Review: OCTET at Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival

Posted August 26, 2025

As I entered the performance tent in Garrison, I wasn’t sure what to expect.

By: Pia Haas

As I entered the performance tent in Garrison, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I had admired Dave Malloy’s wildly inventive Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 on Broadway, but this new chamber musical—Octet—proved even more startling. Malloy, who wrote the music, lyrics, book, and vocal arrangements, has created a daring piece that is both dazzling and deeply unsettling.

Through eight characters gathered in a church basement for a weekly support group, it asks us to face our own uneasy relationship with the internet—our dependence, our compulsions, our quiet addictions.

Malloy’s inspirations, listed in the program, range from Rumi to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, from Black Mirror to The Matrix, from Philip Glass to Marvin Hamlisch—and, improbably, to the game Candy Crush. Out of this eclectic brew, he has fashioned a work that is part confessional, part choral meditation, part fever dream.

The setting is deceptively ordinary: folding chairs in a church meeting room. Eight strangers circle up and share their stories—a woman who became a viral YouTube punchline, a man enslaved by Candy Crush, a couple lost in the endless churn of dating apps. Each tale unfolds as song, supported by the group, who function simultaneously as fellow addicts, a Greek chorus, and an a cappella ensemble of breathtaking precision.

The music is ravishing. Malloy structures the piece around three “hymns” sung in rich, eight-part harmony—lush, intricate, and performed without accompaniment. They land with the power of communal prayer. Between them are solo confessionals, where the full ensemble layers vocal flourishes around the central voice. The effect is often chilling: “Addiction, obsession / Insomnia, depression / And the fear that I’ve wasted too much of myself / On rapid and vapid click-clicks.”

Amanda Dehnert’s direction is nimble and deeply theatrical, shaping a brisk, fluid evening that brims with imagination. The ensemble—Adam Bashian, Melissa Mahoney, Gunnar Manchester, Anand Nagraj, Jill Paice, Mia Pak, Luis Quintero, and Alexis Tidwell—sing and move with an uncanny unity, as though breathing together. They are, quite simply, phenomenal!

The production’s design adds remarkable depth to the experience. The modest realism of the church-basement setting is transformed by Marcella Barbeau’s lighting, which shifts seamlessly from intimacy to mystery, from transcendence to sudden flashes of electricity. Ken Travis’ flawless sound design ensures that every nuance of the unaccompanied voices rings clear and true. Buffy Cardoza’s thoughtful properties and Tracy Christensen’s subtle, street-worn costumes ground the characters in reality, while stage manager Janelle Caso keeps the entire production running with precision and ease. Together, these elements weave the invisible net that makes the piece both theatrically fluid and emotionally potent.

What makes Octet so remarkable is how it weds subject and form. It is about the loneliness of our digital obsessions, but it combats that isolation with the oldest instrument of human connection: the human voice. In a time when technology often divides us, this show insists on the redemptive force of live harmony.

Walking out of the tent, I felt the lingering charge of what I had seen and heard. Octet is one of the most original and moving theatrical experiences in recent memory. It’s frightening, yes—but also hopeful, funny, and profoundly entertaining. For anyone tethered to a screen (and who isn’t?), it’s a wake-up call and, perhaps, a kind of absolution.

Playing Through September 7th. Go See it!  Followed by “Julius Caesar” (September 9-10),