Lamb Lays with Lion

Director Jeremey Catterton sets up two versions of the Anton Chekhov play, performed side-by-side. Mitchell has a traditional take, while Lamb Lays with Lion merrily deconstructs the classic, presenting it in a manner recalling the Wooster Group. Although initially unsettling, the experiment eventually reveals the play in a new light, embodying its themes about upending the status quo in art and society while challenging the viewer to simultaneously, yet also separately, consider and compare two perspectives. It was an intellectually exhilarating, if somewhat exhausting, experience at the end of a full evening of provocative work. -Caroline Palmer, Star Tribune

...but damned if the production didn't turn out to be genuinely moving: you're affected by the story being told at stage right, you're affected by the raw emotion on display at stage left, and then you're affected by the fact that two stagings that started out in opposition are shown to be complementary.- Jay Gabler, TC Daily Planet

I can't even tell where the performances stop or start. -Lightsey Darst, mnartist.org

Director Jeremey Catterton has maintained a sharp heightened style in both the acting and the visual presentation. The effect in demonically ritualistic. He has also co-created a thunderously menacing electronic sound design with Dominique Davis. Falk and Jake Lindgren's lurid costume concept is confrontational and sensual. Ben Seidman is credited as 'Magic Consultant' with intimidating props designed by Smith and Carl Atiya Swanson. Imagine the goth subculture saluting Grand Guignol at an S & M club.
-John Townsend, Star Tribune
(Full Review)

Even Lamb Lays With Lion, a "theater of disruption" company that normally prides itself on having a few walkouts at each performance, was funny, campy, and minimally abrasive in a few episodes of The Ongoing Saga of Clapperclaw—a supernatural thriller.
-Jay Gabler, TC Daily Planet

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No one reviewed this performance, which is a crime.
(Production Stills.)

"I noted that when mimicking bad acting, it has to be done well or the whole thing will fall flat on its face...Fans of more traditionally-structured theater may not be thrilled by the informality and edginess of this dark farce, but I really enjoyed it."  - David de Young 
(Full Review)


'As Catterton struggled, with stuttering gusto, to communicate an abstract (and possibly nonexistent) thesis about the parallels among Jesus Christ (as portrayed by Willem Dafoe in Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ), Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis (as portrayed by Sam Riley in Anton Corbijn’s Control), and St. Matthew (as painted by Caravaggio), Deis perched at the keyboard to drink, smoke, heave her well-suspended cleavage at the audience, and heckle an increasingly brittle Catterton—who finally collapsed into tears and sang “Love Will Tear Us Apart.”' - Jay Gabler
(Full Review)

"It all would have been in rather poor taste if it hadn't actually been quite funny." -David de Young
 (Full Review)