Review Rundown: New York Immersive’s Spring Blooms

This week we’re mostly in NYC, but there’s a big collab up in Toronto in the form of Secret City teaming up with Netflix for a Knives Out universe themed murder mystery dinner.

$5 says that the follow up to Glass Onion will be a very meta movie about a murder mystery dinner that ends up being an actual murder mystery. Mark it. $10 says that The Perfect Bite ends up touring before long.

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And Then, Now — Jody Oberfelter & Glass Clouds Ensemble
$30; New York; Run Concluded

Green-Wood Cemetery is one of my favorite places in New York. It’s gorgeous in all seasons, but it really shines in spring, when the cherry blossoms are in full bloom, wildflowers are sprouting among the crumbling old headstones, and there are birds flitting between the tall, old trees. It has all the natural beauty of New York’s better known parks, with none of the crowds.

But it wasn’t always so empty and serene; for most of the 1800s, rural cemeteries like Green-Wood were popular places for city dwellers to hang out, picnic, and relax in nature — to enjoy life among the dead. Most people don’t do that anymore, and I think it’s a shame — so do the creators of And Then, Now.

And Then, Now is a site-specific immersive dance show from choreographer and dancer Jody Oberfelder and chamber music ensemble Glass Clouds that takes audiences on a winding, sunset walk through Green-Wood Cemetery.

As we moved through the cemetery, stopping at various monuments and mausoleums for music and dancing and meditation, we were encouraged to think about our connection to the earth and our place in history — about those that have come before us, and those that will come after us. The performers’ brightly colored, diaphanous costumes looked at once futuristic and ancient, almost Grecian. It sort of felt like being in a Star Trek episode, in the best way.

The most magical part of And Then, Now, though, was its show-stopping finale in the cemetery’s catacombs. Golden light illuminated the long, tunnel-like space, and the musical trio performed as we explored the cool darkness of the crypts. We stood still, watching, as the dancers flitted to and fro, pulling people into the crypts and whispering to them softly, and then reunited with the musicians for a beautifully-choreographed dance finale.

And Then, Now was gorgeous and fun, and was a wonderful opportunity to see art in one of the most beautiful places in New York. If you missed it, I’d still recommend a visit to Green-Wood Cemetery this spring. You don’t need a ticket to see the show nature is putting on right now — just bring a blanket, sit back, and listen to the music of the birds and watch the leaves dance in the trees overhead.

– Cheyenne Ligon, NYC Correspondent

Brought Up — Kenneth Keng
University Settlement, NYC; $20, Run Concluded

Brought Up was shown as a part of the Performance Project at the University Settlement. It makes me very happy that paid residencies are going out to support immersive work. And with Brought Up, Kenneth Keng shows some early potential to make interesting immersive experiences.

In Brought Up, the audience is cast as a set of clones sent into space from Nueva Manila, a space colony run by a capitalist-religious tyranny. The play follows the journey of a small crew fighting a rebellion in a civil war over the failing colony. The overall tone is satirical with cartoonish mecha-like spacecraft, an over-the-top religion of rising stock prices and shareholder duties, and grotesque sacrifices made by soldiers for the army.

Kenneth Keng has a very rich story to tell and all the performances are very committed to it. The play moves from battle to trial to rebellion quickly and without taking a lot of time to explain itself. I appreciated the depth and fluency of the performance, but I found it difficult to follow the jargon and storyworld told so quickly. That said, the performers did a good job staying true to the world despite how silly it was, and that left me invested in the piece as a whole.

Interactivity came through our role as clones. Sent to be part of the army in exchange for a better life on Nueva Manila for our original selves, we were awakened early to help in the fight against the rebels. To prove our capacity, we engage in a set of tasks to demonstrate our skill, solving Rubik’s Cubes, stacking cups, or learning a dance choreography. I see how the silliness of these activities matched the overall tone, but it also made them pointless and hard to care about. On the other hand, there was a wonderful twist where recordings we had made as part of training were reused in a remembrance ceremony to a profound effect.

Brought Out felt like an early work: showing confidence and deploying many tricks, in need of editing but with powerful parts. Where it was interesting it combined humor and criticism and clever moments of interaction. I would keep an eye on the work of these creators in the future, and let’s hope more organizations choose to support early works of immersive experimentation.

— Nicholas Fortugno, New York Correspondent

Clown Bar 2 — SparkPlug Productions
$30; New York; Run Concluded

I’m not a big fan of clowns. Who is? They’re slightly unsettling and unpredictable, their aesthetic is spooky, and they often crop up in horror movies — though I grudgingly admit to their societal function. They’re kind of like spiders, in that way: I don’t wish them ill, but I try to give them a wide berth.

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Given my mild-to-moderate clown aversion, I didn’t expect to love Clown Bar 2. Frankly, it sounds insane: it’s an off-off-Broadway clown noir (yes, that’s correct! A clown noir!) murder mystery performed in the back of a dive bar on the Lower East Side. It was insane — and I absolutely loved every minute of it.

Traditional clown gags (pies to the face, balloon animals) are paired with frequent songs, sung by Musty the Clown Bard, and a plot that was both ridiculous and genuinely riveting.

It’s about a former cop turned clown, Happy, who has gone missing. His friends in the seedy clown underworld call in two cops — normies from the “beige world” — for help getting to the bottom of his disappearance. They go undercover, infiltrating the clown mob, but find that the clown life is harder to walk away from than they expected.

The jokes are non-stop and the performers were fantastic — I especially loved Catie Marron as rival rodeo clown boss Brigham Bill, and Kimberly Bollard as clown assassin Popo. I laughed the entire time, and was continuously surprised and delighted by the twists and turns of the show.

The audience role is pretty minimal (according to SparkPlug Productions’ listing for ClownBar 2 on Everything Immersive, our role was simply “Someone who cares about clowns getting murdered”) but fun. We had red clown noses and party hats, and were sometimes handed props like bubble guns or balloon animals while we conversed with the clowns. It was fun and engaging enough to just sit there and watch the clown drama go down.

When the show wrapped up and we were sent back to our real lives in the beige world, I found myself singing the deranged lyrics to one of Musty’s songs under my breath the whole way home (”Clowns can kill, clowns can maim, clowns are psycho cray-cray insaaaane!”). Clowns can kill, perhaps, but they can also make me laugh. Maybe they’re not so bad, after all.

Clown Bar 2 was an absolute joy, and I’m grateful I got to see it.

–Cheyenne Ligon, NYC Correspondent

The Perfect Bite — Secret City
$135 — $175 CAD; Toronto, Canada; Until July 28

They say you shouldn’t play with your food, but what about solving a murder mystery with it?

Secret City, winner of ‘Outstanding Immersive Work in Toronto’ at last year’s Immie’s for The Wedding Party (which is being rebooted this year), is back with another puzzle-forward adventure.

In collaboration with Netflix, Secret City delves into the universe of Knives Out, introducing us to the enigmatic Salty Six — a culinary supergroup harboring a deep secret. Set against the backdrop of a four-course meal at Peter Pan Bistro, attendees unravel the sextet’s mystery, one dish at a time.

What differentiates this foray into murder mystery dining is the extent to which the food was integrated into the overall experience. The four course meal existed not just as the dinner half to the “dinner and a show” trope, but as a central narrative tool and key element to each puzzle. By framing the narrative, and its corresponding puzzles, around each course, the show also created a relaxed pace, allowing beginners and puzzle lovers alike the time to enjoy both their puzzles and the food. As a chronically slow eater, I appreciated how this pace gave me the time to properly enjoy each course without having to frantically scarf down my entree for fear of losing precious puzzling time.

Throughout, a cast of six actors propelled the narrative, serving as both suspects and allies for us to interrogate, confide in, and engage with throughout the evening. While the Netflix partnership has definitely given the show a boost in publicity, its impact on storytelling feels minimal; the piece could just as easily have existed as an independent whodunnit.

In comparison to Secret City’s past and current offerings, The Perfect Bite is a more moderately challenging game. Rather than being puzzle-centric, the emphasis here is on the story, making it more accessible to a broader audience. Ultimately, The Perfect Bite does a masterful job of telling a compelling story through puzzles, great food, and mystery — creating an experience that would make Benoit Blanc proud.

— Katrina Lat — Toronto Curator

Third Law — What Will the Neighbors Say?
Culture Lab LIC, NYC; $28.52, Until May 26th

Third Law is an interactive play in which the audience makes choices from options projected on the ground. This is described as a “digital game board” but it’s actually just an interface for the audience to vote with their bodies. When enough audience members stand or sit in the right spot, an element of the play changes, such as the introduction of audio or a change in performers. This is used to tell an abstract, fable-like story of the Garden of Eden. Six actors take turns playing the two unnamed first humans as they frolic in the garden and consider whether to leave paradise for freedom.

On paper, this is an interesting experiment. What happens when the audience gets the chance to make choices during a play solely through movement? On the plus side, the performers were generally strong and the minimal set (just a couple of benches with a strip of lights on the ground and projections on the floor and front wall) was striking. There was certainly skill in the staging and company.

What let the experience down was the interactivity. To make a choice, the piece required you to look in three different places at once (the floor to see the spots, the wall to see what the spots would do, and the actors performing) so it was hard to absorb what you were voting for. Because the play was performed around the entire room with the spots projected in the middle, it was very easy for enough audience members to accidentally trigger something while just watching the play. Far too many times the play was interrupted for essentially no reason.

Most critically, none of the choices appeared to affect the narrative. You were mostly changing the sounds and lights or you were swapping the actors, which stopped the play but didn’t change the action at all. The new performers picked up with the same energy and intent as the old ones. For all the work a choice was, nothing (with the exception of one final decision) had a meaningful effect on the play, so after a while, voting wasn’t interesting and I just stopped interacting.

I commend the Third Law team for trying such a clear and bold experiment with theater and interaction.The ideas in this piece need more work, but I’m inspired by such a strong attempt at something new.

— Nicholas Fortugno, New York Correspondent

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