The City That Cried Wolf
Closed 1h 30m
The City That Cried Wolf
79%
79%
(7 Ratings)
Positive
86%
Mixed
14%
Negative
0%
Members say
Clever, Funny, Entertaining, Quirky, Delightful

About the Show

State of Play Productions presents a film noir-style detective story featuring famous nursery-rhyme and fairy-tale characters.

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Critic Reviews (7)

BroadwayWorld
November 26th, 2016

"You'll laugh out loud at this fun and fascinating show that puts an adult spin on fairy tales and nursery rhymes...The well-known characters are cleverly embedded in a noir detective story. This unique show has a talented, versatile cast...The company masters their characters and the inventive dialogue that has clever quips and quotes straight out of well-known storybooks...It is an entertaining, captivating show that is sure to please a broad audience."
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Lighting & Sound America
November 28th, 2016

"What might be a funny idea for a short S. J. Perelman piece in the 'New Yorker,' or maybe a Bob and Ray radio sketch, quickly becomes laborious when stretched out over 90 minutes. Beyond the reframing of beloved children's stories and poems with a sordid adult sensibility -- an idea that gets old very fast -- the script has no particular point to make...The director, Leta Tremblay, has assembled a cast that knows how to deliver the dialogue in the right hard-boiled fashion."
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Theatre is Easy
November 23rd, 2016

"An evening of music, puns, and murder that doesn't quite hit the mark...It has all the makings of a noir thriller, and it probably would be one, if every character wasn’t casually dropping nursery-rhyme-themed puns every couple minutes in between bouts of witty banter and monologuing to the audience...'The City That Cried Wolf' fell a little flat for me. I had trouble investing in the protagonists and I never really felt a good balance between the humor and the plot."
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Theatre's Leiter Side
November 24th, 2016

“For a time, Reeves does a good job of keeping this comic ball inflated, coming up with a substantial number of zingers...Too many of the jokes barely raise a smile, though, much less a laugh...'The City That Cried Wolf' is the kind of thing...that you might see produced by talented theatre students as an end of the school year production, or even as an extended SNL sketch. But, for all its clever wordplay, it's still a spoof of an over-spoofed genre.”
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Blog Critics
November 26th, 2016

"The shimmering vibrance of 'The City That Cried Wolf' is due to the solid direction by Leta Tremblay. She incisively shepherds the enterprising, spot-on cast, design team and production crew to tease out the brilliance of the source material by Brooks Reeves. Together they just let it all gloriously shine...Peppering this multi-genre production with music and dance along with the witticisms...makes for a rollicking, high-quality evening that is immensely diverting and sheer fun."
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Plays to See
November 24th, 2016

"Reeves doggedly mashes up every Grimm’s fairy tale line and character onto every film noir whodunit trope, sometimes to amusing results...Tremblay’s direction keeps the changes flying fast...But this is a full-length whodunit stocked with rapid patter–lots of it–so inevitably the premise runs thin...There’s enough here for a very witty twenty-minute sketch. Run time is 90 minutes without intermission."
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W
December 7th, 2016

"Twisted and delicious…It’s a tale chockablock with adult themes told in a way that could keep even the youngest among us giggling. Playwright Brooks Reeves has filled the script with ‘dad jokes’ and punny nods to the source materials, providing enough winks and nods to keep things interesting for cool kids of all ages…A merry and versatile band of high-energy players do a fabulous job of creating personalities as distinct as they are diverse."
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