Production Art.

Presented by Yorick Ensemble
By Nicholas Cummings
Directed by Rachel Hall
Fight choreography by Sydney T Grant
Puppet consultant: Em Sheeran

January 23 – February 1, 2026 
Boston Center for the Arts
Plaza Black Box Theatre
539 Tremont St.
Boston, MA 02116
Online playbill

Critique by Kitty Drexel 

BOSTON — The Great Pistachio is an absurd gem of a play about nothing and everything that starts with the letter B: Brechtian, Beckett, burrow, beg, bunker, banjo, beige, brown, bureau of criminal apprehension, bruise, beets, Bertram, Boris, and Beatrice. To a lesser extent, it’s a play about things that start with the letters A and C: apocalypse and company policy. Yorick Ensemble brings this eccentric but thoughtful one-act play from the New York and Edinburgh Theatre Festivals to the Boston Center for the Arts for two weekends. If you survive Snowmageddon 2026, it’s worth carving a path to the South End to see it before it flits to another city.

Hold on to your butt, we’ve got a weird one. In a bunker at the end of the world, brothers Bertrand Brambles (John Brownlie) and Boris (Tim Lawton) are working on very important projects. Bertrand has written his magnum opus: a five-act, 272-page play free from worldly influence. Boris is determined to finally catch up on his newspaper reading; he won’t budge until he does. But! Boris might watch Bertrand’s play if Bertrand finds it a cast. 

Enter Beatrice (Ellen Keith), a young woman surviving alone in a dystopian wasteland with oodles of energy and pluck but not much else. Together, the three navigate the boundaries between abstract thought, concrete relationships, and the actions that tie people to each other. The Great Pistachio is a play about theoretical theatre practices, dramaturgy, and acts of playful creation when the world would force us to stop. 

This play works so well because its actors are 100% in the reality of the show. They don’t question the circumstances of their existence, but they do question each other. Further, they take for granted that there is a world outside for them to hide from (thus solidifying the show using its play-within-a-play as allegory for theatre within society). Instead, our characters antagonize each other over the tasks they perform because the world has ended. Bertrand writes a play and edits it to death. Boris reads newspapers to understand why the world has ended. Beatrice is an actor; she’s going to act the hell out of her part whether it’s necessary or not. 

Brownlie and Lawton take their characters just seriously enough that we believe and maybe even like their unlikeable personas. Bertrand lives in a hole; Boris refuses to stand up from his seat on the couch. These characters need therapy. We’re forced to respect that Browlie and Lawton can’t therapise their characters. Browlie and Lawton can only play these men with authenticity. Bertrand and Boris are authentically bonkers, another B word. 

Speaking of bonkers, Ellen Keith as Beatrice reminds us not to suffer our madness; we must enjoy it. Whether she’s playing the Shoelace Man, performing the live birth of a pistachio, or troll running off stage, she puts her unhinged all on stage for us to enjoy. Keith chewed the scenery so thoroughly that our resulting laughter stopped the show. Twice. As the kids say, Keith ate and left no crumbs.

The props by Rachel Hall (with assistance from Kleanthis Zymaris) are inspired. Many of the show’s props are also set pieces. The actors sit on them, roll them across the stage, and fling them about. Boris’ newspapers tell us how long he’s been reading (decades) and function as meta-theatrical props, costume pieces including a snazzy vest, bunker art, and weapons. Just as Betrand creates his world around his play, Boris and Beatrice make their world out of Boris’ newspapers. 

The Great Pistachio’s many disparate parts shouldn’t make a unified, hilarious whole with messages about the theatre, dramaturgy, and politics, but they do. If you enjoy charmingly weird pieces of theatre nerdity like we do, you’ll appreciate this play. There’s nothing like it currently on Boston’s stages. 

[insert deez nuts joke here]

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