2nd Annual All-New Cabaret Macabre at Silver Spring Black Box Theater

Washington Post - Recommended

"... Let’s hope the U.S. Croquet Association is not meeting in Washington in the next few weeks: Happenstance Theater’s second “Cabaret Macabre” might send the group’s members into shock. The cheerfully sinister, tongue-in-cheek sketch-and-music show — an all-new follow-up to Happenstance’s 2010 Halloween-timed offering — includes a portrait of a prim croquet match devolving into a homicidal free-for-all. Mallets swing through the air like battle-axes en route to players’ skulls (it’s all done in slow motion) as a fastidious commentator, standing to one side, reads from the official Rules of Croquet. The lawn game may not have received such a spoofing since Lewis Carroll had Alice play it with a flamingo and curled-up hedgehog."

Washington City Paper - Recommended

"... This isn’t a Molotov show, so there’s no need for rain slickers or eye protection. Murderous innuendo is the show’s preferred mode. The morbid gags are good but the morbid songs are better: sister duo The Pierces’ “Secret,” performed by Gwen Grastorf and Esther Williamson, Matthew Pauli’s chilling take on Tom Lehrer’s “I Hold Your Hand in Mine,” and clown extraordinaire Mark Jaster’s version of Tom Waits’ all-occasions lullaby, “Innocent When You Dream,” are all marvelous, as is the live accompaniment. Karen Hansen handled the arrangements, wrote an original waltz to accompany Emily Dickinson’s poem “I Like a Look of Agony,” and performs on a variety of instruments. Sabrina Mandell co-founded the company with Jaster and appears in a number of roles—none more memorable than Headmistress Forthright of the Academy of Precocious Twins."

MD Theatre Guide - Highly Recommended

"... The edge of darkened days inspired by death has arrived in Happenstance Theatre’s production of their 2 Annual Cabaret Macabre. Playing at the Round House Theatre in Silver Spring, MD, this unique limited engagement is a perfect celebration of darkness with humor, dance and everything one expects from a cabaret style performance. Conceptualized as a theatrical collage devised by the entire ensemble the performance does not disappoint. With a uniquely talented cast: Mark Jaster, Sabrina Mandell, Karen Hansen, Gwen Grastorf, Matthew Pauli, and Esther Williamson; the show provides everything from singing and dancing to physical comedy and dark haunting moments that are simply to die for."

DCTheatreScene - Highly Recommended

Happenstance Theater has found a winsome way to keep Halloween in our hearts all year long—the chills, the thrills, the frights, the things that go bump in the night. The troupe’s Cabaret Macabre celebrates the season of the witch, the Day of the Dead and every doomsday in-between with a decorously lurid vaudeville dedicated to grotesqueries and the deeply weird.