Mile Square Theatre (MST), the Hoboken-based professional theatre company, is set to kick off a two-night run of Sarah Weber Gallo’s dance/theatre installation “Much Ado About Cucumbers & Cigars” on Thursday night. The show will also be performed on Friday at the Monroe Theatrespace, at 720 Monroe Street on the second floor. Both performances will be at 8 p.m.
“Much Ado About Cucumbers & Cigars” tells the parallel stories of two separate women, the Cigar Girl and the Cucumber Girl, and the interwoven events that bring them both to Hoboken. The Beautiful Cigar Girl washed up dead at the mouth of Sybil’s fresh-water cave in 1841, the brutally murdered victim of a botched abortion. She was later immortalized in a short story by Edgar Allan Poe.
Meanwhile, Cucumber Girl is a contemporary young woman, also from Hoboken, who is both object and subject of a spate of vulgar and highly sexualized graffiti in the local playgrounds. Both narratives are illuminated through dance and text, while a propulsive rock score centered in the Riot Grrrl punk movement provides the musical backbone of the piece.
Much Ado About Cucumbers & Cigars is choreographed and directed by the Metropolitan Opera Ballet’s Sarah Weber Gallo, a resident of Hoboken, and features an ensemble of dancers and performers led by Julliard graduate Michelle Vargo, and Sam Meredith (Broadway’s Swan Lake and Sleep No More).
Tickets for the show are $15. They are available at www.milesquaretheatre.org, and at the Monroe Theatrespace box office, or by calling (201) 683-7014 for reservations. Free parking is available behind the Monroe Arts Center.
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