Media Archive

The mastery of this work at every level is subtle but absolute.

If you’re open to a novel approach to an unusual subject, you might well find yourself amused, bemused, and provoked to thought.

Cabaret Theatre Conflates Migraines and Ayn Rand.

Duo uses experience of migraines to explore the intersection of imagination and illness

How does one deal with pain? That is what Michael Yates Crowley & Michael Rau look at in an engaging theater piece at Oberon this week. EDGE spoke to the writing/directing/performing duo about pain, Beethoven & Ayn Rand.

Dizzying, humorous, and sincere, “Song of A Convalescent Ayn Rand Giving Thanks to the Godhead (In the Lydian Mode)” which runs Oct. 15-Oct. 23 at the Oberon, deftly combines Ayn Rand, Beethoven, migraines, and a multitude of other elements.

What does the excruciating pain of the migraine have to do with Ayn Rand’s stripe of egoism, which is to say, the elevation of self and one’s own happiness above the needs of others?

The disparate elements of the piece create a dance that’s fascinating to experience, engage with, and contemplate; like some of the best art they don’t try to coalesce into a statement about this or that, but rather set the auditor’s mind ablaze with new ideas and connections.

The music is lean, balancing pop’s go-for-the-throat emoting with showier stage exposition, guitar-driven soft-rock passages and laptop electronica that sounds like Trent Reznor if he was weaned on Sondheim.

Ms. Love, looking trim and intense, her long blond hair caught in a tangled ponytail, portrays the onetime love of a dream-bound musician in Mr. Almond’s dramatically blurry but musically inviting work…