The Wooster Group: A Symphony of Rats

With an astonishing array of video imagery and a frenetic assortment of equipment, the legendary theater pioneers of The Wooster Group transform OZ into a sort of mad scientist’s laboratory for their latest “deliriously trippy” production. Widely hailed as one of the world’s most influential and boundary-breaking performance companies, The Wooster Group unleashes a mind-blowing multimedia arsenal to marvel at the absurdity of presidential powers and the hilarity of masculine fantasies about interstellar control. Featuring singing, stunts, and stupefying multi-screen visuals, this reimagining of a playful 1988 political satire by avant-garde guru Richard Foreman is a genre-bending thrillride that New York Magazine describes as “delightful…an attempt to theatricalize the chaos of the brain.”

Written when Ronald Reagan was in the oval office, A Symphony of Rats feels more like sci-fi sarcasm than anything seriously political, with a president who receives messages from outer space and a manic menagerie of aides who scurry in search of a purpose, and occasionally break into song. Co-directed by original Wooster Group members Elizabeth LeCompte and Kate Valk, this delightfully smart and entertaining production is the must-see theatrical event of the season.