Review: PONTIAC FIREBIRD VARIATIONS is a Brilliant Deconstruction of Shakespeare

PONTIAC FIREBIRD VARIATIONS takes a scene from William Shakespeare's RICHARD III (Act I, Scene IV to be precise) and proceeds to give you twenty variations on that scene. The result, ranging from funny to striking, is perhaps one of the most brilliant deconstructions of the Bard of Avon I have ever seen. It doesn't matter if you aren't familiar with the source material, although there are some masterfully clever word plays that those unfamiliar will miss... trust me when I tell you this work is so rich with entertainment that you'll never miss what you, well, missed.

Playwright Casey Wimpee's extremely clever conceit is to populate the piece with characters that would be right at home in the films of Quentin Tarantino. Set in 1987 during the height of the "cola wars" between Coke and Pepsi, the action takes place in a chop-shop in Willet's Point, Queens, New York. The name of the shop is "The Tower". The Lancasters drink Coke, while the Yorks favor Pepsi. Clarence has been gender changed to Clare, the lone female. Clare's lines hews the closest to the original Shakespeare of all the characters.

In the play, six killers deliver various takes on Shakespeare's famous tower scene. To be clear, you aren't actually seeing the same scene over and over, but, rather an ever evolving look at the source material as the characters deal in various ways with the each killer's preferred methods and the potential consequences to killing Clare. The variations go off on tangents that comment on the cola wars, pop music, wrestling, differences in Pontiac Firebird models, mustard, Happy Meals, and crickets as murderous intent surrounds Clare, a tough girl from Queens. The six killers are also various incarnations of Richard: Ritchie, Ryszard, Rico, Ricky, Dick and Dickey.

Theatre Synesthesia director Jeremy O. Torres stages this piece in an L shaped playing area inside a warehouse in East Austin to great effect. He has delivered a cleverly staged piece, using the physical structure of a playing space that works beautifully for the chop-shop setting.

The actors here are all excellent without a weak link in the evening. They are all fully committed to the characters they have created and never once do we see that they are just actors... they are the characters. I especially enjoyed the performances of Nicholas Kier as Ryszard, Nolan Blair as Rico the gay Cuban, Samuel Brett Lee Howard as Ricky the white trash savant, Colt Keeney as the paranoid Dick, Devin Finn as Ritchie, Samuel Owens as mechanic Dickey and Harrison Anderson as Cryin' Ryan, the DJ from Fire 96.9.

In short, PONTIAC FIREBIRD VARIATIONS is a terrific evening of theatre that richly deserves to be seen by a wide audience. I can't remember the last time I was this entertained by the Bard of Avon.

PONTIAC FIREBIRD VARIATIONS by Casey Wimpee

Running time: One Hour & 50 minutes with no intermission

PONTIAC FIREBIRD VARIATIONS, produced by America Archer and Sam & Pat Kier, for Theatre Synesthesia at Museum of Human Achievement (3600 Lyons Road,

Austin, TX, 78702) October 9 - 11, 15, 17-18, 2015 at 8pm. Tickets: $15. Caution: Dress lightly as the space is not air conditioned. Tickets available on-line at http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2296169 or at the door.

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