Kidnapped by Craig’s List: 83% Sweet

SWEET
That our world is carnivalesque is made evident every day on TV (think Jerry Springer), in the supermarket checkout line (ever seen a copy of Weekly World News?), or on the Internet, with Craigslist being a prime example. Kidnapped By Craigslist is the perfect alternative to the overflow of Christmas-based entertainment on our local stages. Word of mouth could easily make this a cult hit. With Kidnapped By Craigslist, TheSpyAnts have once again proven themselves to be one of our most innovative, risk-taking, talented theater ensembles.
Steven Stanley – StageSceneLA

SWEET
Using a carnival theme to launch its twisted collage of actual postings, scripted material and live music, “Kidnapped” has plenty of hysterical moments. Lori Evans Taylor stages the proceedings with noteworthy panache, weaving her antic cast (with alternates) around designer Matt Maenpaa’s velvet-curtained set like feral magician’s rabbits. From the opening of Amy Motta’s barker slithering out of a trunk to welcome us as her colleagues do a freak-show parade, we are in for something unapologetically self-circumscribed.
David C. Nichols – LA Times

BITTER
Amy Motta is all flash and tinsel as the carny barker guiding us through the network of misunderstandings and missed connections, including her sweetly rendered ballad requesting her new boyfriend to lay off the sodomy, and the faux-indignation of a gay man (Eric Bunton) having to endure in the stifling heat the sight of a teenage man lolling around nude near his bedroom window. These are highlights, but Taylor pushes the jokes too hard, beyond the range of their own humor, revealing the superficial essence of the project, like a less than enthralling episode of Saturday Night Live.
Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly

SWEET
This zany, rollicking show by Katie Goan and Nitra Gutierrez is essentially an evening of sketch comedy derived from actual postings on Craigslist, making it a catalog of human oddities.
Neal Weaver – Backstage

SWEET
All the performers were outstanding. Some of the standouts include Addi Gaash, Amy Motta and Danny Lopes. Matt Maenpaa (set design) and Lori Evans Taylor (sound design) prove how ingenuity and resourcefulness gives the audience a glamorous stage. It is said that comedy is an ironic reversal of tragedy. If it were not for all the laughter involved, one could sense the pity in these ads that continually crowd cyberspace. Highly recommended.
M. Jarrett Christensen – Tolucan Times

SWEET
At a certain moment during one of Kidnapped by CraigsList’s many, sometimes numbing, monological barrages it suddenly dawned on me – I mean REALLY dawned on me – that these were the words of REAL PEOPLE, and it was at that point that the play became more than a mostly-entertaining and frequently-hilarious Twenty-First Century Carnivale – it became poignant social commentary on who we are as a nation and how dreadfully isolated we’ve become from one another.
Colin Mitchell – Bitter Lemons