No one in Houston creates this multilayered, nonlinear type of theatre better than The Catastrophic Theatre.

I think it helps that Catastrophic’s Artistic Director Jason Nodler, who directs here, is a goddamn genius by every definition of the word.Only a genius can take the complexly simple Endgame and make it sing, dance, and soar to new heights, exploding into so many pieces simultaneously, satisfactorily, and splendidly that we marvel at its many magnificent manifestations.

Catastrophic Theatre’s stark, unflinching production of Samuel Beckett’s Endgame demonstrates exactly why this company and its artistic director Jason Nodler are so important to the city’s cultural life.

In the year since Catastrophic Theatre was named a MasterMind, the experimental theater company has added an additional production to its schedule, discovered a whole new audience, and artistic director Jason Nodler has even stopped smoking.

Described as "a ghost story for three bodies with three voices," Anna Bella Eema blurs the line between the real and the imaginary. The format is stark and simple. Three women sit in chairs and speak their stories, sometimes alternating monologues, sometimes as dialogue. They punctuate the action using the many props on the folding TV tables set out before each one. Periodically, they sing a capella incantations, laments, primal cries - nothing like conventional song.

Within a harsh Samuel Beckett universe, D'Amour deftly mines the magic realism vein. Tales of wise talking foxes and such lend a Little Prince vibe. The line "I was visited by a werewolf once" is presented as matter-of-factly as "I was visited by a social worker once." D'Amour has a way with the psychologically telling line, as when Anna Bella expresses anger with her mom: "Even though I'm only 10, she fills me with the rage of a powerless middle-aged man."