Review Rundown: The One With Magic, Mystery, and Some Playful Mayhem

We took a week off and are coming back roaring with four reviews out of NYC, the latest from WePlayers in San Francisco as they return to form, and a book that mixes poetry & puzzles in a way that has Blake dropping the House of Leaves name.

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Adventures with Alice
$45; San Francisco; now through May 29

WePlayers latest site-integrated production is a long time coming. Plans for a Alice-themed production were ground to an all-too-common halt in 2020, and pandemic era restrictions helped model and inform the company’s later productions, including the very enjoyable Psychopomps in 2021. But with Adventures with Alice, WePlayers is finally able to jump back into the Wonderland sandbox, and I was very happy to hop in with them.

WePlayers dedication to site-integrated performance was well on display in the western reaches of Golden Gate park, as visitors follow Alice through her encounters with selected characters from both Alice in Wonderland, and its sequel, Through the Looking Glass. We are led through the park for a series of vignettes inspired by, but never constrained, by Carroll’s text.

The performances are uniformly enthusiastic and inspired, and it was a joy to watch each as they entered and exited Alice’s orbit. And while Carroll’s original story often featured Alice’s encounters one-on-one as she explored the fantasy landscape, Adventures with Alice allows the band of characters to bounce off each other and coexist more freely, occasionally receding to the background to allow for more personal, yet no less gleefully anarchic, conversations.

The sprawling stage of Golden Gate Park was incredibly well used. Each locale seemed perfectly designed, and you could believe this was not a large municipal park, but rather a pastoral area of Wonderland that we’ve wandered into. And Alice made excellent use of its cast throughout each scene — at any given point, if you looked away from the main action, you were likely to spot the White Rabbit peeking out from behind a tree, the Tweedles bouncing on the horizon, or a multitude of the actual wildlife that makes their home in the Outside Lands. The use of a relatively small cast in such a wide expanse was particularly masterful and made the experience feel immersive in a way that is often rare when performing on such a large stage.

Alice has seen her fair share of immersive productions, but the talented cast, expansive site-integrated direction, and beauty of the setting make Adventures with Alice a worthy addition to the club. Just remember to wear layers — it can get very cold in Wonderland…

— Brian Resler, San Francisco Correspondent

The Armillary Papers — Scot Ehrhardt
$17; Paperback with inserts

Reginald Gunn has died. Or is that Cyzal Frost? That’s what his ID said anyway. Or is Cyzal Frost the unknown poet, serendipitously discovered on Gunn’s bookshelf? And what of the love story? And the drug charges? And the sense you’re standing on the edge of an enormous cliff?

The Armillary Papers, Ehrhardt’s intriguing chapbook-cum-escape room is always two things. Not just poetry and puzzles, it’s also creeping dread and soft melancholy, tense and eerie but relaxed, fascinating and frustrating. The Armillary Papers thrives on this tension.

Readers are instructed to approach the book however they like. For some, this is a codebook to be busted, for others, this is poetry to be savored. I took a route somewhere between the middle. I gave the poetry a clean readthrough, played with the inserts, and approached the puzzles and codes at a leisurely pace. The necessary physical manipulation of the book is great; I’m reminded of other ambitious escape room concepts, like Solve Our Shirts.

Still, there’s one tension that doesn’t sit as well with me. Who is this book for? Certainly, it’s for me. As a lover of poetry and long time escape room player, this is both a wonderful way to pass an hour or two in the evenings, and a delightful artifact to keep in my life. The spooky coincidence of recognizing my own Maryland backyard in the mystery and poetry only added to the appeal. But for those less enthusiastic about poetry or puzzles, I doubt the draw of one will compensate for your distaste in the other.

Still, for those seeking an eerie House of Leaves experience in real life, slowly losing yourself in what feels like a deeply cursed manuscript, the book is worth checking out. Perhaps the book will ultimately consume you like the story threatens; perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad to have your thoughts possessed by poetry.

— Blake Weil, East Coast Editor at Large

The Magician — theory11
$136 (virtual ticket with boxed components for up to 4 people) or $279 (2 in-person tickets; only sold in pairs); remote or NYC; Through June 6

NY’s slickest magic experience, The Magician, is surrounded by buzz. The show’s website reads like a name-dropper’s diary — Ariana Grande, President Clinton, Kim Kardashian, and Jimmy Fallon all seem to be fans. Today, regular people like us can catch a remote version of the show through June (provided you snag tickets with enough time for a bespoke mystery box to wing its way to your door) or we can make our way to the top floor of Fotografiska New York for the in-person experience.

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I was in the market for a killer date night, so I opted for in-person. This was the right choice. The Magician ticked all of my boxes: moody atmosphere, great hospitality, and an engaging show with moments of mind-blowing wonder? Check. If you’re excited by a wide range of stage-magic styles and you’re looking for a splurge-worthy evening, definitely go. That said, I think this show is better suited to people who like magic more than they like immersion.

I can imagine a world where immersive and magic combine to become more than the sum of their parts, but this is not that world. The Magician’s immersive elements fight with White’s rapid-fire car-salesman delivery. Every once in a while he settles into a fluid sleight-of-hand that seems more in-line with his surroundings. But, for the most part, his (impressive) performance style took me out of our lush and languid surroundings. If White wanted to push his show further towards immersive, he’d lean into his beautiful card tricks and physical manipulations — these were the moments that hinted at narrative and meaning — and away from mathematical manipulations and mentalism. Of course, White doesn’t need to change a thing to keep drawing sold-out crowds. I’m just lighting a signpost for other immersive-first seekers. To everyone else: The Magician is a great show in a beautiful space. It’s simply not any more immersive than magic shows I’ve seen elsewhere. I wonder if the remote show is a different story…

— Leah Davis, New England Correspondent

Murder in the First — Broadway Murder Mysteries
$69–250; New York, NY; Through July 1

It was a dark and stormy night, as a line of press eagerly awaited the premier of a new murder mystery at the SoHo playhouse. We are welcomed to a pre-show gathering by the cast and crew, but just as we are about to make our way to the theatre to see the show “Murder in the First”…. Gun shots! The producer is dead *shock horror* — how could this have happened? Surely it wasn’t on purpose??

A riff on a boxed murder mystery game, this production by Broadway Murder Mysteries, brings the characters to life for new york audiences. There are some great over-the-top performances from this group of young actors, giving delightful stereotyped actor (and stagehand) performances. This is a lighthearted evening of mystery solving, with audiences being coerced to help by an off-duty Detective Edwina Drood, who was hoping to just enjoy a night at the theatre herself. Fun wordplay abounds in this piece, with lots of nods and knowing winks to the theatre fans in the audience.

The bar space of the SoHo playhouse makes for an intriguing location to play in, and I enjoyed the meta-ness of the whole affair, being quite literally below the theatre, but unfortunately with an audience of 50 the space actually hampered the experience. There was simply no room for participants or actors to move or mingle, so the main conceit of the night — asking questions and trying to solve the murder — simply could not happen. In addition, with so many bodies (the alive ones this time) the room was stifling hot and truly unpleasant. I found myself more and more disconnected as the evening went on, simply because I could not engage in the way that the show was designed for, and that I was desperate to actually do.

It’s a real shame that the significant impact of having an audience on the performance wasn’t thought through for this production, as there is the scaffolding of a fun evening. With an audience of maybe half the size and some creative planning for the space, this would have been a fun caper into the cliche tropes of murder mysteries.

— Edward Mylechreest, New York Correspondent

Postcards From — Make/Shift & Sharone Halevy
$20–40; Brooklyn, NY; Run Concluded

The art of Sharone Halevy has taken over a church in Greenpoint Brooklyn, with her grand canvases on display throughout the pews, the expressionistic paintings hovering over the intrigued art connoisseurs. Returning from two art residencies in Iceland and Finland, the artists have created this delightful artistic experiment as a showcase for the work created during this time.

The artist herself speaks to us through a well-produced audio guide as we sit and look at her work. The audio tracks range from brief 2 minutes to 8 minutes, giving Sharone space to share her experience of painting each piece, with all the thoughts, feelings, and methodologies that come with it. There are some fascinating insights, and it is quite remarkable to witness the growth and development of the paintings as I hear more about the process for each.

I was keen to go through each track fully in order to discover the grand narrative of the exhibit, but with 25 pieces the experience lasts a little over 90 minutes, which began to feel a little long towards the end of the experience. Ultimately though, the throughline is the artist herself, and some beautiful revelations towards the tail end of the production helped to give the piece a sense of finality, rather than there being a strict narrative structure to the works. I found the final expressionistic explorations of a self-portrait particularly moving, thanks to the presence of the artist “with” me.

I enjoyed exploring the space, in what appears to be a great collaboration between the church and artist, which makes it clear that this type of work could be very easily replicated or expanded upon in the future. Some say that art should speak for itself, but I would challenge that, having had the delightful experience of exploring the work of Sharone with the artist herself.

— Edward Mylechreest, New York Correspondent

WELCOME TO CLOWNTOWN — The Tank
$25 — $50; New York; through May 13th

As a genre of solo work, “I’m having a breakdown and you’re all invited!” never really goes out of style. Writer/performer Tanya Perez delivers just such a chronicle of emotional collapse in Welcome to Clowntown, a wildly entertaining if tonally confused new work at The Tank.

Clowntown mashes up stories from Perez’s work as a clown-for-hire with reflections from her alter ego, Pixie the Clown herself. Perez recounts nightmarish parties and monstrous children; Pixie wonders if exhausted adults can somehow preserve their sense of play. Mixed in with their stories are a series of volunteer-only party games.

The transitions between personas are difficult to track, and the production (directed by Lorca Peress) adds confusion by having Perez interact with both us the audience, and unseen off-stage characters as well. Still, Perez is always engaging, her lived experience wonderfully bizarre. And the show does find its central theme in the human need for play, though that theme comes into focus only towards the end.

Improv is where Perez most excels. Clowntown feels most alive when she is playing off unpredictable audience reactions, gleefully leaning into the ensuing chaos. So the games proved a delight, as does Perez’s running dialogue with an audience member she dubs “Chelsea” (definitely not their name).

The final image of Clowntown captures its pros and cons perfectly: Perez battling a human-sized balloon animal, beating the massive inflatable into submission. What does that huge inflatable represent, exactly? Hard to say. But watching Perez writhe around in battle with an enormous dog-shaped balloon? A delight.

– Joey Sims, New York Correspondent

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