THE HANGOVER REPORT – Trish Harnetiaux’s TIN CAT SHOES is a surreal, playful commentary on society

The company of "Tin Cat Shoes" at Clubbed Thumb's Summerworks.

The company of Trish Harnetiaux “Tin Cat Shoes” at Clubbed Thumb’s Summerworks.

Last night at the Wild Project in the East Village, Clubbed Thumb officially opened its annual summer festival of new plays – the aptly named Summerworks – with Trish Harnetiaux’s Tin Cat Shoes. Summerworks, now in its 23rd year, is one of the trendiest places to catch plays by up and coming playwrights. It’s also a great place to catch these hot-off-the-press works produced on an unusually high level in terms of aesthetics, acting, and overall polish. Ms. Harnetiaux’s Tin Cat Shoes, directed stylishly by Knud Adams, continues this tradition with confidence.

Like a lot of Summerworks’ previous offerings, Tin Cat Shoes is a surreal, often playful, commentary on human society. The play depicts the young, quirky employees of a shoe store (the titular “Tin Cat Shoes”) and the semi-tragic outdoorsy excursion they embark on. In true Dada-esque fashion, the play randomly ends at a casino, where things appear to spiral further out of control.

Luckily, there are a few things to grasp onto. Terms like “the System” and the various American iconoclasms – the American musical, the go get ‘em attiude, the Wild West – seem to suggest that Tin Cat Shoes is an allegory of sorts for this (fundamentally?) flawed construct we call American society. There’s also the very skilled acting to tether ourselves to – Kyle Beltran, Pete Simpson, Emily Cass McDonnell, Donnetta Lavinia Grays, and my downtown theater hero David Greenspan are all giving giddily delectable performances here.

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TIN CAT SHOES
Off-Broadway, Play
Summerworks, presented by Clubbed Thumb
1 hour, 20 minutes (with no intermission)
Through May 29

Categories: Off-Broadway, Theater

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