‘The Place You Once Forgot’ Is A Warm, Digital Hug (Review)

(Minor spoilers follow.)

The Place You Once Forgot is one of the oddest little shows I’ve done over the last several months of pandemic-era digital theatre. It’s a Zoom sandwich, if you will. But more of a tiny crustless high tea sandwich, perhaps, as it is as light as a feather. Truly, this is a fragile little wisp of a show. And now that I think about it, I now think that a petit four is a more apt comparison: The Place You Once Forgot is short, sweet, doesn’t overstay its welcome. (But I digress.)

Luckily for us, the pieces of “bread” in this Zoom sandwich come courtesy of a stalwart of the Los Angeles immersive theatre scene, Terence Leclere, whose character “The Place” provides a warm, meta-welcome to the experience via telephone. We begin with a good, old-fashioned phone call where Leclere reminds me that I’ve bought a ticket to a show today. He then describes how The Place You Once Forgot used to work in its IRL version at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where he would meet participants somewhere busy, in public, and personally escort them to the intimate live experience.

Leclere has a way of speaking that’s simply hypnotic; his poetic, dulcet tones quickly put me at ease as we ponder what the equivalent of people-watching in a hotel lobby might be these days or look deeply at the strange ugliness of Zoom URLs. Am I ready to start? Let’s take a moment.

Having someone turn the act of dialing into a Zoom call into a calming, thoughtful ritual isn’t something I really believed I needed, but it works in this context.

I hang up the phone and click on the link.

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I next meet The Story (Karlie Blair), an innocent-looking character in pigtails and pajamas who confesses having trouble sleeping; she’s tucked away in a cozy looking corner while ethereal music plays languidly in the background. We work together over webcam to formulate a bedtime story using a series of postcards and sticker books as prompts. The tale we co-create involves a tropical island at sunset and a hungry hen who is hungry and looking for a snack; I giggle a little as we discuss the ways that our hen friend could attempt to find sustenance. I suggest shaking ripened fruit out of a tree; she takes the idea and runs with it. It’s a charming little encounter that does exactly what it sets out to do: make a bedtime story for adults.

My next encounter is with The Key (Megan Combes) who turns up the energy a notch. Her whimsical set is filled with things that shine and sparkle and appropriately fantastical music plays; I feel a bit overwhelmed but admire her makeup; she looks like a fairytale being who has come to life. We play a “this or that?” kind of guessing game that results in a “recipe” that she customizes for me by shouting into a vase; I am aware it sounds ridiculous on paper, but trust me, it fits right into the The Place You Once Forgot experience.

Ultimately, my time with The Key ends on an activity that I’ve come to find awkward when done over webcam: a shared drawing ritual. There’s something about holding my sketches up to the camera to show the other person what I’ve done that makes me feel like I’m back in grade school again, doing a mandatory show-and-tell for the class. That said, I did appreciate the nuance and care with which Combes instructed me to do this ritual. (But I must confess as soon as we were done, the symbols I’d scratched out on printer paper for The Place You Once Forgot didn’t seem that meaningful to me.)

And, as might be expected, the experience’s closing chapter is another short but sweet phone call from The Place. Leclere once again succeeds at his role by gently putting a tidy button on the whole thing, tying together all the disparate childhood-related themes from the show (someone should really cast him in a telephone-centric play, I swear).

Satisfied, I hang up, holding my mug of hot chocolate in my hands. I can feel the weight of the cozy woolen blanket that I’d pulled around my shoulders earlier. I take a deep breath. And I smile. I can’t remember what I’d been worrying about previously and I can’t remember why I’ve been stressed. Which I suppose is precisely the point of The Place You Once Forgot. I needed to take the time to remember the other things in life.

The Place You Once Forgot will return in early 2021.

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