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EXTENDED BY POPULAR DEMAND!!! EVERY WEDNESDAY AT 8PM AT THE KRAINE THEATER, 85 E. 4TH STREET. TICKETS AT THE BOX OFFICE OR THROUGH SMARTTIX.COM.
The New York Times (Andy Webster) wrote, "It's profane, astringent, defiant and buoyant, much like its home, the East Village, once was before it was overrun with skyscrapers and pinstriped professionals. Maybe what musical theater, at its best, can still be."
THE STORY....
There are no senseless acts of violence among the criminally insane,
because to the perpetrators, the violence makes sense. Ask their lawyer.
"Attorney for the Damned," a new rock musical, is a dark, biting, tragicomic peek at the criminally insane and the justice system that abuses them. Conceived and written by Denis Woychuk, composed by Rob McCulloch and directed by Stephen Vincent Brennan.
The musical's form is reminiscent of The Who's "Tommy," in that it is staged entirely as a rock concert. But the story might be characterized as "Law and Order" meets "Silence of the Lambs" meets "The Rocky Horror Picture Show." A very funny, horrific story is told in a Rock idiom.
Its comedic aspects notwithstanding, it is a cry from the conscience of a lawyer who made a living representing the rights of the criminally insane. Playwright/lyricist Denis Woychuk is a former lawyer who represented the rights of mental patients for more than ten years in the '80s and '90s, working out of Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center, a maximum security hospital in New York.
This musical is actually a dark, symbolic treatment of his 1996 autobiographical book, "Attorney for the Damned" (The Free Press), in which he confessed, "I live with the painful knowledge that I am somehow complicit in the horrible acts some of my clients commit after I ease their legal constraints and help them get released."
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