Best Bad Date: Red Flags (PREVIEW)
The creators of ‘And The Drum…’ and ‘HamletMobile’ return to the Hollywood Fringe
I’m not one for internet dating. In fact the first time I went on a Tinder date we wound up at Sassafras, a spot on Vine that I adore… but the date was just ‘meh.’
That was also the last time I went on a Tinder date. This sort of thing is not for me.
Which is why I should have taken it as a red flag that Emma wanted to meet at Sassafras. It was almost as if she had read up all about me and… nah. Couldn’t be that. Couldn’t be.
Red Flags is the name of the game, and the new production from Capital W, the LA-based immersive production company behind the Indiecade award-winning Hamlet-Mobile and the strikingly poetic dinner party experience And The Drum. The team of writer-director Lauren Ludwig and producer Monica Miklas have pioneered a totally conversational style of immersive theatre, which blurs the line between reality and fiction with an ease that’s almost scary.
In this latest piece long-time Ludwig collaborator Lauren Flans plays the role of Emma, a young woman who is unlucky in love. Lucky you are the next to test Emma’s losing streak… but over the course of a funny, awkward, and sometimes tense 60 minutes you’re apt to learn exactly why Emma hasn’t found Mx. Right yet.
To delve too deeply into what Capital W have crafted here would be to spoil it almost completely. To say the date would easily go down in just about anyone’s book as a kind of epic disaster — or at least a close encounter of the uncomfortable kind — isn’t to give away the plot. If only because that’s what Capital W puts on the tin.
They promise a bad date, and they deliver. In emotional spades.
Even though what Emma has to offer won’t change from night to night — at times you may find it hard to believe this thing is scripted, such is Flans and Ludwig’s craft — the audience’s reaction will shape the story they tell afterward. Like all great immersives, it’s going to be a delight to share notes with other theatre-goers after the fact.
The real bad news is that Red Flags is already sold out at the Hollywood Fringe. The good news is that they’re already planning on taking this show on the road — San Diego Fringe beckons — and an extension is in the works due to the demand.
We’ll have a full review once the show is up and running as part of the Hollywood Fringe’s official preview week.
Red Flags, written and directed by Lauren Ludwig and starring Lauren Flans starts its sold out run at the Hollywood Fringe on June 1st, and runs through June 25th. Capital W is accepting mailing list sign-ups at their website, the best way to learn about the extension.
