Review Rundown: The One With More Than A Few Mysteries
Miami, NYC, LA, Portsmouth in the UK, and over the phone. This one’s kinda everywhere. (FIVE REVIEWS)
While last week found us just in LA, this week sees us all over the map. Installation art in Miami, a murder mystery in Brooklyn, history in Portsmouth, a haunted house in LA (shocker, I know!), and just a bit of being over the phone.
Shall we?
Last week’s Rundown, the one with a double shot of LA? Saved it for you.
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The Art Of Killin’ It — TheyGotTime Productions
$35–$115; Brooklyn, NY; through Aug. 27
A new immersive murder mystery comedy, The Art of Killin’ It invites audiences into “Hardigan Manor,” an immersive environment built within Future Proof’s flexible East Williamsburg venue. The show is a ramshackle affair, fitfully amusing but only halfway towards a finished product.
You are a guest at the album launch party for an awful white influencer, who is releasing an ill-advised rap album while abusing (and stealing dance moves) from her mostly BIPOC entourage. When she drops dead on stage, everyone is a suspect. And when one guest turns out to be a private detective, she quickly takes charge of the investigation–though she’ll need some audience assistance.
As Detective Cheryl, Michelle Chan Bennett is by far the show highlight. She is saddled with endless exposition and an absurd amount of vamping, yet carries the slackly paced evening on her back, sustaining the crowd’s enthusiasm through some very rough patches.
The uniformly strong cast is let down by a needlessly convoluted mystery, weighed down by confusing dangling threads and an excess of red herrings. The audience’s role is minimal and often unclear. Craving more involvement, my audience often yelled out random thoughts or suggestions — actors gamely played off the outbursts, but the show was not built with this in mind.
To cover for their underbaked murder mystery, the authors push hard on broad and irreverent humor. Some of the jokes are funny, most cringey. But when you spend so much time actively mocking your own concept, it is hard for an audience to feel much engagement.
— Joey Sims, New York City Correspondent
Renewal 2121 — Artechouse
$21-$25; Miami Beach, FL; Through Aug. 31
Sometimes I think about a scene in 1997’s My Best Friend’s Wedding, in which Julia Roberts shouts at Cameron Diaz that even though Cameron’s creme brulee is amazing, that only Roberts can satisfy Dermot Mulroney, because he doesn’t want creme brulee. He wants jello. Imperfect, but sweet, satisfying, and comforting.
Renewal 2121 is jello that thinks it’s creme brulee. I really admire the attempt to elevate the Instagram palace to inspire change. The sets designed by Yuya Takeda, depicting a vibrant and ecologically decimated Tokyo a 100 years into the future, are captivating. They pulsate with eerie electric life as audiences pass through them, in an enticing if perverse mirroring of the long lost winds over the grass. A taiko drum set piece is particularly stunning, and inspired energetic play from every attendee.
However, the aspirations to ecological importance never quite…well, gel. Some pieces, like a display on species extinct in this future, feel didactic and a little too direct. The lack of a set path through the exhibit also impairs the impact: while the aforementioned electric taiko makes the future seem enticing at fun, we found it at the end of the exhibit. While it would have made a stunning intro to the setting, at the end it felt disconnected. The biggest blunder was the use of exclusively synthetic materials, every artificial cherry blossom destined to end up in a landfill, hastening Renewal’s prophesied future.
This is all to say: sometimes, you want jello. The exhibit is great fun, and offers some great photographs. It’s also a good jumping off point for conversations about the tension between technological progress and ecological preservation (especially for those with kids).
Artechouse clearly has the technological chops and eye for design. I just hope they manage to find slightly stronger thematic consistency in their next installation.
– Blake Weil, East Coast Curator At Large
this — this
$5 — $95; Remote (Telephone); Through July 31
this was my 19th call-based experience since the pandemic’s onset. Phone-centric productions offer a particular magic; they can create an expansive, almost limitless space for imagination while fostering intimate connection.
Billed as “an exploration of placeful-ness, an invitation to locate ourselves, a wandering together toward ease,” directions for this were minimal and vague: it “can happen anywhere you would like to spend an hour on the phone… wherever you choose that feels alive to you.”
Like those descriptors, the show feels mostly unstructured. Even after participating in many phone-based productions, I had questions: I wanted to know more about my role, the show’s intentionality, and how the conversation would unfold. The experience includes touchpoints and guidelines for gentle onboarding and offboarding; in between those bookends is an open conversational playground.
It took time to settle into the rhythm of this. Edward, the performer for my call, had a specific, anchoring cadence to his speech. I leaned into his energy, released my prior anticipations, and found myself sitting in curiosity.
It’s hard to be present. We are busy and moving fast. So we covet arresting emotional states, like wonder and joy. Or we seek out flow and its effortless ride. Curiosity often feels undervalued and skipped over, especially since vast amounts of knowledge are immediately available to us. Saturated and participatory curiosity extends that sparkly tension between the not knowing and the desire to know. It inhabits the pressurized intersection of relaxation and excitement; it’s both quiet and noisy.
this is indeed an invitation to locate ourselves; for me, it was through the delicious thrum of curiosity. And thanks to this, I have even more questions to wander through.
— Laura Hess, Arts Editor
Time Detectives: The Mystery of the Mary Rose — Mary Rose Museum/Picture This Productions
£4.99; Portsmouth, UK; Ongoing
On July 19, 1545, the Mary Rose, Henry VIII’s flagship, sank off the coast of Portsmouth. Now, 40 years since the wreck was dramatically lifted from the sea, this augmented reality (AR) app based show gives you the role of an investigator tasked by the King to discover why she sank.
Using the app, and carrying a scent filled backpack, you scan artefacts to gather clues.
Of the 500 men onboard, only 32 were saved. As you start your multisensory adventure by scanning a painting of the ship, you choose to follow the narrative provided by the inexperienced Captain, George Carew, or Henry, a seventeen year old apprentice.
Both routes contain much of the same content, with red or blue stickers indicating which path you are on and where best to stand to witness the action. Your backpack releases appropriate smells at key moments. Fire the cannon and smell the gunpowder. With the app, you see a board game being played and hear a disagreement between sailors while smelling their beer. (There is also a scent free remote play option for home use.) By scanning a portrait of what the sailors might have looked like from the bodies found, these people begin talking.
Having witnessed the sinking, it is time to make your report. What caused the Mary Rose to sink?
It is clear that decades of care and research have influenced the museum and the story told in the app. In my own lifetime I have watched the Mary Rose display and experience develop, so to be in a room with the wreck hearing the lives of crew members brought to life was amazing. I know that as a child, excited by history and enjoying a hands-on way to learn, this would have been great for me.
— Thomas Jancis, London Correspondent
Within Our Walls — Inside the Box Productions
$30 — $40; Glendale, CA; Through July 30
It’s only July, but it feels like we’re getting a little Spooky Season appetizer with Inside the Box Productions’ Within Our Walls. The show casts the audience as people who end up inside the walls of the Pierce family’s home and can watch what’s going on with the family. And what’s going on exactly? The youngest member of the family has recently passed away, and everyone is understandably on edge. Of course, the sounds coming from inside the walls only makes it worse.
The idea of watching the Pierce family through cracks in their walls is a strong one. The voyeurism and the feeling that you’re intruding on their pain adds an intriguing moral wrinkle. It’s all tied together with a wonderful set that provides audiences ample ways to investigate the three rooms of the home on display, a lived-in feeling home, and little touches that force attendees to make noise as they move through the walls.
There’s a moment about half way through Within Our Walls’ 20-minute runtime when it starts to turn some of those ideas back on the audience. It’s an effective expectation-flip, and I was giddy because it was a logical step to that moral wrinkle and served to heighten the tension of the show.
If the conceit provides the show with good bones and a strong foundation, the decor could use a little bit more oomph; it never quite takes any of its ideas far. There are a couple of gags that add a jump scare or two, but it doesn’t truly embrace making it scary. There’s an explanation for what’s going on that ties into the family’s situation, but it doesn’t get the build up it needs. Even when the show takes the turn, it gives space for the audience to play along, but seems to actively avoid playing along itself.
But, like I said, Within Our Walls is built with good bones on a strong foundation that make it worth a visit.
— Kevin Gossett, LA Reviews Editor
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