Everyone knows about the Three Kings and their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, but not so many people know about the adventures they had on their way to the manger. Bethlehem or Bust, Piper McKenzie's first-ever family show, envisions the Wise Men as swashbucklers on an action-packed journey where they need to brave all sorts of robbers, monsters, Roman soldiers - and the occasional shepherd - on their way to meet one of history's most famous babies. A visual and verbal feast in the tradition of Robin Hood, the Three Musketeers and Monty Python, this show is great for kids age 7 and up - with enough excitement and comedy to entertain anyone else they happen to drag along!
Bethlehem or Bust is written and directed by Jeff Lewonczyk and directed by
Hope Cartelli, the minds behind some of Piper McKenzie's recent acclaimed offerings for grown-ups, including Theater of the Arcade: Five Classic Video Games Adapted for the Stage ("Brilliant" - New York Times) and Craven Monkey and the Mountain of Fury ("They bring fantastic creatures to life" - Time Out New York), a New York Innovative Theater (NYIT) Award nominee for Outstanding Performance Art Production.
The show features costumes by Julianne Kroboth (NYIT Award nominee for Outstanding Costume Deisgn, Craven Monkey) and slapstick, swashbuckling fight direction from Adam Swiderski (Craven Monkey) and Alexis Black (The Ninja Cherry Orchard). The cast includes Rebecca Comtois, Jon Hoche, Jeff Lewonczyk, Douglas MacKrell, Samantha Mason, Rocio Mendez,
Timothy McCown Reynolds and Christopher Yustin. Production design is by Abernathy Bland and Katrina Frances Lewonczyk, lighting design is by Ian
W. Hill, and
Roger Nasser is the assistant director.
Bethlehem or Bust will perform at The Brick Theater (575 Metropolitan Avenue between Union and Lorimer Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn) as part of its second annual Fight Fest, a theater festival devoted to stage combat. Tickets to all shows ($15) may be purchased online at www.bricktheater.com or by calling 212-352-3101 or 212-868-4444. All performances are open for review. The last performance will take place on January 2 at 2 pm.
Piper McKenzie (pipermckenzie.com) has been a fixture of the downtown and Brooklyn scenes since being founded by
Hope Cartelli and Jeff Lewonczyk in 1998. Called "brazenly experimental, unapologetically populist, and surprisingly endearing" by IndieTheater.org, Piper McKenzie creates mock-epic movement theater and kinetic plays/musicals at the intersection of physicality, comedy and mythology (both pop-culture and historical). Recent shows include this past summer's Theater of the Arcade: Five Classic Video Games Adapted for the Stage, last year's Fight Fest hit Craven Monkey and the Mountain of Fury, the extended FringeNYC musical Willy Nilly: A Musical Exploitation of the Most Far-Out Cult Murders of the Psychedelic Era, and the critically acclaimed The Granduncle Quadrilogy: Tales from the Land of Ice.
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