Contributing Our Theatre Voice Writer Alessandro Stracuzzi's review of THREE DESCENDING NOTES:

THREE DESCENDING NOTES. (Episodic.) Four mermaids, a singing bear, and a pirate enter the subway. No, this is not the beginning of a joke. They are just a few of the human and non-human figures encountered by 70-year-old Odelia. She was simply riding home on the TTC, so how on earth did she end up in a sun-drenched valley where animals hum in harmony?

This 40-minute musical attempts to draw us into the fractured mind of a woman living with dementia. By delving into her hallucinations, Robin North’s book creates intriguing and at times whimsical tableaux, enhanced by Nae Phillips’s surprisingly streamlined projections. The piece takes up a compelling subject with tenderness and imagination. Yet its loose rhythm and episodic structure ultimately leave the audience without a firm sense of direction. Rachael Cardiello’s lullaby-swaying score proves suspenseful: like Odelia, we are meant to feel lost. The problem is that the show too often seems lost, too.