Review Rundown: The One With Magic & Multiverses

This week we’ve got five original capsules and two pulled from our more recent feature length reviews. All vibrant proof that immersive is very much alive and kicking down whole new doors.

New voices. New experiments. New opportunities to find your next favorite creator. Let’s get into it.

Looking for more? We’ve got a few up our sleeve.

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CROSSING — Black Rabbit Theatre Company
$42–105; LA; June 3&4; Run concluded.

In a blink and you probably missed it single weekend run that happened to coincide with the Next Stage Immersive Summit, a new venture called Black Rabbit Theatre Company debuted their inaugural piece: a 90 minute solo excursion into possibility itself called Crossing. It was, bar none, my favorite immersive experience I’ve had since before the pandemic, and indeed would have fit in perfectly within that bygone period when it felt like nearly every week brought new realities to explore.

Tapping into the high concept du jour of the multiverse, Crossing invited a single audience member per show to sample what lives may be waiting for them on the other side. The experience was seamless, complete with literally character driven transportation to and from the headquarters of the aptly named Department of Crossing, who offered a chance to “immigrate” to another dimension and assume the life of an alternate version of myself by dropping me into a handful of other realities for a limited time to gauge my suitability as a candidate for the final, irreversible procedure. Well-executed, engrossing one-on-one conversations with just enough tongue-in-cheek corporate serenity and sci-fi intrigue to keep it weird.

I was led from room to room, walking a mile in my own shoes. I was the object of someone’s unrequited affections, a friend offering support during a difficult transition, a therapist counseling a grieving and perhaps justifiably guilty spouse, a hapless supporting player destined for stardom. But despite the many roles I was asked to play, it was always me. Which was exactly the point. Each of my scene partners greeted me with a level of familiarity and vulnerability that presupposed months or years of shared history and gently, but unblinkingly, dared me to match them. Crossing gave me opportunity after opportunity to rise to the occasion, to reflect on how my experiences in this reality have shaped me and the impact empathy can have in any dimension. Asked the most of me. Assumed the best of me.

While the group’s production aspirations don’t lie solely in immersive theatre, I encourage you to follow Black Rabbit Theatre Company and anticipate all the possibilities that lie before us. Because after years of what’s felt a bit like a prolonged ending, this feels like it could be a beginning. Given the choice, I’d absolutely stay in this universe– because I have to see what they do next.

— Chris Wollman, LA Correspondant

Dinner is Served — Toes for Dance
From C$7.63; Toronto; until July 2

For a few weeks, Toronto’s historic Cambell House is being transported back to the 1960s for a very special dinner party. Dinner Is Served, the latest creation from Toronto-native Kristen Carcone, is an immersive dance production in which the audience becomes privy to the intrigue, passion, and sorrow of a colorful cast of characters.

Upon entering the venue, we were each given a rose to pin to our shirt, its shade determining which character we were the “guest” of for the evening. Rather than playing the role of an invisible voyeur watching from a distance, the audience becomes part of the story. In fact, just as the characters were carefully choreographed, so were our movements. We were strategically placed throughout the room so as to see specific scenes unfold, and even incorporated into the dance numbers themselves.

The production uses the historic space remarkably well, with its nooks and crannies separating the characters and their individual storylines. Campbell House is situated at one of the busiest intersections in Toronto, a fact that became particularly amusing when two characters engaged in a very non-PG rated romp on the outside lawn. As we watched the shenanigans unfold, random passerby stared on in confusion.

Throughout, choreography and its performance were stellar, with highlights including a comedic kitchen scene, a clever scene in which an affair was represented through characters on either side of a table, and an absolutely electric finale where the inner desires and thoughts of each character are unleashed.

Despite the eight distinct narrative tracks in this performance, we were instructed to stay with our single “host” character throughout the evening. As the story does not loop at the end of its one-hour runtime, multiple repeat performances are needed to fully grasp the plot. At present, the entire run is currently sold out, so I’ll have to hope for an extension, or renewed production to see the rest of the story!

Overall, Dinner is Served is a welcome homecoming for one of Toronto’s great creative talents, and highlights the city’s blossoming immersive theater scene.

— Katrina Lat, Toronto Correspondent

The Estate Sale — The Catamounts, Brad Ramsey, & Josh Hartwell
From $27.59; Aurora, CO; June 2–24, run concluded

Entering the “home” of a recently deceased (fictional) artist, we were greeted by the estate sale agent in charge of selling his worldly possessions. She indicated that he was odd and eccentric, stipulating that nothing be moved or “staged” for his estate sale, and that the sale doubles as an exhibit of his artwork. She told us she was happy to oblige (less work for her) and just asked that we let her know if we find anything interesting about the artist, or more importantly, if we’d like to make any purchases. (That wasn’t for the show, either — literally everything was for sale.)

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The 12 or so of us who’d gathered to browse, moved into the artist’s library and started looking around — at first taking cursory glances at images on walls and books on shelves, but then going a little further by opening drawers, boxes and books to find hidden compartments and stashed letters. Next door in his studio we found sketchbooks, newspaper clippings and stockpiled ephemera for future projects. I even found a bill of sale for commissioned work at Denver’s annual holiday immersive event, Camp Christmas.

Midway through the experience, the agent urged us to gather in a central sitting room, which was adorned with the most elaborate of the artist’s work. She offered us complimentary drinks from the deceased’s liquor cabinet (“He won’t be using it,” she said cold-heartedly) as we each took a seat. She asked if we’d been snooping, if we’d found anything good, and encouraged us to snoop harder as she dropped a few more letters on the table and exited the room. We read those letters out loud, offered up tidbits of info we’d discovered about the artist so far, and started to collaboratively piece together his story.

Four more rooms of snooping and discovery lie ahead of us — a gallery, a kitchen, a bedroom and a creepy attic filled with dolls. Each one offered more ephemera to touch, more artwork to look at, and more multimedia to engage with, such as old home movie footage playing on a TV, or the chance to listen to the artist’s answering machine messages. Opening the kitchen stove to find a tray of muffin cups filled with baby doll heads (a recurring theme throughout the installation) gave me big Meow Wolf House of Eternal Return vibes, while the hunt for hidden information pulled in my favorite elements of escape rooms: scavenging for clues and solving puzzles in order to progress the story.

With the perfect balance of freedom to roam and light guidance from the agent, this was a delightful romp through another person’s belongings that revealed intimate details of their trauma in clever and thought-provoking ways.

— Danielle Look, Denver Correspondent

The Great Gotham Challenge: MMXXIII
$160.00 — $199.00; NYC; June 10–24; Run concluded

Overall, The Great Gotham Challenge offers a unique day out, if not reinventing the wheel. For those looking for a new view of New York, or puzzle lovers looking for a different approach to the puzzle adventure than a standard escape room, you’ll have an amazing time participating in The Great Gotham Challenge.

— Blake Weil, East Coast Editor at Large, from his full review

Indoor Visit: Into the Rabbit Hole — Gregangelo Museum
$75.00; San Francisco; Thursdays-Saturdays, ongoing

Visiting the Gregangelo Museum is kind of like viewing a house for rent…if that house was actually the inside of a kaleidoscope, and if that house viewing included group therapy with the other apartment hunters. The museum is, in fact, a private home owned by SF artist and performer Gregangelo Herrera. It’s unassuming from the outside, but once we entered the front “portal” (after answering a riddle), the interior exploded into psychedelic controlled chaos. We visited 7 rooms, each one with its own theme, filled with art and trinkets from all over the world.

I took the loosely Alice in Wonderland-themed “Into the Rabbit Hole” tour, one of various options. The museum suggested I join a larger group — “the museum is much less a museum and more an introspective journey of self-discovery. A tour for a single person would be lacking the substance and impact of going through it with others.” So, 5 of us, plus a very kind guide, passed through the rooms, doing a sort of therapeutic exercise in each one (for example, in a room full of shoes, we shared which pair represented something we need more of in our life.)

A few complaints: there was too much time spent contemplating these personal questions, with not enough information or backstory on the art. The tour could have been half as long, and I would have gotten just as much out of it. Also, the price at $75 each, seems way too high for a tour that didn’t showcase any particular performance or expertise. Finally, if you’re feeling closed off and just want to look at a cool house, the tour might not be right for you. I’d recommend it most to people who are into interior design, and comfortable sharing personal anecdotes with strangers.

— Elissa Mardiney, San Francisco Correspondent

In Plain Listen — Jeanette Andrews at National Arts Club
Free, NYC; June 6th (one night only) Run Concluded

Go to any meet-up of immersive people and I guarantee the evening will not pass without a conversation about the definition of immersive. So, throwing my own discordant apple on the table, is stage magic immersive? It usually involves audience participation as a central piece of the act. A good starting place to consider the question is Jeanette Andrews’s recent magic/performance art piece, In Plain Listen, at National Arts Club..

The heart of In Plain Listen is the recreation of a historical magic trick involving burning and rejoining thread, accompanied by an original cello piece that was composed by taking the secret of the trick (as written in a 1584 work refuting the Inquisition) and translating it into notes. In a very real sense, you are hearing the method of the trick as you watch it, but only in a coded form you can’t understand. In that sense, it’s a performance art piece and a clever one. The idea is smart (that you both see and hear something that’s right in front of you that you can’t comprehend), the trick is impressive, and the cello piece (performed by Iva Casian-Lakoš, who does her own immersive stuff with music) was interesting and well-performed. Andrews then goes on to do an short interview about the history of magic and how magic has historically swung from low to high to low culture in different eras before performing a couple of more feats, including one in which she does next to nothing as audience members on stage with props follow the instructions of an audio recording to an impossible seeming result.

It was definitely entertaining. But would I call it immersive? After hearing a talk about how magic should be treated more as an art form, I’m going to say yes. It’s multisensory, it absorbs your attention, and it has you participate so that you can be manipulated to an aesthetic effect. I don’t see how that’s generically different than anything else we review. And if you think about other recent magic shows, it’s hard to argue that the whole form doesn’t have things to tell us about immersive work. But Jeanette Andrews is one to watch. She’s trying something with magic by elevating in a particular way and the intimacy that creates pushes her closer to immersive spiritually in a way that’s worth seeing (and hearing).

– Nicholas Fortugno, New York Correspondent

No Save Points — Outside The March
$30.00; Toronto; Through July 2

No Save Points is a remarkable show. It’s a masterclass in technology and art coming together, and a great example of how immersive theatre can help an audience internalize and understand an experience more deeply than traditional theatre allows. I laughed and cried, and then bought another pair of tickets to see it all over again.

— Katrina Lat, Toronto Correspondent, from her full review

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