I moved to the West coast ten years ago. One thing I have always regretted was not traveling by land to get here. I imagine the physical passage through the enormous American landscape to be a profound, challenging, dramatic experience. Much of "Awesome"’s West re-imagines and replicates this romantic journey, the expansive and rocky landscape, an existential ennui through history and consciousness; an epic three-act musical adventure/meditation of isolation and solitude, movement and stasis, memory and fantasy on a grand, operatic scale.

In "West," their epic-scale and near-epic-length new show at On the Boards, the video wizardry of "Awesome" (always in quotes) has taken a quantum leap. The white silhouette of a galloping horse ripples across a rugged backdrop. A night-sky is unveiled inside a packing crate. Trickles of blood drip down from where you least expect them. These fancy flourishes are all part of a dreamlike meditation on the myths and transformations of the American West that's both ambitious and ambiguous.