“Theater Oobleck, easily the most cerebral absurdist theater company (or absurdist cerebral company) in town, presents one of its most unlikely aesthetic and formal pairings of the company’s history… Mickle Maher’s The Hunchback Variations takes as its premise a panel discussion between the Hunchback of Notre Dame and Ludwig van Beethoven…
“And if The Hunchback Variations, which consists of 11 vignettes in which Quasimodo and Beethoven meditate on their failure, wasn’t heady enough, the play… has found a new incarnation as Oobleck’s first opera, opening this week at the Victory Gardens Biograph Theatre. The A.V. Club spoke with playwright Mickle Maher, author of the now-libretto, and composer Mark Messing (of Redmoon and co-founder of Mucca Pazza) about their own artistic collaboration and why opera suddenly seems to be so popular.”