Review Rundown: Music Fairs and London Nights
Boomtown, Electric Zoo, and two London experiences. Plus: a faerie tale circus in SF & meta-theatre in Pasadena (SIX REVIEWS)
The end of summer means the end of music festival season, and this year we’ve got dispatches from two festivals deploying immersive shenanigans to varying degrees of success. The London team is also running at a full gait, with reviews of the long anticipated Ali v. Fraiser recreation Rumble in the Jungle and the latest mystery at Sherlock: The Official Live Game, and the West Coast squad jumps in with a circus arts fueled show in SF and a excerpt from our review of an exceptionally sharp piece of meta-theatre in Pasadena.
Get ready for an absolute beast of a rundown, courtesy of our international Review Crew!
Looking for more? Check out our most recent edition of the Rundown, and Blake Weil’s ongoing Philadelphia Fringe Festival Diary.
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Boomtown — Boomtown Fair
From £265; Winchester UK; August 9–13, 2023
Boomtown is a 66,000 person music festival held in southern England. It has dozens of stages and six immersive districts — mini-towns with actors and detailed sets that are beautiful and diverse, ranging from futuristic to post-apocalyptic to temple-like. Each has at least 10 different structures and venues, so the effect is fully immersive in terms of inhabiting six unique worlds. Actors are present throughout the day, both interacting with attendees and providing general color to enhance the world.
With a storyline that evolves from year to year, there are narrative-based missions and adventures to pursue across each of the districts. Memorable experiences from this year’s lineup included an AI-enabled photo booth where I joined the mysterious Connor on his holiday, doing silly human tricks using elaborate “magic machines,” and finally a dream-like adventure where I’m waking up an ancient god, fighting an epic video game battle, and ultimately appearing on stage as the star of a play.
However, the missions involved a lot of busy work — going from point A to B and back to A again, waiting in lines, and sometimes doing seemingly meaningless tasks. Also, a disappointingly large number of the actors tasked with facilitating missions seemed to run their own petty fiefdoms by withholding information and misdirecting attendees as to what to do next. It would have been a much better experience had the actors been consistently friendly and kind (or at least had a friendly/kind mode they could go into if needed, if an attendee needed help), rather than often presenting as unhelpful and exclusionary. Each district also had its own set of missions and while some of these ended in delightful art, some ended in being handed a piece of paper which felt like a big let down after so much busy work.
Overall, Boomtown is a delightful integration of immersive elements into the music festival context and I hope the trend expands to other festivals. The environments they’ve created are beautiful and their missions can be fun for either completionists who enjoy “collecting ’em all” or for groups of friends who want something light to do for part of a day.
— Corinna Kester, Contributor
Don’t Follow the Lights — Mystic Ventures Collective
$67 — $80; San Francisco; September 15 — October 7
Inside of a dark forest, fawns, faeries, ravens, and snakes wander about, competing for a place in the royal court. Us humans enter the forest world trepidatiously, keeping an eye out for Baba Yaga as we get to know the world of the mystical creatures.
Don’t Follow the Lights is an immersive circus show by Mystic Ventures Collective, an SF based group that puts on shows by queer artists. The show is highly interactive, and audience members are encouraged to wander around to figure out the desires, quirks, and disagreements between the four different creature’s “factions.” The audience is pulled into a variety of interactions: we learned songs and dances, played table games, read scrolls, delivered messages, and even participated in a vote.
The show also featured circus performances, some by members of the San Francisco Youth Circus. These circus stunts were impressive, and were by far my favorite parts of the show — but they occurred too rarely.
Overall, the show relied too much on audience participation and immersion without offering enough reprieve via performances or written scenes. This issue was heightened by two factors: the length of the show and the setting. With a runtime of over 2 hours, I felt directionless and fatigued at times during the free roaming periods. And the venue, San Francisco’s Circus Center, is a large rectangular room, with limited nooks and corners to work with for set design. This made visiting the different creatures feel a bit too much like a career fair, and took me out of the storyline a bit.
Despite my gripes, the mythical forest was still an enchanting place to spend some time, with strong world building and performances. I’m looking forward to visiting whatever world the Mystic Ventures Collective dreams up next.
— Elissa Mardiney, San Francisco Correspondent
Electric Zoo — Avant Gardner
$160 — $260; New York; 9/1–3/2023
Electric Zoo, the Electronic Dance Music (EDM) festival that descends upon New York City annually, promised “a larger-than-life experience” in 2023, “pushing the boundaries of immersive production” with AI integrated “into nearly every aspect of the festival.” Unfortunately, this turned into a case of the festival’s new clothes — anyone who says they saw EZoo’s promised immersive on display is kidding themselves. It was the unpublicized immersive that ended up making a real impression.
EZoo’s most hyped immersive experience, the MegaMirage stage, was an immersive disappointment. Despite being set apart in a secluded corner of the park with a dedicated entrance to promote full immersion, it was just another high-tech stage kitted out with LEDs, lasers, and screens. Sure, the screens displayed projections above, behind, and in front of performers on stage. But that was it. The festival’s much-touted AI elements were similarly sparse, with large screens displaying loops of people morphing into wiggly, AI-generated animals. The integration of cashless wristbands for convenient transactions was an appreciated touch, but hardly groundbreaking. And none of this tech-heavy set-dressing saved EZoo from having to deal with logistical issues.
The first day of the festival was canceled and there were reports of serious overbooking on Saturday and Sunday. Avant Gardner cited “supply chain issues” as the root of the problem, making me wonder if EZoo’s original immersive vision was also impacted. If so, that’s (perversely) great news. Failing to produce an engaging immersive product is a lesser sin than not having the self-awareness to know the difference between good immersive and high-tech razzle-dazzle. Of course, most people weren’t attending EZoo for immersive. The artists who got to play their sets (Friday’s artists weren’t rescheduled) were stellar and attendees who made it past the gates seemed energetic, present, and happy despite the heat.
There was one immersive experience at EZoo that caught my eye: the unadvertised, unattributed space listed as “Central Plaza” or “Art Installation” depending on the map. This large, circular tent with open sides was strategically placed to provide shade for festivalgoers. But what truly set this space apart was its spatial soundscape. Vertical LED bars encircled the tent’s perimeter, responding dynamically to an unseen ecosystem of birdsong and thunderstorms, techno beats and chill melodies. It felt like being transported to another world. People seemed to breathe in unison. No code of conduct was posted, but something separate from festival etiquette quickly emerged. There was very little standing. People walked, sat, or lay on the ground. Dance shifted away from the roiling, bounce of the festival lawn to a sort of grassy sway. The space created its own set of norms, encouraged by design to shift behavior. It was everything I wanted out of an immersive moment.
Electric Zoo 2023 may have fallen short of its lofty promises of AI-driven immersion, leaving attendees searching for the transformative experiences they were teased with. Nevertheless, the festival (inadvertently?) gave us an art installation that transcended expectations. As the dust settles on another year of EDM euphoria, it’s evident that good immersive — used well — belongs everywhere.
— Leah Davis, New England Correspondent
Measure STILL for Measure — Boston Court Pasadena
$22–47; Pasadena; through Oct. 15th
In Measure STILL for Measure, Bruce (Robert Beitzel), a sought-after, well-respected director, is staging Measure for Measure. We meet the cast and crew during a rehearsal, each of them frantically running about, absorbed in their own dramas, large and small.
Adding to the tension, one of the actors has dropped out due to her mother’s death. Her close friend, Dionna (Bukola Ogunmola) — a young Black woman playing Isabella, a role typically given to white actors — is taking her friend’s sudden absence hard. At the same time, Bruce — an older, white man — seems to have taken a particular shine to the vulnerable Dionna, paying her more attention than the others.
As the rehearsal progresses and Dionna repeatedly expresses concerns about how the play is choosing to depict Isabella, a dream role for her, viewers are left to question how she’s being treated. Is there something going on there? What are her fellow castmates noticing? What are they not noticing? Who is stepping up for her? Who isn’t?
— Juliet Bennett Rylah, LA Correspondent, excerpted from her full review
The Mind of Moriarty — Sherlock: The Official Live Game
From £35; London UK; ongoing
*Some spoilers ahead*
Sherlock: The Official Live Game has been on the scene for around 5 years now; a permanent installation with multiple live experiences sharing the same venue. With source material so ripe for adaptation it’s no mystery why the production has established itself as one of the most reliable bets in town: boasting two food-and-drink puzzle experiences as well as two multi-stage escape rooms, the newest of which promises to bring previous players back into orbit for more.
The Mind of Moriarty is an all-new track for players to prove their intellectual value to Mycroft Holmes’ private investigative force. Surreptitiously entering via Doyle’s Opticians (an elaborate onboarding reminiscent of Swamp Motel’s The Drop) we are briefed by recordings of the BBC show’s original cast: Moriarty is back at large building some sort of weaponized A.I. and we’re tasked with tracking down the code source, hacking it, and reprogramming to de-weaponize it.
Escorted into a close-scale replica of Sherlock & John’s flat, my latent inner fangirl stifles a little squeal: the iconic wallpaper and spray-painted bullet-hole-ridden smiley face loom behind our sofa while we’re further briefed. And this room is barely the beginning: in all we’ll see six areas fully kitted out with extensive set, prop, lighting, and sound work which fully grounds us in each space.
One thing London’s immersive scene can count on: BBC money doesn’t *%&$ around.
It’s lush to be back in an official game experience: after its close Doctor Who: Time Fracture left us without highly produced rooms to run through while touching everything, and the expansion of The Mind of Moriarty fulfills just that need. The rooms are well organized, with roughly three puzzles per space and in-world hints offered when we’re stuck (rather than clunky out-of-character voiceovers experienced in less polished productions).
One or two challenges do feel close to impossible unless you’ve got at least one escape room fanatic amongst the group, but we manage to push through. As we debrief in the private bar to toast our success, watching a couple working on the drinks-based puzzle box experience that looks like a blast in its own right, we overhear that some groups don’t make it through the escape rooms — some don’t even get to see the last room.
We sip our cocktails and smirk knowingly at just how terribly clever we are, and make mental notes to prove it again soon.
— Shelley Snyder, London Curator
Rumble In the Jungle Rematch–Rematch Productions
Tickets from 79 GBP; London; through Oct. 29th
It’s always an interesting thing for a production to play with an actual historical event. And it’s always an interesting thing for an immersive theatre event to attempt to cross over into audiences that aren’t necessarily familiar with the form–like, say, boxing fans. Put the two together, as ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ does, and you have the potential for some strange and interesting times indeed.
The show, which bills itself as a recreation not only of the famous Ali vs Foreman match in Kinshasa of 1974, but also of the music festival that accompanied it, is a massively ambitious (and physically massive, based in a converted warehouse) undertaking. In the three hours you’re engaging with it, you’ll be encouraged to take on a role (as a journalist, I had a brief conversation with David Frost, then went to find some musicians and political activists to interview), enjoy some (expensive, but tasty) food and drink, listen to music, dance, and finally, watch the fight itself.
The cast does a wonderful job–everyone from the musicians (many taking on 70's personas, including James Brown) to the famous fighters themselves, are clearly having a lot of fun and throwing their hearts into it. The fight choreography is particularly engaging, and keeps a match with a foregone conclusion feeling fresh.
There are a few uncomfortable moments–in particular, the show’s attempts to engage with the politics of the match, from the Black Power movement to the Mobutu regime, can come off uncertain, or even ignorant–the audience is encouraged to applaud for an actor playing Mobutu at one point, and it’s not clear if the show expects us to understand the implications of the dictatorship, or how the match was accused of being an infamous case of “sportswashing.”
Overall, though, Rumble in the Jungle has all the ingredients for a fun night out, and a chance to think about a forgotten moment in history. So get ready to Rumble–carefully, of course.
–Ellery Weil, London Correspondent
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