Cartoon, the play

Last night I went over to the Onyx Theatre (953 E. Sahara #16 in the Commercial Center) to attend a performance of Cartoon, which was written by Steven Yockey. The Onyx Theatre is a nice fairly new little theatre (low on frills, but high on intimacy) headed by John Beane, who also directs many (if not all) of the plays there, including this Vegas production of Cartoon. The resident theater group of the Oynx call themselves The Insurgo Theater Movement (http://insurgotheater.org/index.htm) and after watching them in Cartoon, I'll definitely be looking forward to their future productions.

Cartoon is an experimental piece about violence and fascism and although I didn't "get" everything that was going on, it wasn't the kind of experimental that is just mostly annoyingly clever. Cartoon as staged by the Insurgo Theatre was funny and highly entertaining and when the violence erupts it's pretty hard-hitting (no pun intended). The crowd favorite character is named Rockstar, who's played by Paul Mattingly, but in his big furry outfit, even if you know Paul (as I do, through my store), you'll forget that it's him (and while his character doesn't have a lot of stage time, Paul proves the idiom that it's quality not quantity that counts). Seriously, the whole cast was really good (with great costuming, make up and set design) so I'd recommend checking out one of the last two performances of Cartoon (it runs through March 14th).

The Insurgo Theatre Movement's next play at the Onyx is The Insect Play, which was written by Josef Capek and is a satire / examination of World War I from the Czechoslovakian perspective.