1. A play written by Gertrude Stein in 1916.
2. A play by Gertrude Stein reimagined and liberally edited by Curious Theater Branch in 2011.
3. A play song city street exploring how communities disintegrate and are rebuilt, how rituals sustain and fail us, and how language traps and liberates us.
**RECOMMENDED**
Gertrude Stein was so cool. Absurd before absurdism, she expressed a deeply serious sense of the ridiculous that's still breathtaking in its originality and rigor, its calm insistence that if she and the world weren't in sync it was the world's duty to catch up. It hasn't yet. This piece, a sort of spoken fugue from 1916, is still a challenge, not just because so much of the dialogue refuses to parse but because of how it toys with our need to parse it. Jennifer Moniz and a crack cast exploit that need in this witty Curious Theatre Branch production, creating a context that at various times suggests a nest of plotters, a band of cartographers, and a gaggle of linguists.—Chicago Reader
