Shaking the Tree Theatre's latest production, The Boy and the Bird, adapts a short story by Alissa Nutting, which was based on the Brothers Grimm's "The Juniper Tree" into a tight 60-minute spring season play filled with tension, suspense, and stray rays of humor.
Fairy tale adaptions are only as good as the people adapting them, but Shaking the Tree has boiled the bones of "The Boy and the Bird" into a visual feast.
I disliked shadowplay before I saw Shaking the Tree do it, and I think it's because I've never seen it done well before.