POOL (NO WATER): 90% – SWEET

The cast of “pool (no water)” at Flight Theatre at the Complex. Credit: Jazmin Monet Estopin.

SWEET
Directed by Monkey Wrench Collective artistic director Dave Barton and choreographed by Angela Ann Lopez and Lee Samuel Tanng, the production unleashes its fiercely committed 11-person cast on David Scaglione’s flexible, largely abstract set that’s discreetly enlivened by Eric A. Wahl’s video design.
Charles McNulty – LA Times

SWEET
It has been said that the true measure of any drama is the degree to which it implicates its audience. If so, British playwright Mark Ravenhill’s unflinching 2006 flaying of artistic pretense must be judged a harrowing and hilarious triumph.
Bill Raden – LA Weekly

SWEET
While all are effective in communicating hypocrisy, pettiness, insecurity, and sickening feelings of guilt, some of the most stunning moments belong to Mowrey and Ryanen, showing the defiant viciousness behind the group’s phony sentimentality. Like any piece of performance art, “pool” will likely evoke highly subjective responses, baffling some while energizing others.
Eric Marchese – Backstage

SWEET
With an exhilarating mix of erotica, nudity, romance, sexuality, and skin, along with an invisible thread tying each member of the ensemble together in an intricate tapestry, the show ‘has it all,’ and is bound to intrigue its adult theatre audience.
Bonnie Priever – LA Examiner

SWEET
It’s a pleasure to see something on the Los Angeles stage that isn’t trying to be a film or TV pilot or showcasing actors for a casting director. This is uncompromising theatricalism.
RS Bailey -Curvewire

SWEET
Monkey Wrench Collective has brought us a genuine theatrical gift, and we’re lucky to have it.
Terry Morgan – LAist

SWEET
pool (no water), written by Mark Ravenhill and directed by Dave Barton, is a very quirky show, which I enjoyed immensely.
Joe Straw – Joe Straw #9

SWEET
Anyone seriously interested in the power of theater, and in what a collective of like-minded artists can do together, will be amply rewarded for attending.
Bob Verini – FringeReviews

SWEET
If you’ve been wondering whatever happened to all those experimental communal collective consciousness theater pieces that made New York’s famed La MaMa legendary back in the early 70′s, wonder no more. The art form is alive and well and swimming into The Complex’ Flight Theatre in a quirky yet absorbing production of Mark (Shopping and Fucking) Ravenhill’s pool (no water).
Jazmin Monet Estopin – Stage and Cinema

BITTER
The Flight Theatre venue didn’t show off this piece at its best. The stage felt too crowded and claustrophobic, and the talked-about movement looked a little sloppy around the edges.
Don Shirley – LA Stage Times

POOL (NO WATER)
Monkey Wrench Collective
Flight Theater at the Complex
6476 Santa Monica Blvd., Hlywd.
Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m.; through June 17, 2012
Tickets: (800) 838-3006