Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – Uncompromising music theater to catch: Paul Pinto’s MANO A MANO and La Daniella’s GOOEY’S TOXIC AQUATIC ADVENTURE

• By drediman
• February 19, 2026
• No Comments

If formulaic musicals on the Great White Way aren’t necessarily your calling card, then may I suggest that you check out some uncompromising works of new music theater that can currently be seen far from the bright lights of Broadway. Read on for my thoughts on two such adventurous productions, both of which feature breakout performances by their respective creators.

GOOEY’S TOXIC AQUATIC ADVENTURE
The Bushwick Starr (in association with ¡Oye! Group)
Through February 28

Earlier in February, I trekked out to deep Brooklyn to catch La Daniella’s new musical Gooey’s Toxic Aquatic Adventure (RECOMMENDED), in my estimation a scrappy and quirky love child between Wicked and Avenue Q (ironically, both shows were up for the Tony Award for Best Musical the same season, with the latter claiming the prize), complete with daffy use of puppetry and a David and Goliath-like narrative (no spoilers here!). The Bushwick Starr production — giddily directed by Sammy Zeisel  and presented in association with ¡Oye! Group — features a bouncy, well-crafted score by Ben Langhorst and a talented young cast of five that imbue this little quest musical an irresistible spirit, child-like wonder, and its own brand of brash Brooklyn charm. Indeed, the creatives involved have created a world with its own well-drawn culture (there are even the occasional advertisement ditties thrown in, all terribly amusing) and internal logic. At the center of it all is La Daniella’s irrepressible turn in the title role. Donning a gregarious smile that could light up Coney Island, the take-me-as-I-am performance is winning from the get go. If the musical decides to be further developed after its limited Bushwick Starr run, I can’t imagine her not leading the cast. Visually, the production largely conjures a comic book/fun house sensibility that’s a hybrid of surrealist modern art masterworks, Garbage Pail Kids trading cards, and Art Spiegelman’s renegade graphic novel Maus. But to be fair, that’s only where the numerous references begin.

MANO A MANO: AN OPERATIC MONODRAMA
La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club (in association with thingNY & Amanda+James, Anti-Social Music, MATA)
Through February 22

Also recently at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in the East Village, I was to take in the far more abstract Mano A Mano (RECOMMENDED), a self-described “operatic monodrama” written and performed by Paul Pinto. By merging the Anglo-Saxon epics of Sir Gawain and Beowulf, Pinto and director Kristin Marting — who emerges post-HERE and Prototype with this noteworthy and unapologetically idiosyncratic project — conjure a collective mythology in which both heroes battle the same she-dragon. Throw into the mix some other wildly tangental references (e.g., Antonio Banderas movies, boxing, etc.), and the result is a hallucinatory fever dream — episodically staged into discrete “chapters” with their own visual and aural textures — that takes a surreal panoramic view of (toxic) masculinity across time, art, and entertainment. As staged on what seems to be King Arthur’s round table — around which the audience is seated — and set to a sonically thrilling and encompassing improvisational jazz score for percussion and saxophones, Marting has imagined and executed a production that is at once theatrically ingenious and viscerally immersive (special mention must go out to lighting and projection design by Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew, as well as the sound design and mixing by Philip White). At the center of it all is Pinto’s astonishing vocal and physical performance, an obsessively meticulous yet maniacal turn that takes the proverbial bull by the horns and doesn’t let go from start to finish.