Mr. Acebo’s Wild Ride

So Fingersmith looks destined to become a huge hit for OSF this season. If you’ve seen the BBC version, this is not that; it’s more Sondheim “Sweeney Todd” (without the music) than “String of Pearls” (yeah, I’m torturing the metaphor. Deal.) I’m calling it a dark comedy; Herself is calling it more of a drama with comedic elements. Whatevs. It was a hoot of a show, with enough asides through the fourth wall and slight alterations to the plot to make the ending plausible instead of not so.

The whole cast is super. Sara Bruner and Erica Sullivan are well-cast as the leads, but Kate Mulligan captures the audience every time she’s onstage.

One of the main characters you’ll see is the staging: it’s a bit of Victorian ironmongery with some high-tech additions to round out the scene. But there’s a big mechanical feature that, hand to God, reminded me of nothing so much as part of Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride at Disneyland.

Go see it!