A town that is failing from a catastrophic incident at the local mines, is frequented by a dapper, mysterious stranger. He finds himself persona non grata. Not a solitary vacant mattress for the night time. Then in some way the other shoe drops, and the lodge operator recognizes him as a preeminent adventurous traveler. He’s been maintaining the village’s spirits up, sending letters with vivid anecdotes and enthusiastic claims that their drinking h2o has magical healing powers. The people who stay here are on the brink of destitution, and understandably, disconsolate. They are thrilled to actually meet up with him, and celebration breaks out. At very first this man insists they are mistaken, but when he sees he can easily buy the city, he begins to perform alongside.
Catching a demonstrate at Ochre Home is like stepping into an additional realm. Their sensibility, their playful strangeness, their deadpan gags. Visualize a cat with three eyes that saunters all-around the neighborhood, totally comfortable and nonchalant. Consider that no one notices and/or cares. This is how it is with Ochre Household. We have an inkling something’s off. It doesn’t connect with attention to by itself, but it is there. By a lot of yrs the visionary intellect of Matthew Posey and his absurd, cheerfully defiant actors have been delighting and astonishing and mesmerizing audiences, with multipurpose and meticulous content. Some reveals are much more nuanced than many others, some boisterous, some demented, some taciturn.
From time to time, Ochre House offers political allegory. Never clear, it creates a narrative that off-handedly intersects with quick troubles that are skewering our life. In This Town For Sale, a moderately first rate person keeps resisting the prospect to acceptable a foundering local community. Until finally he gets a style of how simple it is to exploit the trust of these who lionize him. The deeper he sinks, the more his ethics are diminished. Prior to it’s over and completed, he’s just about unrecognizable from the man that opens the story.
About the yrs I have observed possibly some theaters in DFW that are regularly flawless, and The Ochre House is surely one particular of them. Often surprising, unique, subversive, fanciful and beguiling to the coronary heart, brain and soul.
The Ochre Household offered This City for Sale, that performed February 14th-March 2nd, 2024. 825 Exposition Avenue, Dallas, Texas. 214-826-6273. ochrehousetheater.org