too. “The Slug Bearers” is an answered prayer for anyone who has dreamed of living inside a graphic novel. Make that for anyone who dreams of crossing into a completely sustained alternative reality, which I assume means a lot of adventurous theatergoers."
Read the whole review HERE.
NEW YORK SUN:
"Their oddball parable of Western naïveté in the face of globalization has its ungainly moments, to be sure, albeit nearly always tempered by the dazzling use of Mr. Katchor's fancifully old-timey illustrations on all sides of the stage. Director Bob McGrath and the wonderfully skilled projection designers Jim Findlay and Jeff Sugg have turned the Vineyard Theatre stage into a three-dimensional graphic novel, with Mr. Katchor's perspectival contortions and multi-panel wonders augmented and sometimes mirrored by Mr. McGrath's wily staging. They have collaborated on devising an intoxicatingly cluttered world where the margins have taken over the center."
Read the whole review HERE.
THEATERMANIA:
"The Slug Bearers of Kayrol Island, the new musical at the Vineyard Theatre, has a great deal going for it: Pictorial novelist Ben Katchor's offbeat text and imagery (projected large and in lush color), Mark Mulcahy's congenial indie-rock score, and an absolutely superb seven-actor ensemble. But in the end, one is still left wanting more, such as a few more twists to the faux-ingenuous plot or a bit more gravitas to the unflaggingly whimsical proceedings."
Read the whole review HERE.
VARIETY:
"The new musical at the Vineyard Theater, "The Slug Bearers of Kayrol Island," is many things at once. It's a rock opera, but it's also a cartoon. It's a strong argument against globalization, but it's also a sharp rebuke of liberal politics. Mostly, though, it's a bizarre and charming show that doesn't resemble any other tuner in town."
Read the whole review HERE.
NEWSDAY:
"Well, we're not likely to see this one all over town. Say what you will about "The Slug Bearers of Kayrol Island (Or the Friends of Dr. Rushower)," the thing is an original. How sad that there isn't far more to say"
Read the whole review HERE.
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