Last year Tim Mooney was loved by Dangerous Theatre audiences for two different amazing shows - and his is back this year with two more amazing shows that he has been playing at Fringe Festivals this summer. One is a brand new show (Breakneck Hamlet) while the other is Criteria, a thriller of a show he has has in his collection for years. I have heard from so many that THIS is their favorite shown they have seen him perform, and he is bringing it to Denver for only 3 shows!
Here is a review from this summer's gig at the Kansas City Fringe:
Written by Kristen Shafel Omiccioli
"What if social security numbers became the new benchmark for segregation in the United States? The industrious Fringe favorite Timothy Mooney poses this question and takes it to the brink in his new play Criteria, where, in the twenty-fourth century, the United States has been divided into new factions based on the social security numbers of each region’s residents. From “Zeros” to “Fives,” each group is assigned a gratuitous value of worth resulting in a new caste system, which our unnamed protagonist is out to overthrow.
The protagonist is traveling to Durango, Colorado, the heart of the California Union (“Fiveland”) to detonate a nuclear device on those “bourgeois, bloated Fives” who take all that beautiful land in their union for granted. After meeting a couple of locals at a diner in Lamar, his whole worldview is challenged. Will he or won’t he carry out his mission? What does either action mean for his people, the “Fours”?
Along with his signature comedic timing and vigorous delivery, Timothy Mooney is a nothing short of an indefatigable creative force. After bringing pieces based on history and Shakespearean literature to previous KC Fringe Festivals, this year he shows off his talent for original speculative fiction. His flair for storytelling and imaginative worldbuilding completely immersed me in this vision of future America, focusing on totalitarianism, identity, security, and class structure.
The world of Criteria reminded me of something Margaret Atwood said at her recent lecture at KU—that everything in her seminal novel The Handmaid’s Tale is based on things that have actually happened in world history. Dystopia is all the rage lately, and the best examples are those that look backwards in order to imagine forwards and make you think about the topics afterwards, which Mooney handily achieves with Criteria.
Criteria is appropriate for all ages."
Click here for link to review: http://kcmetropolis.org/issue/july-22-2015-fringe-issue/article/kc-fringe-2015-criteria