Delicate Moments Are Subject To ‘Fragile Recall’ (Review)

Sinking Ship Creations connects you to your past

Set and setting are such a huge thing in immersive, and it’s taken this damnable — and, let me be quick to point out lest I’m misunderstood, necessary — quarantine in order to bring into focus just how much of the power of the form comes from those two factors.

I say this to set the stage for our review of Fragile Recall because the set and setting of this one is largely out of the control of the creators, who do more than yeoman’s work to build a world, rapport, and story in an hour’s time that feels quite full in its own right.

Let’s start there.

The framing is that you’ve paid for an hour with a psychic who promises to connect you with one of your past lives. You give them a ring and there’s some looseness on the end before a somewhat broad caricature of the kind you might see in late night television plays through a quick act of “guessing” your name. After the name game and getting your star chart spun up our psychic operator will connects you to the past.

There I found myself talking with a young woman named Edith (which was my grandmother’s name, so that was an odd coincidence), who was sitting on death row, waiting for the hangman’s noose. So a fun romp through history this was not going to be. Edith, I would appear, got herself into this bind by covering for someone she loved. We proceed to have a conversation about the limits of that concept and, since I’m her future self, what scraps of hope she might have for something to look forward to, as it were.

Only that day I wasn’t really feeling all that hopeful. I mean first there’s gestures around and then on top of that it was the second day in a row that workmen were crawling all over my building because the building manager believes that cosmetic repairs to a 111-year old building are more important than the sanity of the people who are stuck inside that building. Not exactly conducive to having a heart to heart with a fictional past life who may or may not have been a real person. (I’ll leave you to discover that.)

It is a testament to the skill of performer Jennifer Suter and the script that I didn’t fully disassociate from the sacred hallucination we were creating and instead managed to have that heart to heart, even if my — forgive me — heart wasn’t fully in it. It’s a sad piece, done very well. Or at least that was my experience of it. I suppose there’s a way to bring something bright to it all if that’s where you head is at, but joy is in short supply these days.

Not that everything offered up to us right now needs to be joyful. I find myself craving the highs, but I also find myself feeling better after being put through a catharsis. Hell, I spent most of this past weekend watching the Irish college romance Normal People, which had me crying every half hour on the half hour, and topped it all off with the final episode of Clone Wars in which pretty much everyone-but-the-three-characters-we-know-won’t-die, dies. Loved every second of those.

I think under the right conditions I could love the work Suter and Sinking Ship Creations are doing with these phone encounters. While rooted in LARP traditions, here they are only asking you to show up as your authentic self, and it’s a testament to Suter’s skill as a scene partner that she manages to draw me out under horrible conditions.

Of course, we were doing all this in the middle of the day — a day we originally thought was going to be free from outside interference — your experience of these works is likely to be quiet, quite different. But do keep in mind: you’re going to want to take the time to find your set and setting, to do a little more legwork as it were, to strike the right mood before diving in to a remote experience.

That’s also an opportunity for creators to take the initiative and put together “mood recipes” for participants to carry out at home. If any do follow this path, it would be wise to billboard what is suggested, as not everyone is going to be able to set the right mood and that right there could be reason enough to choose an alternative.

Still: even if we weren’t all stuck connecting over phone lines and video chats, Fragile Recall would be a welcome addition to the remote interactive genre, and I look forward to Sinking Ship Creations expanding their catalogue for years to come.

Fragile Recall is now booking through Sinking Ship Creations. The production is one hour long and costs $59.99.

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