‘The Raven’ Struggles to Take Flight in NYC (NoPro Notes)
The collaboration between immersive creators Lance Weiler and Ava Lee Scott keeps audiences in the dark
(The following is based upon a preview performance of The Raven from November 1.)
I think it’s a universal experience to every child to try to mix your favorite flavors. For me, my experiment was combining sparkling apple cider and strawberry yogurt. Of course, dairy, bubbles, and the acidity of juice don’t belong anywhere near each other, but it’s hard to imagine the results when you’re young. You just know they’re both wonderful, separately, and imagine how spectacular it will be when you manage to combine the two.
Of course, it never works out, no matter how much you wish the cider/yogurt smoothie would gel. So despite how much I enjoy the work and admire the talents of both Lance Weiler (Where There’s Smoke, Frankenstein AI, Sherlock Holmes & the Internet of Things) and Ava Lee Scott (Home of Enchantments, Sleep No More), I can’t help but feel that The Raven, their latest show and first collaboration, is a similarly ill-fated mashup, with bits and pieces of my favorite things actively working against each other.
Taken individually, their talents are formidable.
Weiler is masterful at using a physical space to create a world, and integrating cutting edge technology into an environment. The Irish American Historical society is an intriguing playground for him — ambient and lovely — and a perfect setting to give each audience member a private audio track that matches up to their location using Bose AR Frame sunglasses. The combination of synced soundtrack, live dialogue, and swirling ambient sound was uniquely effective at creating a haunted atmosphere, so much that it was difficult to tell what was real, and what was literally only in your head.
As for Scott, this is a performer who can still forge empathy like no one else. She has a delicious balance of vulnerability with a deep undercurrent of power that suits the character of Edgar Allen Poe well. As always, the opportunity to interact with her is intense and delightful. Her scenes are inventive, and make creative use of the full works of Poe (over 100, we were told) to tell his story through his words. Catching a snippet of a favorite poem tucked away in a monologue delivered by Scott was a lovely, memorable part of the evening.
The audience “casting” was also an inspired choice; each audience member gets an item, some of which you might half-remember from high school English class. These items are also paired with their private audio tracks (and therefore storylines and instructions unique to each audience member.) The mystery of the evening reveals itself as determining “who” you are in the story world, and exactly how much blood you have on your hands. It’s a great hook that quickly worked at pulling me into the story. The production then alternates between opportunities to search the darkened mansion for clues about your identity, lantern in hand, and scenes with Scott as Poe hinting at your dark past.
So why doesn’t The Raven work, despite every component being strong on its own? Mainly, it feels like each of those positive elements ends up cancelling another out. The separate elements act like matter and antimatter, both containing plenty of potential energy, touching and vanishing, although without creating much of a spark in the meantime.
Yes, Scott is beautifully expressive… when you can see her. In The Raven, the audience is burdened with sunglasses, in a pitch black house, lit only by dim hand held lanterns. So the audience can’t pick up on the subtleties of her performance except during the scenes where she interacts with one audience member, directly, removing their glasses. That audience member becomes the star of the scene, their characters acting out their part in Poe’s life, suffering his judgement, or enduring his uncomfortable praises as was my case. This is great when she’s performing just for you. However, this makes all the scenes in which she isn’t focused on you difficult to endure. Scott and whichever audience member is featured in the scene become obscure shadows, with facial and vocal nuance trampled by the technological aspects of the show. Sure, Scott shines in the scenes where you get to speak with her directly. She brings Poe to life, creating a creature of menace, and pain, and terrible secrets. But watching someone else get a one-on-one in public felt interminably slow, and not particularly illuminating into the character of Poe.
Weiler’s technological layer and the atmosphere of the house end up coming into conflict with each other as well. The Bose AR Frames mostly worked for me. At least, I thought they did. While their exact function was wrapped in mystery, I gathered the glasses were supposed to change the audio based on my location, as tracked by my lantern. Occasionally audio would begin as I walked around the venue, but without knowing what the possible triggers were, it was hard to know whether this was standard audio that all audience members were receiving, or bonus “special” audio that only I was receiving based on my location. Even if it was the latter, without knowing what triggered the content, it was hard to connect the dots; why give it to me, and only me? What does this room I’m standing in have to do with this monologue about Poe’s father? Why is this snippet of “The Fall of the House of Usher” connected with this location in the venue and not another? By treating the audio as discoverable ghosts, but in a house too dark to really find anything, the audio felt divorced from the production’s context and just served as another layer of frosting to the already spooky atmosphere, as opposed to the meat of the show it seems intended to have been.
Even the audience casting ended up leaving me slightly cold. We were all assembled, from the start, as the only attendees of Poe’s wake. Bit by bit, we were all made to feel responsible for Poe’s death. This would have been deeply engrossing, but collapsed in on itself when I learned that I had been cast as a fictional character; that is, an invention of Poe’s own creation. This led to some brilliant solo scenes, including instructions for a scavenger hunt whispered in my ear. This intimate scene was the highlight of my evening, but left me alienated from what felt like should have been the core storyline of the show. Poe was like a father to me, who repeatedly assured me that I was his favorite creation, and I hadn’t the slightest opportunity to do him wrong as a creature subject to his whims; so, why should I have felt guilt or shame? I understand how tempting is it to reveal that a good chunk of the audience are fictional characters but it also undermines the central narrative for those audience members after the twist occurs.
I also found that The Raven requires a deep familiarity with Poe to fully appreciate the narrative. Poe comforting the figure of his dying wife was somewhat moving, but again plagued by the difficulty seeing the action due to the low lighting. I ended up appreciating that scene more because I recognized the sound of lapping waves in the background signifying that this unidentified woman was his Annabel Lee. And we were all standing in her tomb, in that kingdom by the sea. But in the scenes that I felt bored by, how much of that could have been alleviated if I picked up a more obscure literary reference?
The Raven’s flaws aren’t necessarily any one department’s fault. Overall, the show just feels a little rushed, a little half-baked, the victim of huge ambitions and tight deadlines. I know how capable its creators are of making spectacular work, and that is what makes it particularly disappointing. This was a preview, with revamps in the coming year. With better tech, working more harmoniously with the live performance, the show could be special. But for now, the experience is exactly what Lance Weiler and Ava Lee Scott aren’t: boring.
The Raven finished previews on November 4, 2019. Future dates are to be announced.
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