Review Rundown: The One Where Adventurers Are Wanted
Two daring productions in London, new work in NYC and SF, and a mystery unfolds at home. Five Reviews.
When is the Rundown tiny but BIG?
When there are only five reviews but it’s all killer no filler.
This week you’ll find genre defying work across the spectrum — with two shows that push the boundaries in London, moving dance work in NYC, a soul-sitting mystery box that ships to your home, and innovative installation art in San Francisco.
Frankly we’re JEALOUS of all of you who get to do these! Let’s go!
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The Drop — Swamp Motel
£119.90-£159.80 Per Group; London, UK; through Dec. 31
What starts as an escape room swiftly tilts into an immersive experience unlike anything else currently on the London scene. It’s participatory, it’s interactive, it’s an adventure, it’s decadent, and it’s producer Swamp Motel’s first time making a full scale ticketed in-person experience.
It’s enough to make a lesser creator furious.
We wouldn’t dream of spoiling any portion of the roller-coaster ride awaiting attendees of The Drop but we can wax rhapsodical about the custom-built facility guests are welcomed into and the deeply kinaesthetic experience they’ll have, solving puzzles and making swift decisions along with their teammates to progress through the strong narrative — a factor which is often missing in more pedestrian escape rooms. There are interactions via phone calls & texting as well as in-game internet sleuthing which paint a richer tapestry of the show’s universe.
The production value is solidly present; it is not until the end of the hour-long experience with the benefit hindsight that we appreciate just how extensive the set design and how precise the stage management is (The Drop welcomes up to 4 groups per hour, running 3 groups simultaneously at any given time). There’s opportunities for audience improvisation and even potential for diversion from the core story track, which while still fulfilling is not nearly as delicious as making it to the finale. Group booking is essential — going through alone is feasible but not nearly as fun.
Swamp Motel absolutely knocks it out of the park on their London homecoming with this site-specific production, leaving those of us in the field gaping at the limit of the sky and wondering: what’ll be next?
— Shelley Snyder, London Curator
A Feather In Dust — Chapter 1 — The Boundless Library
$39.99 monthly subscription; Remote (At Home Box); Ongoing
A Feather In Dust is a monthly subscription box from The Boundless Library consisting of six parts, made of packages filled with beautiful, detailed, notes, scraps, relics and other pieces, but also emails, podcasts, and historical tidbits. It is, on the surface, the story of a woman born with wings as she finds her way as a circus performer in the Dust Bowl during The Great Depression; however, if the first installment is any indication, it’s a much larger, more sprawling tale.
Opening the first mailing is almost overwhelming — in the best way possible — with documents, letters, and artwork that beg to be poured over, handled and, in some cases, translated. However, unlike some box experiences, this isn’t a puzzle in the strictest sense. It is more like an incredibly fascinating research project and you are the chief research assistant going through primary sources, which include things such as physician’s reports, bills of lading, letters, and news clippings.
— Anthony Robinson, Associate Editor, Culture from his serial review
Lost Origin — Factory 42 with Almeida Theatre & SKY
£18–£30; London, UK; Nov. 24 — Dec. 4
Lost Origin boasts a technical interface and design budget that many immersive companies can often only dream of. An R&D project funded by the UK’s Audience of the Future programme, Factory 42/Almeida/SKY were seemingly handed the keys to the candy factory and set loose upon a mid-size warehouse.
The results are what the poets would sing of as an “exquisite corpse”: a series of statements which while having very little to do with one another still make a beautiful image. Lost Origin opens on a standard immersive theatre premise (you’ve been inducted into a secret law enforcement unit and are tasked to infiltrate blah blah blah) but the facility itself is where the designers’ efforts shine — staggeringly stunning installations and sharp lightwork turn each new area into a living walk-through sculpture, with surprises and gasp-moments tucked around every corner. Animated props, interactive projection mapping, and the crown jewel: Magic Leap augmented reality headsets against fully dressed sets.
There’s a bit of improvisation participation for the guests and the story can end with some slight deviations, but for the most part I would have been happy to be sent around the environment and left to play with the toys, rather than be hand-led through an infiltration gig which ends a gorgeous firework of a production with a fizzle rather than a bang. While it’s a shame the actual plot felt fragmented and messy this time around, the truth is that Lost Origin is still in R&D and has every intention of improving: guests are requested to provide direct feedback afterwards via survey.
Well worth a visit, if even just for the sets and toys!
— Shelley Snyder, London Curator
Nocturne X — Gray Area and Numina Studio
$15-$40; San Francisco, CA; through Nov. 28
Stepping off the busy streets of San Francisco’s Mission district and travelling across the spaceport, visitors enter the world of Nocturne X. The team of over 50 artists and tech experts from a collaboration between San Francisco’s Gray Area and Numina studios have created an intriguing self guided art installation in the converted Grand Theater.
Two large projections on either side of the space extend the world of Nocturne X beyond the 4000 square foot alien forest. The multi-sensory experience involves resin cast plants of various sizes, glowing with an electric bioluminescence. At first, the experience provided a simple quiet diversion from the busy city streets outside, but with each lap around the space, the various elements revealed themselves further and rewarded exploration. Exploring nooks and crannies within the landscape reveals prisms reacting to light, undulating on their own, or glowing with your movement. Some plants react to sound, others to touch, and some to sound. The hints of a story and history are revealed within letters and journal entries posted within the walls of an underground laboratory.
Some interactions were intuitive, others I needed to be guided to or instructed (fortunately a team member was available to help reveal some of the less intuitive tech), and I would’ve preferred if the storytelling was more dispersed throughout the experience, rather than mainly limited to the lab setting, but these are minor quibbles. Overall, the serene experience of Nocturne X was a pleasant and calm diversion and a chance to experience the hard work of a talented team of local artists.
— Brian Resler, San Francisco Bay Area Curator
Subject — Welcome to Campfire
$10-$70; New York, NY; Run Concluded
The beloved dancing duo behind NYC’s Welcome to Campfire transports audiences once again to a compelling yet eerie future world in their newest piece, Subject. This time, we are faced with the monumentally difficult question: on an Earth where everything has fallen to pieces, would you choose to erase your memories in hopes of starting over?
There is much to applaud with Subject: the effective, minimalist set and costume design; the artful sound and audio compositions; the way I wanted so badly for there to be more when the piece was done. However, nothing so much so deserves recognition than the transcendent partnership between creators Tony Bordonaro and Ingrid Kapteyn. Watching them perform together, I finally understood the cliche of two dancers so in tune with each other that they move as one. Both are clearly excellent dancers on their own, but together, they are absolutely engrossing. In particular, I found myself amazed at their ability to communicate and move together with intentionally little eye contact for a long stretch of the piece, culminating in the most gratifying and moving moment of a met gaze (and break of a smile) an audience could ask for. You can feel the respect and devotion that Bordonaro and Kapteyn have to the stories they tell together through all of their movements. The immersive community as a whole is better for these two artists having found each other.
I feel a love-hate relationship with the 45 minute runtime of Subject. For a piece that demands so much of its performers, the brevity makes sense, and in that time, what was achieved was worthwhile. However, I dream of a world with a Subject that allows audiences to dive even deeper into this curious story that Welcome to Campfire has let us have a peek into.
— Leah Ableson, New York City Correspondent
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