Review Rundown: The One With Pirates & Cowboys
And wait… are those priests? Monks? Who are they? (THREE REVIEWS)
This time out we’ve got Cowboys in London, Pirates in Salem, Mass, and a radio piece by Samuel Beckett given a physical dimension in Manhattan.
Last week’s Rundown, the one with The Denver Fringe? It’s right here.
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Cascando — NYU Skirball and Pan Pan Theatre
$35; Manhattan, New York; Run Concluded
How do you get an audience to listen to a full half-hour of experimental abstract content? Pan Pan Theatre tackles this problem with Samuel Beckett’s radio piece Cascando by having you listen to the piece over headphones as part of a procession. Donning identical black robes, the audience forms a queue and marches slowly through Washington Square Park and the surrounding streets while listening to three tracks — two monologues and one musical composition — that take turns sharing an internal reflection on existentialism and progress.
The text of Cascando is ambiguous and repetitively loops around a few themes, so the piece works well as an audio tour. You can drift a bit in the monologues and music as you want without worrying about losing the thread of the narrative. The performances by Andrew Bennett and Daniel Reardon are compelling and the musical composition by Jimmy Eadie works well with them. And there’s certainly something interesting about walking in a public procession with a group of twenty people in identical black robes.
Unfortunately, none of these elements seem connected. The purpose of the tour was to have you meander through the streets and encounter random exercise classes and first dates and curious strangers, but this all seemed very haphazard, lacking purpose. How was this performance different from just listening to Cascando on my phone while walking to the subway?
The structure of an audio tour was the right approach to the work, but the specific path brought a lot of randomness into the work that lacked meaning and intent. I respect what Pan Pan Theatre did to make Cascando listenable, but I wish there was more connection between what I was doing in the world and what I was hearing in my headphones.
– Nicholas Fortungo, New York City Correspondent
Full Winds In Her Top Sails — Intramersive Media LLC
$30; Salem, MA; Run Concluded
Intramersive Media is known for producing shows that bring history (and historic spaces) to life. Their work is playful and well-researched, meant to imbue their subjects with a sense of modern relatability. So when Intramersive turned their attention to queer pirate icons Mary Read and Anne Bonny for this year’s Pride Month, I was excited to see what they had up their bishop sleeve.
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Full Winds In Her Top Sails is an interactive production that puts us in a tavern with Read, Bonny, and Captain Calico Jack Rackham as they search for new crewmates amongst the crowd. The heart of this show lies in our trio’s stories of love and rebellion, which focus heavily on queer themes of strength in community. These stories were told with such kindness and authenticity that everyone in the audience felt safe bringing their own stories of adversity to the table, allowing Intramersive to really make the transition from interactive theatre to LARP.
Because Full Winds isn’t just one thing — it’s a mashup that combines elements of LARP, storytelling, improv, traditional theatre, and immersive environments — the comparison that keeps coming to mind for me is “Renaissance Faire but less cheesy.” Almost everyone attending Full Winds is in costume. There are lots of dirty jokes. You can pretend to be a character if you want, or you can just hang out and do your own thing. The difference is that Full Winds sheds light on queer erasure in history… and doesn’t serve turkey legs.
With Real Pirates Salem as the show’s backdrop, there’s plenty of (less queer, more… traditional) history to explore when you’re not vying for piratical attention. Artifacts from the Whydah’s 1717 shipwreck combine with the exhibit’s already theatrical staging into a ready-made immersive environment that’s perfect for this type of one-off event.
— Leah Davis, New England Correspondent
PREVIEW: Phantom Peak — The League of Adventure / fever
£34–39; London, UK; Sept. 18
It’s shaping up to be a rootin’-tootin’ rip-roarin’ rowdy summer in London, y’all.
Phantom Peak hasn’t quite opened yet but our preview visit to fever’s new venue in Canada Water made quite the impression. Built in the shadow of the monumental Printworks festival facility, Phantom Peak looks dwarfed from the street entrance but is most certainly bigger on the inside and promises more than four dozen different adventures within its borders.
An Americana-western-steampunk-inspired town built along a man-made canal with hidden caves as well as a log ride(!), the city of Phantom Peak is populated with citizens, visionaries, and even a few robots. The locals have their own ideas about what’s going on around here, and visitors are expected to stick their noses into everyone’s business. With 52 mission trails to follow (each lasting between 10–25 minutes and a special collectible available at the end of each one), there’s at least 2–3 visits worth of adventures with new storylines & missions anticipated at the turn of each season.
Food and drink will be available (Phantom Peak is a fully vegan/vegetarian town and stocks from local breweries) and entry sessions are for up to 5 hours, so it’s easy to stop in for a spell or visit for dinner and the show. Newcomers to the immersive realm can dip a toe in, while fervid fans can receive repeat-visit rewards for extensive engagement.
Whether passing through town or looking to make a full day/night of it, Phantom Peak promises to be one of the immersive destinations of the summer and hopefully extends through several more seasons. Though there are a few other Old West-themed productions popping up this year with Phantom Peak likely being the largest in scale, this town is certainly big enough for all of ’em, partner.
— Shelley Snyder, London Curator
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