Review Rundown: The One With A Play About A School Shooting

Sometimes the week is tonally all over the place, and this is definitely an example. In LA, HERO Theatre tackles one of the USA’s great social ills with a play that manages to be both intimate in scale and exceedingly ambitious in design. Somber work that’s sensitively approached. But before we get there: it’s murder mysteries in the form of Hunt-A-Killer and Live In Theatre, both of which can be experienced at home. Plus Thomas gets to have some anarchic fun in London.

Just, you know, be ready for the flip.

Last week’s Rundown, the one that you were supposed to read by order of the Peaky Blinders? You still have time to rectify your transgressions.

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Dead Below Deck — Hunt A Killer
$31.99; Remote (At-Home Box); Available Now

In Hunt A Killer’s latest self-contained retail exclusive, Dead Below Deck, Rachel Veinson has been found dead aboard a luxurious rental yacht while out at sea. Her death was ruled an accident, but Rachel’s friend disagrees. The friend has collected all the evidence they could find, providing it to the player to identify which of the five suspects is the murderer.

On the surface, Dead Below Deck features all the tell-tale markings of what makes Hunt A Killer’s mysteries top-notch and incredibly novice accessible. From paper type to content, each document is well designed and crafted. Brochures, legal agreements, grocery lists, notes, and more ring true as documents the player could encounter in everyday life. Plus, I always appreciate how Hunt A Killer tells a murder mystery story without subjecting the player to violent and gory details.

In diving deeper, problems begin bubbling up. The suspects lack depth, the murderer’s motivation is fairly pedestrian, and without a strong narrative, issues with puzzle design emerge.

In one document, keywords have been replaced by symbols, but the code to decipher them is unhelpful, and the symbols’ inclusion becomes busywork, elongating the mystery for its own sake. Also, there’s one physical object whose one and only associated clue is painfully easy to miss. But the association between the clue and object forces players to make an assumption, and there’s nothing denoting this object is the one in the clue.

Dead Below Deck requires Hunt A Killer’s app, which is easy to use and navigate. For this mystery, there are recorded suspect interviews containing important clues, yet the app struggles to play them. Nearly every time I paused or rewound a video, it froze and wouldn’t let me play any videos. The only fix was to close the app and start a video from the beginning.

Dead Below Deck simply isn’t Hunt A Killer’s strongest offering and I’d recommend setting sail on another mystery in their massive and solid catalog.

– Patrick B. McLean, Chicago Curator

FeelPlay — Christopher Green
Free; London, UK; Run Concluded

It feels strange to experience something again after twenty years, as my feet burn stepping on to a hot bouncy castle.

Set up in a Greenwich park (and former cemetery) FeelPlay offers the opportunity to “find your child-like joy in a playground specially made for grown-ups.” A deflated bouncy castle and a square full of inflated balls promise fun and games!

Our leaders, Ro and Tee, are excited and try to make the crowd become play friends, making us chant “You Play, We Play, FEELPLAY!” We are asked to use our imaginations to find our inner play-persona. An empty tent? No! The bottom of the sea. (Cue some play-personas drowning).

The groups are divided and mine watches the bouncy castle being inflated while being asked to state how we feel. But a mocking health and safety check (some of us had consumed dairy or have dyed hair) means no one was allowed to bounce on the castle.

We are scolded for trying to bounce and the castle is deflated. The second space with the balls, representing good things, is more active. We toss them, screaming emotionally “Oh no! We lost wealth over that fence!”

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The two groups descend into anarchy. We bounced on the castle. We throw the balls. I assume it was expected we will rebel when given hard structures but there is some confusion. There is clearly a need for rules, to ensure safe play. When the command to ‘play less’ is given, is that genuine or part of the overly strict rule enforcement?

Part of my issue was the fact that some of the absurdity is a norm for my experience as a theatre maker. Isn’t it silly to study play? Ludus and Clowning!

Ultimately this was a fun half hour in the sun playing games.

— Thomas Jancis, London Correspondent

Murder in La La Land — Live in Theater
$20; Remote (Zoom); Through Sept. 10

It’s March 1st, 1951 and Summit Pictures’ newest star scriptwriter has been found dead. Thus, I slapped on my brightest shade of red lipstick, coiffed my hair into my best attempt at a 1950s curl, and logged onto Zoom to get to the bottom of this murder mystery.

As a member of Summit Pictures’ Security team, I was tasked alongside the other audience members, to interrogate the six suspects who last saw the victim: the blustery studio president, the clueless leading man, the scorned yet self-assured writer, the persnickety director, the distressed secretary, and the self-absorbed actress.

With only five minutes to chat with each suspect, we chose our questions carefully. Oftentimes, (and much to our chagrin!) time ran out in the middle of a witness revealing important details. While the time limit added urgency to the interrogations, it also felt rushed and left limited space for playful interaction with the very colorful cast of characters.

Zoom can be a curious medium to experience live theater over, but the show’s interview-style interactions worked well within the platform. Furthermore, the use of breakout rooms for audience members to share suspicions and strategize was a clever and effective use of the function.

Murder in La La Land is a great take on the murder mystery genre that showcases Zoom’s strengths as a storytelling medium. The experience was designed for anywhere from 5 to 300 participants and would work well both as an individual experience or for a larger corporate event.

— Katrina Lat, Toronto Correspondent

RISE : An Immersive Exploration of Gun Violence in Schools — Hero Theatre $30–35; Los Angeles; through Sep. 18th

RISE is an emotionally intelligent site-specific play about an incredibly difficult subject — school shootings — that gets hamstrung at points by its attempts to become a fully immersive piece of theatre.

Let’s start with what works.

Game and grounded performances by the cast, portraying a group of high school students and their substitute teacher who must lockdown during a school shooting, make what could otherwise be a cringe worthy attempt to render one of the America’s ongoing tragedies — the political stalemate that leads to the regular sacrifice of young lives — into something that’s just this side of cinematically harrowing. The play, devised and directed by Jack McCarthy, gets the feeling of a “substitute day” in a high school class pretty much bang on. (I should know, I’ve been on both sides of that equation.)

Smartly we’re given enough time to get to know the characters before the sometimes melodramatic beats of the lockdown begin, and that carries the through-line all the way to the shooting’s aftermath.

If all RISE was attempting was to be a solid piece of topical site-specific theatre it would pass with top marks. Yet the show reaches for immersive status, and that reach exceeds its grasp. Audience members are cast as visiting parents and teens, and are told the the students will just treat them like they are not there. This extends to the moments in lockdown, leading to clunky logistical exposition in the middle of what should be dramatic moments.

Trying to have us “really” be there and yet have no agency just doesn’t work. It creates cognitive dissonance that cuts against the grain of the drama, but not so much dissonance as to be profound. It’s a half-in, half-out conceit that was ultimately distracting. Moreover, the play doesn’t need it to be effective, and future versions of RISE would be wise to ditch that aspect and focus instead on the site-specific nature of the work.

There’s a good play here that manages to walk a tonal tightrope without losing its balance, and it would be far better if it weren’t always having to draw attention to the fact that it’s a play.

— Noah Nelson, Founder and Publisher

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