Review Rundown: Of Plants, Planets, Platypuses, & Paralysis
Sci-Fi in London & NYC, Horror in Denver, and more. (FOUR REVIEWS)
This week’s Rundown is brought to you by the letter “P.”
Sometimes the Crew really likes what they find, and this is definitely one of those weeks with boundary pushing work across multiple genres on two continents.
Let’s get into it.
Avast ye swabs! Last week’s Review Rundown “The One With Pirates, Shipwrecks, and Playable Art” be waiting for ye in Davy Jones’ Locker.
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Moonshine Saloon–Inventive Productions.
Tickets from 39.99 GBP; accepting bookings through December 2023
“We are not going to mosey.” This was the one stipulation my drinking and theatrical companion made as we made our way to Moonshine Saloon, the much-loved immersive cocktail experience by veteran theatrical-slash-boozing company Inventive Productions. However, it was soon clear–to really get the most out of our time at the saloon, mosey we must, and mosey we did.
This was not my first brush with Inventive Productions, who were also the minds behind Alcotraz, and their signatures (secret rooms, flashy mixology with generous portions, American accents with semi-plausible origins) were present here. However, the differences between Moonshine Saloon and Alcotraz go well beyond the obvious theming, and while both are a mighty fun time, which one suits you best is up to you to decide.
Guests enter Moonshine Saloon after being outfitted in stetson hats and the occasional sarape by one of the comic relief characters. You are informed that, whatever your cover story, you’re one of the finest moonshiners in the West, and you’re here to talk business with the saloon’s Moonshine Queen. Whether you side with her and her family, or the Sheriff looking to bring them down, is up to you–although really, isn’t the choice obvious?
For some of the night, you’ll be left to your own devices, drinking, talking, and perhaps playing cards or dice with the helpfully provided game sets on each table. The cocktails keep coming, although guests must smuggle unopened alcohol in themselves. You’ll also have opportunities for rendezvous with various characters, both discrete and otherwise–and maybe a few extra sips of “moonshine” in the process.
Compared to Alcotraz, Moonshine Saloon is relatively thin on plot, but heavy on atmosphere. There are some real laughs, and opportunities to mess around a bit, but this show has been running a long time, and definitely feels, in ways both good and bad, like a well-oiled machine. That being said, the machine in question is a still full of good liquor, and you’re in good company, so it’s definitely worth a mosey.
Omega — Paralysis
$150; Longmont, CO; Run Concluded
Imagine getting a coveted one-on-one, but that’s the whole show — just you and three performers, moving about in a nondescript house in a residential community in rural Colorado for 45 minutes. Oh, and you’re there for “mandatory home rehabilitation,” which will be administered by a devout Christian husband and wife duo who are, quite frankly, disgusted by your sins.
That was the setup for Omega — the limited run public debut from new immersive horror theatre group Paralysis — except there was actually a lot more to it, because on-boarding and engagement started a month before over phone call, text message, email, and snail mail. By the time I arrived, I’d already had a couple of memorable moments with the narrative, which filled me with excitement, anticipation, and some nerves as I entered my hosts’ backyard.
There were a lot of remarkable aspects about my short stay in that troubled home, but perhaps the most novel to me was the opportunity to truly know the characters up close and personal as their story unfolded around me. The experience was just as much about the couple and their own set of disturbing problems as it was about me and my “rehabilitation.”
Another remarkable aspect of Omega were the “extreme” elements of the show — the physical engagements and explicit subject matter that made this more than just a creepy drama. It’s an intimidating list of likely occurrences, and I will say that I experienced everything on it except for three things, but all of those “extreme” aspects weren’t the point; the story that I was living out, was. These exclamation points on the narrative allowed me the opportunity to feel — not pretend to feel — what was happening, and those moments are still repeating in my mind with insane vividness.
Omega was performed for 16 people over the weekend of March 24th and 25th. Despite much positive post-show feedback from attendees, and intentions to keep producing, Paralysis Founder & Creative Director David Higgins told me last week that a remount is highly unlikely.
“We create our stories with an intention that it is very much connected to the time, space and physical journeys that we are on in our own lives,” he said. “We want to tell stories that are resonant in our lives, so it’s time to move on to something new, to let Omega be free and have its rest.”
Stay tuned for a full-length Omega recap and interview with Paralysis coming soon!
— Danielle Look, Denver Correspondent
Phantom Peak presents — Platypus Parade- The League of Adventure
From £34.99; London UK; Ongoing
It’s the most exciting time of year in Phantom Peak, the Platypus Parade. Robots will march through the town to celebrate the ‘best egg laying mammal’ and there will be bunting.
This is Season Two of Phantom Peak, the steampunk Western town. Thomas and Shelley report:
Thomas: The main drive of the evening is completing trails, with tasks and questions to solve and answer accessed through a web browser. Shelley and I had a grand time rushing from place to place looking for clues and consulting the map.
Shelley: I’d previously covered Season One, so it was lovely to return to Phantom Peak to see what had changed. Boy howdy, the answer is “A LOT”. Not just tons more content and all new trails, but they’ve made big renovations to the New Town as well as hugely expanded the Old Town.
T: Not having seen Season One, I felt a little lost. No explanation WHY Jonas, the mysterious ruler of the town, loves the platypus (enough to build a Plati World exhibition) or why parts of the town have been gutted by fire. (I will grant you this might have been discovered if we had chosen a different path from the one we took). The first quest took us over an hour and the second closer to twenty minutes. A completed trail gives a takeaway of playing cards for each quest.
S: I did catch myself coaching us where to go — there were maps posted around, but we skipped much of any first-timers’ fumbling. You mentioned it was kind of like targeting Disney World rides!
T: There is some crossover with the quest-giving characters which resulted in us saying “We solved that thing about the balloons, now let’s talk about chairs!” This can cause a delay as we cannot advance our trail without information from the townsfolk but they are all interesting and easy to form relationships with. Everyone has opinions about Jonas and the resistance group wanting to drive him out.
S: There’s also a special mini-performance within the show which runs about a half-hour. No spoilers but all we’ll say is that the log flume of yesteryear is no more, but the Plattyworld exhibit is worth catching!
T: When you want a break there is an adventure playground of a mine or a range of sideshow games as well as various bars. The food available is a nice mixture of vegan burgers, hot dogs and tacos around a central seating area. This allowed us to sit back and watch others compete in mini games in the central space.
S: I was glad to see that they moved the food vendors to a more central location and added more seating — the previous layout caused serious bottlenecking and the current solution is ideal. I really enjoyed my burger!
T: At nearly three and a half hours long, the experience can drag a little but you are always guaranteed something to do.
I am excited to see where Season Three takes us.
— Thomas Jancis, London Correspondent & Shelley Snyder, London Curator
Vaulting — This Yearning
Free/Donation-based; NYC; Run Concluded
The future feels increasingly bleak, doesn’t it? Between climate change, growing wealth inequality, and the rise of artificial intelligence and mass surveillance, the times ahead seem less likely to be populated with flying cars, and more likely to be filled with a Mars-flavored techno-feudalism. This widespread pessimism has carried over into our fiction — speculative sci-fi, once hopeful, is mostly dystopia and darkness.
But Tracy Smith, the biologist and creator behind This Yearning, is shining a light in the darkness. Her most recent immersive experience, Vaulting, considers a future in which climate change has forced humans in the near-future to seek a new planet. But instead of simply colonizing and bending that planet to our will, humans will undergo a transformation in order to live in harmony with nature — we will, like the plants around us, learn to photosynthesize.
During the one-day run of Vaulting, Smith transformed a shuttered diner in Greenpoint into a spaceship. The mylar-covered walls created a futuristic nook where we crawled into silk sleeping sacks and put on headsets. We were told to close our eyes; the pulsating light of heat lamps warmed our skin and faces.
A mixture of verdant smells — myrrh, pine, grass, and more arcane smells I couldn’t place — wafted through the small room. In our ears, an audio track — Smith’s calming voice and layered sounds — walked us through our transformation.
We were each given a homemade strip of gelatin, cinnamon bark, and spilanthes, a type of plant used in traditional medicine that causes an intense tingling sensation when ingested. Though Smith prepared us for the sensation, I found it mildly frightening at first– a cool burning that began on my tongue and quickly spread to my lips and throat.
But the fresh smells of plants, and Smith’s voice in my ear, telling me about our ascension, mixed with the hypnotic pulsing of stars, turned the fear into ritual, made the sensation feel like physical proof that we were changing into something different, something better than ourselves. Change, after all, isn’t usually comfortable,
In Vaulting’s imagining of the future, the biggest change humans will need to make isn’t necessarily physical — it will be letting go of our individualism and, as Smith describes it, expanding our sense of self “into that of a greater macro-organism.”
Told by another, less talented creator, that could sound hivemind-y — but under Smith’s deft artistry, it’s a beautiful idea.
“Here is the secret no one knows,” Smith’s voice whispered, as the warmth of the heat lamps dimmed and the buzz of the spilanthes retreated. “The root of the root, the bud of the bud…the wonder that keeps stars apart: I carry your heart in mine.”
When Vaulting ended, and I emerged from the spaceship-diner into the cool spring night with barely a hint of the spilanthes left on my lips, I may not have been able to photosynthesize — but I was certainly transformed.
– Cheyenne Ligon, NYC Correspondent
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