The Chicago Reader
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Mime artist Dean Evans has a curious and riveting fragility: he's both doll-like and dangerously expressive in his one man-show. Dropping all the defenses and boundaries normally erected in pueblo, he creates and kind of physical comedy - and physical tragedy - that's more than physical. Everything he feels is writ large on his plastic, wide-eyed face and echoed in his rubber body. This makes The Magical Exploding Boy almost painfully raw and resonant at times as well as funny in the manner of a of a Warner Brothers cartoon or Jim Carrey movie.
Evans's seven almost wordless vignettes seem plucked from a dark, eerie comic book. The stories range from the silly-in "Bully and the Boy" he beats himself up-to the almost heroic: in one scene Evans plays a jellyfishlike creature that won't admit defeat. In "telling" his tales, Evans is both precise-he trained with Marcel Marceau, after all-and imaginative: in "Bully" the victim finds refuge in his imagination, where he's riding a fine horse. Evans is an original, and his work is both startling and satisfying. - Chicago Reader