Review Rundown: The One With Curiosities & Alternate Dimensions
London, Denver, Vegas and LA all represent in a spectacular lineup (FOUR REVIEWS)
The Rundown returns this week with significant new work from multiple creators with long track records: Coney, the Particle Ink team, and Lonnie Hanzon. Plus a show in LA with some real throwback vibes.
Immersive Spring is definitely here!
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1884 — Rhianna Ilube and Coney
£20 (£15 Concessions); London, UK; through 27th April
Bright and breezy entertainment would appear to be the order of the day in renowned game-makers Coney and playwright Rhianna Ilube’s new playable immersive show. This is despite the inspiration coming from the 1884 Berlin Conference in which western powers divided up the African continent for their own gains. In the performance the analogous neighbourhood of Wilhelm Street is split into houses of our own choosing and, eventually, our own design. Meanwhile an unseen ‘meeting’ is taking place, which despite determining our future, should be of no concern. In fact the local radio DJ, in between handing out light weight group tasks, is dropping some ‘big beats’. As an audience we are always handled gently and preempted against possible discomfort at every turn.This begs the question, can theatre be provocative without feeling unsafe. Ilube’s influence on the traditions of Coney point to the answer being yes, suggesting in the process that everyone else has been doing things wrong all these years. Even the narrative is free of shock. The conspicuous central metaphor and predictable twists in the first half are less concerned with being smart and catching us out, and more concerned with being real. Eliciting real feelings and real guttural reactions.
Is 1884 about race? Surely it’s hard for a historically political game-maker like Coney, working with the subject of African colonialism, in one of London’s most diverse boroughs, to not create a show about race. But 1884 doesn’t want to be about race. It doesn’t really even want to be about the 1884 Berlin Conference. Instead its message is more far reaching. It wants us to look at how we look at history. It wants us to live a moment, then see that moment misconstrued and mutilated by people who are not us, who do not understand us, and do not represent us. Then, without judgement or prejudice, it wants us to carry that feeling, in a small but powerful way, as we return to our regular lives.
— Roderick Morgan, London Correspondent
Cabinet of Curiosities and Impossibilities — Lonnie Hanzon
$10;Greenwood Village, CO; Ongoing (by appointment or during select events)
The Museum of Outdoor Arts (MOA) is not a traditional “museum” in the least. Much of their permanent collection is accessible 24/7 in public spaces throughout Denver’s southside in Englewood and Greenwood Village, while their headquarters at Marjorie Park (next to popular outdoor amphitheater Fiddler’s Green) is only open during events and tours (by appointment only).
It is these peculiarities that perhaps make the MOA the perfect host and guardian of Denver’s newest and long-awaited work from Lonnie Hanzon, The Cabinet of Curiosities and Impossibilities. Inspired by, and true to, the history of the exhibit’s namesake, Hanzon’s installation is a magnificent and instantly captivating collection of artifacts. It’s up to you, the viewer, to discern which of those are real or fabricated relics — all of which are works of art in their own right.
Fans of Hanzon’s Camp Christmas will be delighted to find an experience similar to the hunt for holiday puns, except now it’s a game of recalling the finer details of your childhood nursery rhymes and fables in order to make the connection to the antiquity on display before you — a chipped brick from the collapsed London Bridge, for example, or Rapunzel’s never-ending braid draped across an entire wall of curiosities.
And while the carefully curated visuals harken back to Hanzon’s original permanent installation at the MOA’s former location in a way that all its fans will recognize and appreciate, this new incarnation’s tangible interactivity creates a sense of magic and wonder that its predecessor could never have dreamed of. From holographic frogs to tiny dioramas waiting on the other side of hidden fairy doors, these thoughtful and well-placed moments of joy bring the space to life and make it more than just a tiny museum.
In addition to the large body of visual, audio and spatial work from Hanzon, the exhibit is also peppered with art from a variety of other artists as well as pieces repurposed from some of Hanzon’s previous shows, like the glass lantern slides that pervade the exhibit from a 2007 magic lantern show at the MOA. Furthermore, The Cabinet includes space for rotating artists to display their work, the first of which will be unveiled in July.
The Cabinet will be uniquely activated next month when Boulder’s Catamounts take over Marjorie Park for their immersive production, Impossible Things, May 25 — June 16th.
— Danielle Riha, Denver Correspondent
House of Shattered Prisms — Particle Ink
$27 Wanderlust Experience, $67 Show; Las Vegas; Ongoing
Thirty years ago, the nature of shows on the Las Vegas Strip was transformed by Mystere, harkening the arrival of the avant-garde Quebecois circus troupe Cirque Du Soleil to the land of Wayne Newton and Elvis Impersonators. Within a decade, the performing arts landscape of Las Vegas revolved around Cirque and their growing portfolio of shows’ needs. Now, thanks to three separate installations, immersive entertainment is causing the next major paradigm shift to the Las Vegas entertainment ecosystem. First Meow Wolf brought their indelible brand of hand made whimsical environments to Area 15 with Omega Mart, then the Sphere engulfed music lovers (who can afford it) with tech forward wizardry. Now Particle Ink’s House of Shattered Prisms stakes an exuberant claim in the midpoint between Meow Wolf and Sphere’s aesthetic poles on the family friendly end of the southern Strip.
Nestled in the former wedding chapel of Luxor, Particle Ink’s House of Shattered Prisms is an evolution of their original show Speed of Dark which ran in Vegas’s Arts District back in 2022, and has two separate experiences.
During the daytime hours, for a modest $27, patrons can come in and explore the “2.5th Dimension”, learning the narrative through AR activations in a custom app (still in beta testing mode). This allows the immersive art fan the time and space to absorb the details the creative team infused into the environments, all the while encouraging a sense of high tech play, whether it be with “digital spray paint” or encountering characters that will be crucial to the plot of the full show. Speaking of the full show, that’s where the real magic awaits. An archetypal narrative of light vs. dark emerges through the space thanks to performers play at the intersection of high tech wizardry and an expressive brand of physical, circus based theatre. The spaces that were merely activated by projection during Wanderlust are enlivened with dynamic, environmental projections that the performers constantly interact with. The opening scene creates the 2.5th dimension and subsequently places the world in peril. We are then released to explore the 2.5th Dimension following the characters on their various quests. After some loops of the brief exploration sections, the complete audience reconvenes in the initial space for the spectacular finale.
Not having seen the previous downtown iteration of Particle Ink, then called Speed Of Dark, it’s hard for me to gauge the changes made in it’s journey from the hip Arts District to the heart of the Strip. That said, I found the entire show rather stunning, engrossing and easy to follow. I’m not sure if I (or any immersive-heads) am in the minority on this front because some patrons I was talking to after the show weren’t able to read some of the projected texts that are crucial to understanding the experience, let alone on how to move through a more sandbox type space even though there are clear places where our gaze wants to be directed. Which brings me to my main concern, as this is the first partial-sandbox immersive experience on the Strip, I’m nervous on how a mass audience (I imagine a bachelorette party from Topeka) will interact with the space and show. That being said, Particle Ink’s audience capacities are modest compared to almost any other show on the Strip, so hopefully it will serve as a niche experience for immersive Stans in Vegas for whatever reason, but more importantly, a gateway drug for the adventurous future Immersive fan.
— Martin Gimenez - Reviewer at Large
VOID — Trailblazer Productions
$50; LA; May 3- 25 (Preview Attended)
There are a lot of 2017 vibes around Trailblazer Productions’ VOID. For better or worse.
Promises of an existential journey. Instructions to head down an alleyway and meet a guide with a mysterious name. That cloud of uncertainty that has you texting friends “this is the door I’m about to walk through” photos.
On the other side of that door is something quite different from the 2017 zeitgeist of psychological horror and twisted fantasy, although it carries forward some structural traits from that era that would have better been left behind.
The gist is like this: an intergalactic agency has popped up in a seemingly abandoned storefront to help shepherd souls to better lives. This is revealed via monologue and accomplished through a few prompted dialogues. While shows in the past would have done this one on one, VOID puts three folks together at a time. This creates an extra friction to really opening up, but unfortunately not one that the Trailblazer team plays with.
One issue with this format is that if you’ve done it once you’ve basically done it a thousand times. The guides don’t have any real skin in the game, so it quickly becomes a “what you put in is what you get out” scenario. That said, if you haven’t — and one of the audience members I was with that night seems to have not — such things can be affecting.
While I wasn’t moved, there are some glimmers here. The high concept, for one, is a fun conceit and the way that the team uses it for the dismount is rather clever. Enough so that I don’t want to spoil it, even if it’s more of a conceptual shift than any kind of production leap. We were each also given hand written notes to take with us, and the one I got was quite lovely. There’s a voice here in all this, which comes out most in the writing, and I appreciate that. The primary production design also did a pretty good job of creating a cinematic sense of location with minimalist tools.
The biggest missed opportunity here is one of tone. The fictional world the team invokes through language is never fully realized in performance. There’s also the issue that a three-on-one isn’t the same as a one-on-one, especially when the overall framework is that of the “confessional type.” Granted: an experience that was three times the price wouldn’t be tenable at all, but once you’re into group dynamics solo structures won’t serve you. To chase those kinds of catharsis privacy is key.
— Noah Nelson, Founder & Publisher
