Review Rundown: Take A Trip, That Kind Too (6/29/21)

This week the Review Crew takes day trips to Las Vegas and Anaheim, checks out the latest version of one of the pioneering VR theatre pieces, reenacts a bit of Tumblr history, and visits a Japanese diner in a trippy experimental VR piece.

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The REVIEW CREW podcast recording will return on July 7th at 5pm PDT.

Need more reviews? Last week’s edition HAS YOUR BACK.

The Dark Master — Niwa Gekidan Penino
$25; The Japan Society; Run Completed

Kuro Tanino’s The Dark Master is a trippy but oddly focusing new virtual reality work. Presented through headphones and VR headsets by Tanino’s company Niwa Gekidan Penino at The Japan Society through June 28, the experimental piece is intentionally disorienting at first — but by its end, grounds you with surprising precision in life behind the counter at a Japanese diner.

As the piece begins, you are but a patron, arriving at the diner to eat. “The Master” resentfully prepares you a meal, regarding you with a frightening intensity as he cooks. Then the chef announces that he’s sick of life behind the counter. Would you like to take over? Just like that, now you are behind the counter, with the Master’s voice in your head guiding you carefully through his recipes. It’s hard to say if the Master is watching and guiding from the next room, or if you’ve somehow “become” the Master, trapped in a body and life not your own.

Either way, watching your hands move with care and grace through each step of cooking is deeply satisfying. I felt my investment in this task — unexplained as it was — growing with each scene. Though on occasion a customer stares for just a few beats too long, and reality tilts just a little bit before readjusting itself.

Then there are the smells. At first, I thought I was imagining the pungent scents accompanying each dish. I couldn’t see (and barely even heard) the hard-working crew carrying each dish up and down the space around us, hurriedly waving smells into our booths.

Later, the piece moves away from cooking into a late-night visit from an escort, a less successful section that felt superfluous. The VR experience was less successful simulating fellatio in any way that didn’t feel just a bit cringe.

Where The Dark Master excels its immersion into process. As I left I found myself regarding the systems of things I passed with a new focus — a worker making a smoothie, a newsstand attendant watching passersby. Their careful movements, or their stillness, the wide smile or fatigue in their eyes — each little detail struck me anew.
— Joey Sims

Finding Pandora X — Double Eye Studios
$35–55; VRChat; Current Run Concluded

Pandora is dead. Hope is lost. The Gods face extinction. There’s no question that Finding Pandora X thrusts its audience into a living Greek tragedy. Unfortunately, like the ancient classics it draws inspiration from, this VR experience’s fate is doomed before any dramatic action begins.

Yet, let’s celebrate all that’s good first. Since last NoPro experienced Pandora X, the narrative appears to have been reworked. I’m moved by the plight that’s befallen the remaining Gods on Mount Olympus. The performers have found their stride, both in embodying their roles and interacting with one another. The cast’s chemistry is palpable, allowing me to emotionally invest in their struggles. Additionally, while the audience is clearly “on rails,” I found the moments of interaction engaging.

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Sadly, our tragic turn emerges. Pandora X is too technologically ambitious. It asks too much of the audience and VRChat. While there’s a detailed onboarding process, the audience at large struggles to move around, even in wide open spaces. Many audience members leave their mics on, their incessant commentary blaring in my ears, drowning out the performers. Also during the onboarding process, great care is taken in removing the audience’s nameplates and other VRChat elements to heighten the level of immersion. But, after traveling to another world, the only way to return to Mount Olympus is by opening the large VRChat control window. Why bother to push for near total immersion if direction will be intentionally given to shatter the magic circle later on?

While Finding Pandora X has narratively found stronger footing in its latest run, it’s sadly still far from reaching Mount Olympus’ summit. I’m excited to see where they go next but without some technological breakthroughs, I fear their fate is forever tragically sealed.
— Patrick McLean

The Queer Witch Conspiracy — The Seeing Place
$10; Remote; Run Completed

There’s an incredibly difficult balancing act being beautifully achieved by The Queer Witch Conspiracy. Author Brandon Walker adapts the infamous internet yarn of the Tumblr LGBTQ pagan group torn apart when one of their members confessed to grave-robbing and attempted to sell human remains to their fellow witches into a lightly interactive evening of remote theatre. Audience members play members of the online group as the events unfold, characters composited from archetypes familiar to any Tumblr user arguing about the diverse range of issues surrounding the event, from respectability politics to cultural appropriation. The ability to bicker about the issues raised in the Zoom chat with both fellow audience members and cast members not speaking (under assumed “Spirit Names,” of course) allows the audience to act as a sort of Greek chorus, and gives the play the frantic energy of the message boards the story originally played out upon.

The show’s greatest success was acknowledging the absurd and sensational nature of the central plot (guys, she stole their bones!) while recognizing the humanity of these easily mocked figures and the cruelty of society that could cause marginalized people to act out in such unusual ways. The play unequivocally succeeds as both tragedy and farce. It even somehow manages to remain empathetic to leftist and queer circles while questioning many sacred cows, including a few delightful meta moments in which characters call into question the purpose of the tropes of leftist theatre they themselves are enacting. The characters manage to be universally flawed, some irredeemably so, but the script never feels like it’s punching down, instead it’s exploring what marginalization does to people and the struggle to find connection after being damaged by a hostile world. While the staging is occasionally clumsy (scene transitions are clunky and the cast’s use of Zoom occasionally felt under rehearsed), that doesn’t detract from the show terribly. The overall effect of The Queer Witch Conspiracy makes the often times nightmarish subject of leftist infighting an easy pill to swallow and makes for a thought provoking evening of theatre.
— Blake Weil

Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance — Disneyland
Included in park admission, virtual queue entry required; Anaheim, CA; Ongoing

This is perhaps the most immersive and theatrical “ride” I’ve ever done, complete with casting the audience as new Resistance recruits and using a single plot line that is carried throughout the experience; the conceit of the ride is that this is all happening specifically to you in real time.

The attempt at 360-degree immersion using high tech animatronics, practical sets, projections, and other special effects during Rise of the Resistance produces at least six holy shit moments from my count.
— Kathryn Yu, from her forthcoming Full Review

Wink World @ AREA15— Chris Wink
$18, plus $2.50 for Chromadepth glasses; Las Vegas; Ongoing

I never say this: I wish I had been on drugs.

Wink World is the brainchild of Chris Wink, a founding member of Blue Man Group which has been in Vegas since before the pyramids. Okay, not really, but they do play the Luxor. It’s described on the AREA15 site as a “Psychedelic Art House Meets Carnival Funhouse,” and this description is entirely accurate.

Guests move through a linear progression of blacklit rooms with infinity mirrors and physical objects that make swirly patterns to melodiously booming beats. We’re told to stand at the edge of the light box and lean in — there’s even a little ledge to help with that — but I found myself stepping back and DANCING at points.

The music is great. The swirly and pulsing objects more effective, for me at least, when viewed as a gestalt. Some rooms were set up so that the cut out created a widescreen effect, some were set up so that objects were up high as well. All of it swirly, manic, and mildly delirious.

If you’re making the pilgrimage to Omega Mart, it’s a fun bonus round/cooldown, both from the crowds and thanks to a wicked AC. A tiny bit pricier than I’d like but then again, it’s Vegas, where only the booze is free. PROTIP: there’s a cafe stand downstairs that sells a “deconstructed CBD latte” and when I go back one day that’s going to be my first stop before queuing up for Wink World.
— Noah Nelson

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