Wood Boy Dog Fish Reviews
Broadway World- Highly Recommended
"...Morality temptations aside, the show is a pretty spectacular combination of stagecraft and over-the-top theatrics that create an impressive, if at times overwhelming, experience. It's a mood piece with a message and it is right in the Rogues' wheelhouse."
LA Splash- Highly Recommended
"...It is thoughts and experiences like this that fill the show with massive energy and visual as well as mental stimulation and I love shows that not only create emotion but which also generate mental stimulation, and "Wood Boy Dog Fish" does that abundantly. Ergo this is a show of great entertainment value but I am also convinced that to see it at its very best you really do need to refresh your recollection of Pinocchio first. Yes I know I just repeated myself but that is because I truly do believe it is that important to achieve maximum joy from watching a truly great cast deliver a deeply memorable performance on stage now at the Garry Marshall Theatre in Burbank, California. It is a wild and zany ride and one you will long remember."
Stage Scene LA- Highly Recommended
"...Wood Boy Dog Fish, Rogue Artists Ensemble's deliciously twisted take on Carlo Collodi's Pinocchio has moved uptown and upscale from the Bootleg to Toluca Lake, terrific news for those who like their fairy tales dark and dirty and theatrically magical."
On Stage Los Angeles- Highly Recommended
"...Rouge Artists Ensemble flirts with the edge of something... something dangerous: something alive, something real. Excellent video and other spectacular devices by Dallas Nichols and Hardly Human FX are wonderful. Shackle your disbelief to your bed post and come for an adventure to Shoreside!"
Stage Raw- Highly Recommended
"...The show reverberates in immediate allegorical dimensions. Geppetto (the terrific Ben Messmer), a grief-stricken alcoholic, carves the boy during an all-night session punctuated by panic and nauseated black-outs. As we see Geppetto's fabrication and assembly of a boy, director Sean Cawelti compresses time by ingenious means - it involves the manipulation of a table-lamp. When the puppet is completed (nails in the head are bristles of hair), voiced perfectly by Rudy Martinez and articulated bunraku-style by a sensitive team dressed in black (Martinez with Mark Royston and Sarah Kay Peters), the bewildered Wood Boy kills a talking cricket and asks Geppetto impossible questions about the human heart."
Theatre Ghost- Highly Recommended
"...Wood Boy Dog Fish sounds grim, but it magically combines its vision with buoyant comedy and colorful spectacle. This is the happy result of a gift neither Collodi nor Disney enjoyed - the Rogue Artists' mad inventiveness. They fill the space to the back doors and the rafters with characters, music, day-glo colors, balloons, sounds, puppets ... It's an overwhelming sensory feast, a baroque wedding cake with a dark chocolate center."