Photo by Apollinaire Theatre. Great squirrels of our time.
Presented by Apollinaire Theatre Company
By Robert Askins
Directed by Brooks Reeves
Movement Choreography by Audrey Johnson
Fight Choreography by Matt Dray
April 18-May 18, 2025
Chelsea Theatre Works
189 Winnisimmet St.
Chelsea, MA
Running Time: estimated 2 hours
Critique by Kitty Drexel
“Artists must let audiences in on the risk of the live performance through intentionally crafting moments in which it is revealed. This is why moments of misfire, moments that shatter the theatrical illusion, feel so resonant: they reveal the risk underpinning a truly live and dynamic experience… These moments don’t have to be literal mistakes… But rather ideas, images or performances that surprise us by upsetting our expectations and enhancing our awareness of events unfolding around us.”
Theatre of the Unimpressed: In Search of Vital Drama by Jordan Tanahill, Coach House Books, Toronto: 2015.
CHELSEA, Mass. — The Squirrels by Robert Askins (best known for Hand to God, a play about a boy and his outspoken hand puppet) is a strange ‘lil beastie of a play. At first glance, it is a departure for Apolliniaire Theatre Company – a company that stages adventurous plays about the human experience. But, upon further investigation, The Squirrels is well within Apollinaire’s bailiwick. Askins’ play is about the failures of our flesh, our need for compassion and warmth, and our propensity for greed when left unchecked. It is also about common street Rodentia.
Apollinaire’s website summarizes The Squirrels thusly: “A bitter struggle for love, power, and the almighty acorn divides a once-peaceful tree in Robert Askins’ dark satire of prejudice and greed… A tragi-comical epic battle for nuts.” It is Watership Down meets King Lear with some Lysistrata thrown in for good measure. It is fluffy, horny, and entirely human.
At its start, a mad Scientist (Thain Bertin) introduces us to the eastern grey squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis) with unflinching eye contact in a 4th-wall-breaking presentation. He gives us the skinny on the grey squirrel’s behaviors and the ins and outs of its battle for habitat with its cousin, the smaller (prettier?) fox squirrel (Sciurus niger). In his presentation, the Scientist foreshadows the drama to unfold for our entertainment… And Horror!
Sciurus (Dev Luthra) is the rich, aged patriarch Squirrel of his tree. With his loyal mate Mammalia (Cara Clough), Sciurus leads his family through times of abundance and scarcity. His beloved daughter Chordata (Audrey Johnson on the night I attended, Parker Jennings at other performances) loves her father but questions his hoarding of resources. Sciurus will not share his secret trove of nuts; his delegation of resources is miserly and lacks transparency. She loves Carolinensis (Matteo Bailey), a squirrel from a faraway tree. They wish to adopt more holistic nut-sharing practices – practices which Sciurus fears. Sciurus’ adopted daughter Rodentia (Sophia Koevary), also loves her father with an impure adoration that antagonizes Mammalia’s status as the tree matriarch.
Sciurus hoards secrets: He’s exhibiting early signs of squirrel dementia and does not remember the exact location of his great nut stash. Once treasured allegiances are brought into question because Sciurus cannot remember what was said by whom or when. After a skirmish in the bows, Carolinensis is banished from the tree. Chordata is forced to choose between her father and her love, whom she muk-muks. Their family drama is complicated even further when a stranger, Sciuridae (Bertin, again), enters the tree to force the tree into a disorganized totalitarian coup for Sciurus’ nuts. Miguel Dominguez, Gabriel Pagan, and Max Wanty perform squirrely ensemble roles.
Robert Askins’ play utilizes the absurdity of low-stakes (to us) squirrel antics to accurately depict the very real, current human political bat-shittery going on in Washington, D.C. at this very moment. The Squirrels was published in 2021 and was possibly (probably?) influenced by the first wack-a-doo administration of the sitting FOTUS. Askins tells us it’s inspired by true events. Whether its warring squirrels in the ‘00s, Nazi Germany in the ‘40s, or billionaires buying the government right now, fascist oppression of the starving working-class looks largely the same. Let it be said, cuddly fantasy squirrel authoritarianism is easier for a desensitized audience to stomach and digest in their own time. (This is not normal. Call your representatives and protest the coup. Invite them to a performance!)
Lest one think The Squirrels is too strange and unusual for the common theatre goer, while this play is indeed unusual, rest assured, it is otherwise exciting, well-crafted art. Brooks Reeves and his cast created a singular world for Askins’ play to welcome skeptics. They accomplish this by being 100% all in; they take the world of The Squirrels deathly seriously. So much so, they might as well be performing Shakespeare.
Photo by Apollinaire Theatre. Love knows many forms.
The actors play squirrels, but the audience recognizes them as people. Their characters have a unique language, albeit a pun-laden one, as well as a vocabulary of mannerisms choreographed by Johnson, ranging across the spectrum of the squirrel experience from love to hate as they negotiate life in rodent society. Additionally, Johnson and fight director choreographed the high highs of squirrel love and the low lows of squirrel war. As a person who has never communed with city rodents, I don’t know how realistic their choreography was. I believed it enough to feel horrified, and like I was seeing something I shouldn’t.
Reeves and The Squirrels’ well-tempered ensemble are assisted by their designers. Costume designer Susan Paino dressed the cast in durable, flexible costumes consisting of fur sleeves and vests. The vests had tails attached at the lower back with a tail pinned to the upper back of the vest to replicate the shape of a squirrel’s tail at attention. The costumes not only looked realistic, they also captured what a squirrel is: chaotic, anxious, ungovernable. Paino’s costumes worked a lot of the magic necessary to stabilize the audience’s attention in this world.
The audience on Friday night tried to stay emotionally distant from the play’s events, but we quickly succumbed to the drama onstage. It was like ALW’s Cats but rodents… Rats? …Or, the Infinite Monkey Theorem if the monkeys were squirrels and the squirrels had private coaching from Sun Tzu. It’s weird, but it’s good weird.
Photo by Apollinaire Theatre: Two Chordatas. Things are very bad in the branches.
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