HIGHLAND LAKE, NY — NACL Theatre presents Nightjar Apothecary’s “Darwinii: The Comeuppance of Man,” in a swashbuckling, one-man “tour de farce” created by “the ferociously physical and vocally chameleonic” Brett Keyser and award-winning playwright Glen Berger (Broadway’s "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark," Off-Broadway’s "Underneath the Lintel").

Brett Keyser plays an Argentine convict who brings new meaning to “Survival of the Fittest” in this sincerely funny, (and scientifically accurate) search for family origin, which audiences have described as “intellectually seductive,” and “one hell of a ride!”

Created by NACL company member, Brett Keyser, and playwright Glen Berger, Darwinii features Keyser in the role of Cristóbal, a wild-eyed gaucho hustler convicted of various crimes, including stealing original Charles Darwin manuscripts from rare book libraries around the world. Why? Because he’s convinced he’s the great-great-great-great (bastard) grandson of the father of Natural Selection. As part of his sentence he must deliver a public apology, during which he digresses, with flamboyant intensity and bawdy humor, into the story of his life, growing up as an orphan in Tierra del Fuego and inadvertently becoming an expert Darwinologist, exploiting every opportunity to prove (and cash in on) his unbelievable pedigree. The performance is a tango-tinged dance of life, a fresh take on some of Darwin’s ideas about the struggle for survival, sexual selection, the origin of species, and the descent of man.

Picked for “Best of the Live Arts Fest” by the Philadelphia Weekly, Darwinii sold out its 2009 premiere run at the American Philosophical Society Museum, the historic Philadelphia institution that commissioned the piece (among six performance works Keyser produced for the museum over as many years).

Cleveland’s Scene Magazine reports, “[Keyser] works this blood-red runway with the fierceness of Tyra Banks on meth…. Darwinii is an immediate contender for the title of Most Enjoyable and Engrossing 70 Minutes on Stage in 2011.”

“One of the most mesmerizing pieces of theatre this town has seen in a decade.” —The Plain Dealer.

Call 845/557-0694 or visit www.NACL.org.