Before we go any further, let’s answer the fundamental question: should you pick up a ticket to Delusion: The Blue Blade now that it has extended?
Yes. Yes, you should. Because we haven’t really seen something like The Blue Blade before.
Oh, sure. Delusion has been around for years now — taking hiatuses when necessary — and the Delusion format is at the heart of this year’s show. But from a production standpoint The Blue Blade makes it feel like what came before was a warm-up.
While opening in the heart of Spooky Season, this edition of Delusion strays from the horror genre and instead embraces the action adventure films of the 1980’s as inspiration. If you ever wanted to live through an Indiana Jones adventure involving time travel then you are in luck, because that’s what’s on tap.
Each group of eight audience members is cast as fresh recruits of the Safeguard Society, an order of academics and adventurers who storehouse potent artifacts that fall into the category of “Things Man Was Not Meant To Know.” The most powerful of which is the mysterious Blue Blade: an ancient dagger that can cut holes through space and time.
The titular Blade has been stolen by a rogue member of the Society: Evelyn Lowell, who is using it to amass a fortune across time and space. While others have failed to recover the Blade and bring Lowell to justice the Society has faith you can follow one last slim lead: Lowell’s ne’er-do-well cohort Stanfeld and get what’s needed out of him.
Naturally everything goes wrong right from the start and soon you’re on the run from 4th dimensional demons who chase you into the arms of the German Army circa 1943. Yup. Nazis. I hate those guys.
From scene to scene you’ll leap from one time period to the next, following a trail of breadcrumbs across history into some ridiculously well realized environments. Delusion creator Jon Braver has asked his design team — headed up by production designer Kevin Williams and lighting designer/technical director Ian Momii — for the impossible and the army of designers, craftspeople, and volunteers delivered. There isn’t a soul who poured their blood, sweat, and tears into this build who shouldn’t be proud.
Delusion has always been an ambitious endeavor, but this year’s edition is monumental in scope. Which makes the rough spots stand out in stark contrast to what’s been accomplished.
Two things keep The Blue Blade as it stands now from fulfilling its destiny as a high energy adventure romp.
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The first is just how exposition-heavy the story is. The initial ten minutes of The Blue Blade are filled with so many names of characters, secret societies, objects of power, and more characters, that by the time things start to happen its tough to track who is who. Some early big reveals — like the nature of the Big Bad — get lost in the shuffle. The Blue Blade’s story is firmly in the melodramatic tradition, and the operative word in melodrama is drama. Which is the stuff that happens between characters.
And it’s not like the characters don’t seem to have a sufficiently tangled web of relationships to exploit, it’s just that when there’s so many offers on the table it’s hard to pick which thing to care about.
Some of that comes from how the audience is cast. In this story we’re recruits of a secret society, which doesn’t have quite the same stakes as previous Delusions. In His Crimson Queen we were set up as half-human/half-Vampire children searching for our kidnapped vampire mother. In Lies Within the audience are super fans of an author who has been sucked into her own stories. Those relationships pull us through the set pieces and give the stunts and effects an emotional resonance that makes the design elements sing. Story and spectacle are what the Delusion brand are all about.
For The Blue Blade the stakes are cosmic, but right now that’s getting in the way of the personal.
The second is the disconnect between the realities of traversing the space — it’s dark and there’s some treacherous footing — and what the story demands from moment to moment. Which is that we RUN! Run from the time demons. Run from the Nazis. Run from the Nazis who become time demons.
Only don’t run because there’s this step right… yes, here. And the six people in front of you are going a little slow and… well it’s nice that the Nazi time demon is taking its time chasing us because if they didn’t we’d really be screwed given how slow everyone is getting through that door.
Here’s the good news about both of these problems: they’re readily fixable.
The former requires some fine tuning of the first few scenes to more emphasis on the character relationships — which is already in the writing but just needs tightening.
The later will take a bit of a “traversal audit”: looking at some of the tricker moments of moving through the space and changing the framing. There’s still moments where moving quickly will work just fine, but where the physical plant doesn’t really allow for a group of eight to hustle out of one space into another the game needs to change from “run” to “sneak.” Otherwise that disconnect between what you feel like you should do and what you actually can is going to keep throwing audiences out of the story.
Which will be a shame: because when The Blue Blade works it is incredibly fun. There’s moments of “wow” and “are you fucking kidding me” every few minutes. The great thing about interactive theatre is that it lets you live iconic moments. The Blue Blade does that. Over and over. With some judicious tweaks this latest Delusion has a shot at becoming timeless.
Delusion: The Blue Blade has sold out its Fall/Winter run. It will return on February 14th, 2019 and run through June 30, 2019. Tickets start at $95.
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