Review Rundown: This Immersive Thing Is Moidah, I Tells Ya

What’s scarier: being trapped in a rundown penitentiary with a bunch of ghouls, a séance, a murder mystery, or democracy?

You can pick your own flavor of fun or fright in this week’s grip of reviews from the Crew, and even grab a virtual cocktail along the way.

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Fight Night — Ontroerend Goed
$20-$48; on tour in the USA until 10/15

“Did you pay for your ticket tonight?”

“Do you trust the other people in this room?”

“Which are you? A little bit racist, a little bit sexist, a little bit violent, or none of the above?”

These were but a few of the many questions the audience was prompted to answer at Ontroerend Goed’s Fight Night this past weekend at EmersonArts in Boston. The show casts audience participants in the role of voters who must decide the winning candidate of the voting game each evening. Using small remotes reminiscent of class engagement clickers, the audience votes on various questions throughout the evening, some in relation to the candidates and others not so much. What ensues is a deeply compelling analysis of modern democracy and the many flaws it may fall into.

Ontoerend Goed’s longstanding reputation for creating highly engaging, participatory work serves them well in this piece, which has been performed in different iterations since 2013. The audience participant experience is exciting, purposeful, and actually contributes to the structure of the piece instead of the more superficial meaningless participation opportunities that are quite popular in immersive and interactive work as of late. However, the piece lacks a strong onboarding, which may be purposeful.

At the start, audience participants are guided through how to use their clickers to vote, but that’s about where any sort of onboarding or boundary setting stops. Lights remain on through most of the show so folks can see their clickers, understandably, but as the piece progressed, the lack of boundary setting and informality of the audience being lit made it much easier for audience members to begin interjecting their own comments to the room during their show. It’s very possible this is intentional, as the social contract of theatre is further disrupted later in the experience, but it was a bit awkward to navigate without the formal guidance of the piece itself. This did not ruin the piece in the slightest, but rather added an intriguing layer of audience/voter behavior to the overall questions the piece was asking.

Fight Night is a clever piece that is incredibly apt for an election year, although I hope the USA’s voting goes a bit better than ours did in the theatre this weekend.

— Allie Marotta, NYC Curator

Halloween Nights at Eastern State Penitentiary
$39+; Philadelphia; through November 6

Four years in, the question automatically arises why I continue to review Eastern State’s Halloween Nights every year. Theoretically, we could link last year’s review and say “well, Philadelphians, check this great standard out.” The fact of the matter is, though, Eastern State continues to innovate and refine their production every year, and deserves the spotlight on their new features. The fact that they are able to consistently meet their ambition of a tasteful Halloween event at a historical prison, with a broad variety of entertainment options, is stunning.

While the core haunted houses remain, they all have received new levels of polish. Big Top Terror, their dark circus haunted house, now has more moments of interactivity and spectacular animatronic set pieces. The Crypt, historically the weakest house, has undergone an overhaul that brings it more in line with the other houses, although it still remains a somewhat weaker entry. Nightmares meanwhile, a catch all for the odder scene concepts of the creative team, continues to be the scariest house, now enhanced with new tech and expanded one-on-one scenes for those brave enough to wear the “full contact” glow necklace.

The addition of a linking storyline across the event, using character interaction and QR code lore drops, is overall a positive addition, but clearly a first draft. While fun, the actors were occasionally a little confused, traffic flow a little odd, and the faction system a bit lopsided. Nonetheless, it’s a step towards expanding the event that detracts nothing and provides a fun opportunity for improv stars. I received my favorite question, “do you work here”, once more as I was knighted by the villainous Hallow Queen, dramatically swearing fealty.

This year’s major additions are outside the houses though. Dedicated scare zones, closer to what would be found in an amusement park haunt, now scatter the grounds, but have more of an intimate quality that allows for some spectacular gags, including a must-see one-on-one in a dilapidated retro ice cream truck. The Bloodline Lounge, a vampire cabaret, has finally found its tone, and now matches the quality of the VIP only Al Capone’s Speakeasy. The live entertainment is plentiful enough and of a high enough quality I might even recommend the event for someone who can handle the light scares of roving actors but has no desire to set foot in a haunted house.

Tonally, the event has finally found enough confidence in its horror strengths to embrace some camp; between the ghost singing “I Don’t Care Much” from Cabaret, the vampire giggling her way through Patsy Cline’s “Crazy”, and The Boogie Monsters, a modern dance show with an extensive vogue section, my party pondered the distinctly queer sensibility the event has picked up. This, of course, culminated in us dancing The Time Warp with a corseted Count, confirming our suspicions. Still, this played well across the audience, Halloween Nights finally achieving its aim at providing Halloween entertainment for both scream fans, and those who come to the holiday for costumed spooky kitsch.

What more can I say? Mother Nosferatu drank and left no drips.

— Blake Weil, East Coast Editor-at-Large

The Mixologist — Flat Hill Games
$19.99; VR (Meta Quest, Steam); Available Now

From Flat Hill Games, The Mixologist is a VR simulator game where players pretend to be bartenders. Similar to its spiritual predecessor Clash of Chefs VR, players have to quickly make a large variety of drinks on the fly. There are two forms of gameplay, either a solo bartender-only timed-round campaign or multiplayer modes where up to two players can bartend while up to three others are patrons.

If you’re an immersive theatre gamer where narrative and agency are a must, The Mixologist is not for you. While a story is technically present, being that players work through 10 to 12 rounds at each bar to become the greatest mixologist ever, that’s the entire plot. Players are simply and only making drinks to score enough points to move onto the next round, with it never explained how the point system works. And as this is a simulator game, the experience only amounts to feeling like doing actual bartending and nothing more.

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Worse, this simulation doesn’t go far enough along with being unnecessarily punishing. Rather than having all liquors and mixers sitting out, they’re on a Lazy Susan conveyor belt in a random order. While lime and lemon juice are placed together, you’ll have to move the belt to find the pineapple and orange juice. Furthermore, it’s incredibly easy to not only spill drinks but miss pouring liquids into glasses. The Mixologist’s gameplay feels designed to be purposefully difficult rather than intentionally challenging.

Tragically, multiplayer modes are even less engaging. Publisher Noah Nelson and I played together, starting with him as bartender and I as a patron. After ordering my drink, all I could do was wait. Other than verbally ribbing Noah, I had no in-game actions to do and couldn’t pick up my drink when Noah served it. And while Noah could freely move around the space, I wasn’t as patrons are “glued” to their seats.

We then tried bartending together, which was the most fun I had in The Mixologist. But as the bartenders use the same space, we’d have to take turns searching the conveyor belt. And there is only one cocktail shaker and one ice scoop, so we constantly fought over using them.

The best thing The Mixologist has going for it is I’d rather hang out in these bars and do something with friends rather than stare at each other in an empty, bland Meta Horizon space. And in lieu of creating an in-game avatar, The Mixologist uses the player’s Meta Horizon avatar so if the avatar resembles yourself, it creates an illusion you’re hanging out with others in person.

While I appreciate studios like Flat Hill Games trying to create social VR experiences that don’t require gunplay, The Mixologist only recreates the tiring slog of working at a bar where no one cares if you’re there.

– Patrick B. McLean, Chicago Curator & Remote Experiences Editor

Speakeasy, Die Softly — Murder Mystery Co
$138.50; Manhattan; booking through Oct. 28th

As seen on Shark Tank, Murder Mystery Co. has brought immersive theatre to Broadway in their newest production, Speakeasy, Die Softly, which opened to the public last Friday, September 20.

After arriving at Carmine’s restaurant, guests are taken upstairs to a secret, all-new dinner theater, where they are greeted by actors in costume and invited to enjoy a drink, listen to live music, and play some roulette during the pre-show.

Then, surprise, surprise: there’s a moidah!

It’s the guests’ job to figure out whodunnit through multiple rounds of free-roaming detective investigation sessions, interspersed with clue-revealing vignettes from the actors, and, of course, three courses of Carmine’s cuisine.

The show is campy and fun and full of puns that would make even the Haunted Mansion tombstones chuckle in their… graves. Lou Zar, Keys Yacar, and Lucy Morals are just some of the suspects guests must keep an eye on, while attempting to solve the crime.

Perhaps my favorite moment of the night occurred during a police raid, where the speakeasy workers had to quickly convert the bar into a totally inconspicuous soda shop. It was cool to watch the space transform manically as the sirens wailed — and even cooler to help the actors place a giant fake cake over the roulette table seconds before a detective stormed in.

This kind of audience participation is paramount to Murder Mystery Co. founder, Scott Cramton, whose “goal is for people to leave with a story of something that happened to them.”

Giving agency and alcohol to audience members is high risk and high reward. But the very talented cast of Speakeasy, Die Softly rose to that challenge quite nicely, managing to win over a sold-out, slightly rowdy audience with plenty of well-earned laughs along the way.

Not to mention one particular call-and-response that never failed to make me smile — and quiet everyone down. When they say, “Ayeeeeeee,” you say, “Ayeeeeeeeee.” It was stupid and form-fitting, and I absolutely loved it.

Beyond that, the production employed other smart mechanics that will hopefully become mainstays in other immersive works: Did somebody say a “secret, post-show, bonus scene + song”?

On his long-term plans for the genre, Cramton said, “We’re hoping this is the start of immersive hitting the true mainstream.” I am, too.

Making immersive theatre — in all of its transportative, interactive storytelling magic — accessible and exciting to new audiences is no easy feat. But securing a location in the heart of the Theater District for a funny, smart, and charmingly interactive show is an important and impressive first step in this fight.

Keep the moidah coming.

— Alec Zbornak, NYC Correspondent

The Spirits’ Speakeasy — Monica Hammond & Sarah Sutliff
$79-$1790 (VIP for 10 people); Manhattan; through November 3rd

Utilizing space well is a critical part of live immersive work. It’s not a stretch to call it a defining characteristic of the form. Therein lies the issue with The Spirits’ Speakeasy. While there’s a lot of talent in the show, it’s simply the wrong performance for the box it’s in.

The Spirits’ Speakeasy is framed as a séance you’ve been invited to by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It’s a variety show of classic songs and magic tricks connected by a story asking whether the medium Margary is a psychic (as Doyle argues) or a fraud (as Harry Houdini claims). You rotate between seeing about 20 minutes of performance and then hanging out in Sincerely, Ophelia’s hip cocktail lounge. These performances are the strong part of the show. All of the actors are great and the brief story bits are solid. The songs are well sung and the magic is well magicked. The finale in particular is quite compelling as a piece of magic-driven storytelling. The content you see is great.

The issue is that it’s just not easy to see all the content. Sincerely, Ophelia is a small venue and when it’s crowded with people, it’s not navigable. The audience is divided between two rooms and the performances alternate between them, but it’s a tiny bar; nothing about the space encourages you to move around and it would be almost impossible to maneuver if you tried. So if a scene is happening in another room, you might not even hear it. And if 10 people stand in a doorway, you can’t cross it. I must have missed at least half of the story material just because I was seated in a tiny cabaret bar and nothing afforded my expectation or ability to get up and move. When a séance bit finally came to the room I was in, I was told it was the third and final one, but it was the first I had seen all night.

I cannot justify calling this show immersive or paying up to $179 to see it. The fraction of The Spirits’ Speakeasy I saw was solid and I commend the performers. But an immersive piece has to work in the space it’s in and Sincerely, Ophelia is simply not designed to allow a walkable multi-room experience. Unfortunately, the medium is what makes the séance and this was not the right medium.

— Nicholas Fortugno, New York Correspondent

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