THE MYSTICETI AND THE MANDELBROT SET

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The Kid and the Kat are the leading characters in Theater Oobleck’s new show, The Mysticeti and the Mandelbrot Set. In Jeff Dorchen’s new play, the Kid and the Kat are psychedelic time-and-space travelers, trying to understand the nature of chaos and find the place where language (i.e., rationality) ends and whatever comes after that begins.

Along the way, they stumble through a characteristically Oobleckian collage of spiritual and secular arcana; political assaults and rock ‘n’ roll references; biblical, mythological, and scientific references; sexual, scatological, and parental-hostility humor; and lots of drug jokes. The sex, drug, and fart routines not only get the most laughs in the show, they also give the audience something to hold on to; even members of the cultish following Oobleck has developed over the past few years seemed generally confused by the script’s more obscure material (which is to say anything that didn’t involve a bodily function or a fucked-up familial relationship).