The Amoralists Theatre Company

Happy in the Poorhouse

“Happy in The Poorhouse has a knockabout physicality that grabs your attention. But what holds it is the working-class poetry of Derek Ahonen’s script. Mr. Ahonen brings the populist instincts of a born entertainer. He might be a contender yet.”
-The New York Times

“This gleefully crass comedy by the Amoralists is like a shotgun blast, with a charming cast, a favorable rate of funny jokes, and an undercurrent of genuine warmth help animate Paulie’s frantic campaign against uselessness and the death of dreams.”
-The New Yorker

“There’s no denying Ahonen’s forging a unique voice. HAPPY IN THE POORHOUSE IS A FUN RIDE.”
-NY Post

“My gut is that part of the future of American theatre rests with these guys, which is why I keep coming back to see what they’re cooking up.”
-NYTheatre.com

“The Amoralists specialize in “going there” - that is, where other troupes usually dare not tread.”
-Blog Critics

“If John Cassavetes had been hired to do a movie remake of ‘The Honeymooners,’ the results might have been something like the very funny (and very poignant) new play ‘Happy in the Poorhouse’”
-The Connecticut Post

“Ahonen’s dialogue is character-specific and spot-on, and his characters’ predicaments serve as mirrors to anyone in the audience who has ever known disappointment and compromise.”
-Show Business Weekly

“Poorhouse is grounded in a community with which Ahonen seems very familiar and within a generation for which he speaks eloquently. The love that underlies his work is palpable, which is why audiences care so readily for the inhabitants of it.”
-NYTheatre.com

“Happy In The Poorhouse is both funny and refreshingly adult.”
-Flavorpill

Amerissiah (Redux)

“The Amoralists are the new Sam Shepard”
-The L Magazine

“I am floored by the versatility and energy of the actors in the company. Pilieci is a comic virtuoso. Sarah Lemp is a comedy dynamo who zooms from 0 to 60 upon entering the play but somehow never goes completely over the top. Kautz is as funny playing a square as he was portraying the down-and-out fighter in “Poorhouse.”
-The Connecticut Post

“Amerissiah may surprise those who have grown to love the hectic hilarity of the Amoralists’ other works. Messianic zeal, the duties of fathers and the postbelief vacuum all figure here, and the balance tips away from zaniness and toward sincerity.“
-TIme Out New York

Throughout, the writing in this Amoralists production is zestful, filled with scatological zingers and trippy non sequiturs, which the company delivers with gritty aplomb. Their work ensures laughter. It also forces theatergoers to contemplate the deeper meaning behind Ahonen’s screwy comedy.
-The Village Voice

“Ahonen, one of the co-founders of the genius up-and-coming theater troupe The Amoralists, takes family dysfunction to brand new, shockingly original heights. Take a look at the future of downtown New York theatre.”
-NYTheatre.com

“Derek Ahonen, who wrote and directed Amerissiah, stirs everything together with gusto and a delicious incongruity.”
-The New York Times

“Nobody else weds old-fashioned realist structure to working-class-hero lunacy quite this way, and no other acting collective seems so raw, so heartfelt, so exuberantly extreme onstage and off.“
-Time Out New York

“Amerissiah displays Ahonen trademarks: characters eking out a living on America’s fringes, outré dysfunctions, extreme physicality, foulmouthed humor. But Ahonen’s work is more than low-brow provocation wrapped in white-trash aesthetics. He has affection for all his characters, including the Ricewater family of Amerissiah”
-The New York Post

“It’s a shocking thing to shock a New Yorker, and Ahonen, with his needle-sharp wit, left a stunned audience guffawing at the most inappropriate jokes. The whole cast is terrific”
-Off Off Online

Curtain Call:

The Pied Pipers Of The Lower East Side

Top Ten, The New York Post (2009)
Top Ten, TimeOut New York (2009)
Top Ten, Just Shows To Go You (2009)
Top Ten, JamesSpeak.blogspot (2009)

“What I particularly loved about the show was that Ahonen takes these four people and their dreams seriously. .The Pied Pipers is fast, funny, raucous and in-your-face. .It’s cast is 110% committed. I’ll certainly follow the Amoralists’ work from now on.”
-The New York Post

“The satiric thrust of the work is so on target. .Pity the lovers of this sort of rollercoaster-ride, in-your-face, freewheeling theatrical experience who are out of town for the summer. .Ahonen starts with what seems to be a hippie-era slice of life, but artfully steers his play into something far more. .The funniest onstage nudity in recent memory.”
-Variety

“Deservedly extended and what long, shaggy, exhilarating ride it is. Rendered with brassy verve. vigorous cast members.”
-The New York Times

“The young company’s deep commitment and contagious exuberance brings to mind the vitality that distinguished the early Off-Off Broadway work of artists like Sam Shepard only a generation ago.”
-The New Yorker

“The happiest surprise of the season. Ahonen has written full, complex characters, and the committed cast approaches them with sincerity and heart. This is exciting work, fresh and refreshing: The Pied Pipers of the Lower East Side makes you want to follow the Amoralists wherever they go next.”
-Time Out New York

“The most exciting theatre I’ve seen in quite a while. The sheer scope of this piece-touching on religion, environmentalism, economics, anarchy, vegetarianism, sexuality, and much more-makes it endlessly admirable. .The six actors give bold, thoughtful performances.”
-NYTheatre.com

“The Pied Pipers of The Lower East Side manages to entertain, educate, and titillate.”
-BackStage

“I left wondering what, exactly, Ahonen was trying to say: is he idealizing these people and their lifestyle? Is he trying to show that it can’t work? Or is he making a point about what society does to idealism, and what happens when idealism has to square with the real world around it? The realism of the play he and his talented cast have created makes it such that the answer is, actually, I’d think, all three.”
-Broadway World

“Derek Ahonen’s fascinating new play, which he has also directed, is a rare creature among the world of Off-Off-Broadway- it is superb.”
-The Off Off Broadway Review

Happy in the Poorhouse

“Happy in The Poorhouse has a knockabout physicality that grabs your attention. But what holds it is the working-class poetry of Derek Ahonen’s script. Mr. Ahonen brings the populist instincts of a born entertainer. He might be a contender yet.”
-The New York Times

“This gleefully crass comedy by the Amoralists is like a shotgun blast, with a charming cast, a favorable rate of funny jokes, and an undercurrent of genuine warmth help animate Paulie’s frantic campaign against uselessness and the death of dreams.”
-The New Yorker

“There’s no denying Ahonen’s forging a unique voice. HAPPY IN THE POORHOUSE IS A FUN RIDE.”
-NY POST

“My gut is that part of the future of American theatre rests with these guys, which is why I keep coming back to see what they’re cooking up.”
-NYTheatre.com

“The Amoralists specialize in “going there” - that is, where other troupes usually dare not tread.”
-BLOG CRITICS

“If John Cassavetes had been hired to do a movie remake of ‘The Honeymooners,’ the results might have been something like the very funny (and very poignant) new play ‘Happy in the Poorhouse’”
-The Connecticut Post

“Ahonen’s dialogue is character-specific and spot-on, and his characters’ predicaments serve as mirrors to anyone in the audience who has ever known disappointment and compromise.”
-Show Business Weekly

“Poorhouse is grounded in a community with which Ahonen seems very familiar and within a generation for which he speaks eloquently. The love that underlies his work is palpable, which is why audiences care so readily for the inhabitants of it.”
-NYTheatre.com

“Happy In The Poorhouse is both funny and refreshingly adult.”
-Flavorpill

Ghosts in the Cottonwoods

“The Amoralists, and their playwrights, continue to clear the way for a Theatre beyond entertainment. They want a new one.”
-Stagevoices.com

The strikingly talented young company the Amoralists [...] and Adam Rapp’s play, which he wrote fourteen years ago and directs here [...] is just the ticket...
-The New Yorker

Rapp’s dialogue is beautiful mayhem, full of mudslops and dogsnakes and hog gravy, and we care just enough about these strange souls to be devastated by their pain...it jolts and haunts all involved in its happy amoralism.
-The New Yorker

“Like Sarah Kane’s Blasted, the play is mysterious and unforgettable disturbing.”
-Flavorpill

“It is performed with the hard charging gusto that fans of the Amoralists have come to expect”
-The NY times

“Fearless”
- The NY Times

”The Amoralist’s show has the infectious energy of a major event in New York theater history.”
-L Magazine

“This is a theatrical meeting made in heaven.”
- New York Post

The Amoralists use the play to strike a blow against sclerotic modes of presentation and received attitudes in the minds of audiences and critics… I had a blast
-Backstage

A grotesque American Gothic, peppered with black comedy, sensationalistic violence and an oddly poetic backwoods patois, illustrating American alienation and familial decay.

With their raw energy and unblinking commitment, the Amoralists’ fierce, talented performers make Ghosts in the Cottonwoods…
-Time Out NY

Ghosts in the Cottonwoods is not to be missed…It is just plain great theatre. The Amoralists are, as always, in top risk-taking form

The Amoralists and Adam Rapp are quite the explosive combination. Let’s hope they take another journey together soon.
-NYTheatre.com

A furious assault on the senses -- in the most cathartic way possible.
-Theatermania.com

Some of the most raw and intestine twisting theater happening in New York City right now… Rapp again pushes the limits of the human mind and what it can and cannot endure. The Amoralists as a theater company have solidified as their true talent, an ability to adapt to any situation or text.
-Slant Magazine

“Ahonen’s dialogue is character-specific and spot-on, and his characters’ predicaments serve as mirrors to anyone in the audience who has ever known disappointment and compromise.”
-Show Business Weekly