Christopher Hale plays Ned, plus a dog, plus a drowning man, plus joins the dance ensemble in the premier of The Girl Detective staged by Ateh Theater Group at the Connelly Theater. Called “mesmerizing” by “The Village Voice,” the play moves eerily through a dreamscape, interspersed with comedy, drama and dancing to tell a story adapted from a Kelly Link short story, a postmodern fairy tale from the bookStranger Things Happen. “It’s a tricky play,” said Hale, “because it’s about coping with loss and when you’re living your life, you get a lot of fragmented information. So you have to sort through it to draw your own interpretations and conclusions. The play draws on a lot of performance art − from typical dialogue, to mime, to ensemble dance numbers. It’s been fun to work with such a talented cast in such a creative play.”
What are they saying ? ...
“Done with a style and wit to create a postmodern mythology” − Back Stage Magazine
“a theatrical experience to find yourself in again and again” −United Stages
"Mesmerizing ... " Village Voice
“Thanks to crisp direction, winning performances by a talented cast, and above all, brilliant choreography, the Ateh Theater Group’s production, at the beautiful Connelly Theater in Manhattan’s East Village, is a pleasure.” − Blog Critics
“Smart and coherent, with a crisply competent ensemble cast, it manages to capture the dreamy dislocation and strict emotional logic of Link’s work, taking it out of the realm of pure language into a lot of very clever staging: visual, kinesthetic, musical . . . It’s also funny and entertaining and moving – the tap-dancing, boa-wearing bank robbing lineup alone is worth the price of admission.” − Ellen Kushner Online