Review: MEN ON BOATS at City Theatre Austin

City Theatre Austin’s Men on Boats moves with the sly confidence of a story that knows exactly what it is dismantling.

Jaclyn Backhaus’ satire reframes John Wesley Powell’s 1869 Colorado River expedition, long treated as a cornerstone of American exploratory myth, and strips it down to its bones. A group of explorers set out to chart the Grand Canyon, carrying the familiar weight of “discovery” and national bravado, only to find themselves constantly outmatched by a landscape that refuses to be narrated into submission. The river, indifferent and unstoppable, keeps rewriting their certainty in real time.

Powell, played here by Allison Fifield, who is often cast as a heroic pillar of control, is rendered more delicately. Not diminished, but exposed. His authority feels provisional, like something built on shifting sand. Every attempt to lead lands a half-beat too late, as though the canyon has already moved on without him.

The production’s clarity of intent comes from Jaclyn Backhaus’ sharp satire, but it is sharpened further under the direction of Andy. Berkovsky, who keeps the tone buoyant without ever letting it drift into empty parody. This is historical comedy with purpose, light on its feet but exact in its aim.

The set design (by Berkovsky) is deceptively clever. There is no excess, no decorative clutter pretending to be wilderness. Instead, the boats themselves become the language of movement. They are not static objects but pieces of choreography, constantly reconfigured to map shifting terrain, shifting power, shifting survival. Everything on stage earns its place. Nothing is ornamental because the world itself is already enough: the vast, indifferent Colorado canyon rendered through suggestion, rhythm, and negative space.

That economy of design mirrors the ensemble work. An all women and non-binary cast steps into these historically male roles not to imitate them, but to expose masculinity as performance. It is posture, repetition, and volume masquerading as inevitability. The humor emerges from how quickly that performance begins to crack under pressure.

The ensemble is the production’s engine. There are no weak links, and therefore no true standouts, only a tightly synchronized group building the world together moment by moment. Comedy lives in timing, in shared breath, in the way one actor’s hesitation becomes another’s punchline without anyone breaking formation.

Still, a few moments cut through the flow. Bradley, played by Taylor Allen, falling into the river and struggling to stay afloat is one of them. Allen’s physical comedy is fearless and precise, transforming panic into something unexpectedly musical, as if chaos itself has rhythm.

Later, the rattlesnake sequence brings a different flavor of absurdity. Hawkins, played by Aimee Knight, a matter-of-fact cook and self-described “party boat” rider, kills a rattlesnake and immediately declares it dinner, as if survival has been reduced to routine paperwork. Into this enters Old Shadey, played by McKenzie Allen, completely unfazed, carrying a quiet stillness that suggests he has either made peace with danger or simply stopped registering it. The contrast is comic, but also oddly mythic, as if frontier logic has slipped into dream logic.

What ties it all together is physical storytelling. Exaggerated movement, shouted bravado, and overinflated authority become the vocabulary of the piece. The joke is not just in what is said, but in how much effort it takes to maintain the illusion of control. The canyon never argues. It simply outlasts them.

By design, nothing feels wasted. Every movement, every repositioned boat, every shift of ensemble energy serves the same purpose: to show how fragile the performance of conquest really is when placed against something that cannot be conquered.

In the end, Men on Boats is a fun, precise piece of historical comedy that understands its own mischief. It rewrites history not by erasing it, but by exposing how theatrical it always was.

Duration: 2 hours including intermission

Men on Boats

By Jaclyn Backhaus

Directed by Andy Berkovsky

City Theatre Austin at Genesis Creative Collective 

1507 Wilshire Blvd. Austin 78722

Now Playing through April 12th, 2026

Friday and Saturday at 8:00 PM