The seven male members of the NY-based Pigpen Theater Company have been making shows together since meeting at the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama in 2007. They are a multi-talented group: they create plays together, act in them, write and sing songs, play instruments, do puppetry, and help design costumes, sets and lighting. Their stage wizardry has won them slews of awards across the country, including best-play prizes two years in a row at the New York International Fringe Festival. In 2016, Sir Trevor Nunn invited Pigpen to join his first American acting company for a production of Shakespeare’s Pericles. On top of that, their debut album “Bremen” was named #10 album of the year by The Huffington Post. Now Pigpen has visited The Wallis with its touring production of The Old Man and the Old Moon, a whimsical tale about a young man whose search for his missing wife takes him on a fantastical journey on which he crosses mountains and deserts, is washed overboard at sea and finds himself in the belly of a whale. That’s just for starters because, after figuring out a way to escape his pelagic prison, he (and a fluffy dog) end up in a hot-air balloon on a mission to bring water to the parched moon. All along the way, friends and foes pop in and out of the action, the suspense keeps building, and many toe-tapping tunes are sung (culled from Pigpen’s two successful albums). The Old Man and the Old Moon is obviously aimed at kids, but this senior citizen, along with some of the other elderly folks in the audience, had himself a surprisingly good time.
