AKT musical is all about image, reproduced with permission from EncoreMichigan.com.
A photograph may be a fixed likeness, but it's the product of a lot of moving parts. When studying a photo as a work of art, the technique – composition, exposure, use or absence of color, processing methods, and the like – can be just as important to consider as the subject. Sometimes in fact, the content is beside the point.
For viewers who can’t choose just one Christmas classic, there’s Every Christmas Story Ever Told (And Then Some!) (by Michael Carleton, Jim Fitzgerald, and John K. Alvarez). As presented by young company The AKT Theatre Project, with direction by Angie Kane Ferrante, this whirlwind tour plugs directly into the mainframe of favorite Christmas culture and media, in an exhaustive visual smorgasbord of holiday greatest hits. Dwelling in lightness and peppered with self-effacing humor, the result is a hyper-manic experience that feels like all of Christmas flashing before one’s eyes.
In a quick setup/premise maneuver, traditional Jon Pigott’s insistence on yet again performing A Christmas Carol is overruled by compatriots Jeremy St. Martin and Jack Hundley, who open the floor to suggestions for favorite Christmas traditions, movies and TV specials, and stories. What follows is a cavalcade of beloved holiday classics, as well as a handful of bumpers, including descriptions of worldwide Christmas lore that clash disturbingly with America’s jolly consumer paradise. No holiday favorite is sacred, be it a copyrighted ninth reindeer or a magically animate snowman or the mathematically improbable feats of jolly old St. Nicholas himself, and it becomes clear how deeply ingrained these stories are when a single moment or visual communicates the thing as a whole, or when two of the best-known tales are mashed together in a second act lightning round. Hundley, Pigott, and St. Martin are tireless in their pursuits and entirely willing to make fools of themselves as the occasion warrants; rarely does a moment pass in which there isn’t something new and elaborately goofy to take in.
April 23, 2013