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This raucous, righteous, rock-and-roll romp skewers predatory capitalism with a bayonet of scruffy sci-fi, puppetry and clowning. But for all its originality, Dimension Zero, the new musical from Boxcutter Collective, launches with a time-tested tale-telling trope.
An alien civilization picks up a broadcast from humans and sends and emissary to investigate. The outsider’s perspective gives us a widened eye on our own civilization – in this case, the working- and creative-class side of a downbeat New York City that could be in any era from the 1970s to today.
The earthbound side of the show’s sci-fi involves a supposedly brain-enhancing device that actually turns people into proletariat productivity drones. That the actual victims of this mind control are a planetful of adorable puppet-orphans who star in a hit TV show is emblematic of the show’s zero-dimensional zaniness.
Drunk and Disorderly Dolls
Those same silver-skinned aliens also launch the show’s shiny, cheesy aesthetic. Their eerie opening “dance” and the emissary’s subsequent journey through space harks back to 1950s sci-fi movies. The show explodes into outrageous costumes and props, eye-popping and sometimes dizzily dancing backdrops, and puppetry of various inventive ilks. The live band churns out original ’60s-’70s-style psych-rock, space-rock, doo-wop, funk, and good old rock-and-roll, backing up Rocky Horror-style songs and campy production numbers that sizzle with warp-drive energy.
Fun and laughter abound. The band rocks out but never gets loud enough to obscure the well-mic’ed actors as they sing. The puppets range from sprawling structures – a fighting robot, a monstrous personification – to expressionless dolls. Most creatively of all, lines between human actor, costume, and puppet blur.
Puppets get drunk and disorderly. Others engage in Punch-and-Judy violence. Flats representing New York City icons dance across the set. A set representing one thing becomes another thing. A skyscraper setpiece allows the puppeteers to play two characters at once, their puppet and their human self, magnifying the already-large cast. Indeed it’s almost mind-boggling what the company is able to do in what is really a pretty small space.
The absurd. The surreal. Brecht. Ubu Roi. Viscera-on-sleeve political messaging. And all the great puppet theater of the past. Spiky and overflowing, Dimension Zero whips its traditions and influences into a cheeky gumbo, its earnest anti-capitalist message wrapped in cosmic-psychedelic paraphernalia and unstoppable hijinks. It’s rough around the edges, but I suspect too much polish would dull the effect. The world premiere of this riotously original show is at HERE Arts Center through October 25, 2025. Visit the show page for schedule and tickets.
