There’s Nothing Quite Like ‘CAGES’ (NoPro Notes)
A preview of a next-gen musical rewrites rules in DTLA’s Arts District
Have you ever wondered how a two man band could feel like a rock ensemble backed by an orchestra? Ever longed to see music videos come to life? Do you lust after the state of the art in theatrical showmanship?
Well, come on down to The Chemist, just past the woods at the edge of Anhedonia (aka LA’s Arts District) and get yourself a ticket to CAGES, a rock opera that does all these things and serves up an immersive course at intermission for good measure.
Before we go any further, I just need to give full marks to CAGES for being the most technologically ambitious musical I’ve ever seen, if not of all time. In fact it’s the most technically ambitious stage show I’ve seen, although I haven’t seen Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, and for students of the theatrical arts who don’t have issues with photo sensitivity (be that seizures or migraines) you just really need to go see this. Full stop.
I was graced with the opportunity to see a “friends and family week“ preview, and what was on display was so polished I’m not sure what might be adjusted without radically rethinking what they’re doing.
We need also note, as we’re a site that focuses on immersive, that CAGES isn’t primarily concerned with building an immersive experience. Rather, the production team leverages the immersive arts to do some world building before the show and at intermission, pointing to a direction that Broadway producers will likely find enticing.
Entry to The Chemist, the pop-up bar that serves as the show lounge and a critical part of the show lore, is done in small batches. Patrons get a beautifully constructed “scene zero” that does a hell of a lot to set the tone and shift the dozen or so guests from the industrial district vibe of the streets outside and into a pseudo-Victorian world that is about as High Goth as you can get without everything being made out of raven bones. If I had the money, this would be my aesthetic.
Immersive heads will instantly find themselves wanting to explore the space in depth, and the chance will come later. A brief actor-driven interlude establishes key iconography for the story, and then its into The Chemist proper, where a beautifully decked out bar is overlaid with a projection mapped visual finish that gives the whole thing a visual pop! What look like trailheads and mysterious glyphs to be solved, however, turn out to be only thematic elements. Paying close attention pays off a little in the context of the show, but not in the moment or through your own agency.
When it’s time to enter the theater — and yes, there are chairs — the atmospheric characters become ushers, moving us down a narrow hallway that’s been made to look like an alleyway in the dark city of Anhedonia, where all the people have had their hearts locked away in cages.
Once seated the lights go out and the room gets very dark. The curtain can be heard, slowly winding its way up into the rafters, almost comically so. Composer Benjamin Romans takes his position in a balcony at stage right and then what can only be described as a living music video unfolds.
For the most part this is a two man vehicle, with Woolf (CJ Baran), also known as the boy the red heart, on a stage where the world of Anhedonia is projected both behind and in front of him, as if we were watching someone on a holodeck. This is done through a projection technology called the “Eyeliner“. Meanwhile the sound envelops the whole space through a L-ISA Immersive Hyperreal sound system, which someone told me is what they use at Galaxy’s Edge at Disneyland. (Editor’s note: those of you playing the NoPro drinking game may now drink.) Occasionally the chorus is brought in — mostly at the beginning and the end — but for the most part it is Baran and Romans doing all the live performance. Romans on music and Baran on vocals.
Which isn’t to say that there aren’t other characters in the show.
The whole thing is narrated by The Chemist himself, who tells us the story of Anhedonia in a prologue that jumps us right into the world and the elaborate effects they’ve conjured to build it. We won’t see him until later, however.
CAGES, being a love story in a traditional mold, requires a girl for the boy to meet and then lose. In this case that girl is Madeline. She is Woolf’s everything, and the special effects illustrate that with a melodramatic romanticism that feels true to anyone who ever went out of their mind over a lover.
What’s terribly odd is that Madeline isn’t really there. Nor is she played by one person. Her physical form, played by Alison Harvard, only manifests as a Pepper’s Ghost of sorts: projected onto the screen at the front of the stage when she needs to share space with Woolf. Her voice is supplied Frida Sundemo, making the character of Madeline a holographic chimera. Now Barans does a great job of playing off a person who is never actually there, and there’s something metatextually tragic about a guy in love with someone he can never actually touch, but that’s never really brought down to the level of the text or made part of the story in a tangible way.
Which had the effect of throwing me a bit out of the story every time Madeline was on screen, even through Barans sells every second he’s performing opposite the hologram. He brings a distinct “silent movie” vibe to his physicality that really worked for me.
Yet if we let go of the idea of this as a stage play, or even a movie, and embrace it as a kind of post-modern concert CAGES really works.
At intermission were released back to the bar, and now the chorus and atmosphere players take on new life as they play out scenes from life in Anhedonia in the rooms just off the “alley.”
One of the other members of the NoPro crew and I all but ransacked the front vestibule, looking for narrative ephemera, without success. Stepping back into the bar I made eye contact with one of the performers (in my case, Sophie Cooper, also of Haus of Creep this season), the very same one who had led us into the world. She had a storybook, and together we slowly tripped through its pages before she offered to show me something.
I was led back into the “alley” where a scene straight out of the show was being performed by the ensemble members of the cast. The whole beat held the same kind of dreamlike quality that the grand immersive shows had: hitting that all so elusive tone if only for a brief moment.
Then it was back to our seats for Act II and more spectacle.
CAGES is fascinating, and totally thrilling in how it deploys just about every theatrical trick available to tell its story. Yet the story itself can’t quite match the sheer craft that’s been brought to bear to tell it. So much craft! It’s certainly an unforgettable night at the theater, but it’s the how and not the what which lingers in the imagination long after.
Now, flip it around and tell me this is a concert experience, and suddenly the future of live performance snaps into place with clarity and depth. How many artists in LA are going to see this and be inspired? How many of them will have a tenth of the resources on display here?
CAGES feels like it was built to tour, while the space itself feels like it is primed to become a venue for bold experimentation — provided that LA’s seemingly crushing rules and regulations let the damn thing breathe. Yet whether CAGES takes to the road or another piece is conjured up behind The Chemist’s laboratory, there will always be something special about this run of this show: as the whole thing was shot in the space as it was being built out. Which just adds a site-specific twist to the whole affair.
Woolf and the Wondershow present CAGES, currently in previews through November 25th. Tickets start at $50.
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