Review: “Last Gasp”

A comedy about a sex industry startup attempts to explain what it is that women want in bed with Artificial Intelligence.

Thomas (Hanjie Chow) and Evan (Matthew Schatz) are the embodiment of the modern-day American dream. A tech nerd and a business school dropout, they are best friends and partners in a startup with a mission to revolutionize the female orgasm with a "smart" vibrator. But it is not easy to make in Silicon Valley. By the time we meet those two at their San Francisco lab (refurbished from a dentist's office), their million-dollar idea hangs on a shoe-string budget. With her expertise in investment and a much-needed female perspective, Denise (Kyla Sylvers) is their best shot at saving the company. But will this business triangle withstand the pressures of arrogance, mistrust and budding romantic feelings?

Hanjie Chow, Matthew Schatz, and Kyla Sylvers in Last Gasp. Photo by Ahron Foster.

Last Gasp by Jeff Smith is a chamber production tackling a massive topic. Written in the style of a sitcom, kind of like The Big Bang Theory, the play relies on the characters’ charisma. Unfortunately, the cast, led by director Dan Dinero, has somewhat unsettled chemistry (understandable considering that Chow only joined the production a day before the first performance). However, Chow does a great job portraying a self-conscious genius with a fish, Holmes, as a sidekick. Schatz nails it as a sly salesman obsessed with his body shape. And Sylvers follows the unbeaten path performing female sexuality as calm and powerful as opposed to neurotic, mysterious, or any other cliche.

Despite Thomas’s occasionally smutty slogans like “Opening minds through opening the legs,” the play navigates the dangerous intersection of sex and business relationships smartly. The characters start with assumptions based on gender stereotyping and awkward flirting. Then they go through a sober and constructive debate on taboo topics. They arrive at a post-gender vision of sexual pleasure rooted in care and not in self-serving greed.

In the days of AI living in our bedrooms, how are human sexuality, and the female orgasm in particular, really affected? I wish the playwright had had the guts to go all the way down this path, instead of circling around and spending time on “smart” verbiage. It's interesting that the play parallels questions of control, collaboration, and creativity in both pleasure and business, but I had hoped the answers would be more satisfying. One might argue with Last Gasp’s answer to the question “What do women want?” but it is certainly interesting to hear it out.

[Editor's Note: Director Dan Dinero is also Theasy's Editor in Chief, but he had no part in this review.]

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Last Gasp plays at The Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, through August 24, 2019. The running time is 1 hour and 40 minutes without an intermission. Performances are Thursdays through Saturdays at 7, and Sundays at 3. Tickets are $50 and are available at lastgasp.show.

Last Gasp is by Jeff Smith. Directed by Dan Dinero. Set and Props Design by Lauren Barber. Costume Design by Sonya Plenefisch. Lighting Design by Elizabeth M. Stewart. Lighting Associate is Eden Guill. Stage Manager is Chiara Johnson.

The cast is Hanjie Chow, Matthew Schatz, and Kyla Sylvers.

(This review was published on theasy.com on 8.24.19)

Review: "NOIRTOWN"

NYC’s WITNESS rethinks the iconic film noir archetypes of a Private Eye and Femme Fatale

- Are you a very good detective?

- No. But some would say I am the best.

A private eye, John Beckett, and a woman in a burgundy dress lock eyes five feet away from me in the dimly lit cabaret. She introduces herself as Vivian but he calls her Effie, suspecting she might be somebody he met a while ago. She looks troubled. He glares with the excitement of a person whose work is driven by passion, not money. “What’s on her mind? Will he be able to help her?” — those questions race through my head and, before I know it, half of the audience storms out of the theatre chasing an unseen character into a labyrinth of hallways. I decide to stay, unable to turn my eyes away from Effie. Little did I know, she is not the only femme fatale in this detective story.

Stephanie Salgado and Daniel Harray in Noirtown. Photo by Carly Hoogendyk 

NOIRTOWN, an immersive play produced by WITNESS, is staged in the Lower East Side’s Clemente Soto Velez, and is a part of Rave Theater Festival. It draws on the aesthetics of film noir and invites the audience to follow one of three cases, each investigated by a different detective. The note given out upon entry explains the mechanics of the experience: we are free to follow any of the characters, we can not speak or touch anything. This brief “onboarding” is somewhat ambivalent regarding the intended way to perceive the show. So I take liberty and switch tracks a few times by following each of three detectives. Thanks to the genius structural design, or by pure chance, I ended up with a complex, coherent story, which blew my mind.

Chance or not, this multi-track immersive play, written by Michael Bontatibus is probably the best specimen of this genre I have ever seen. It is complex in the way that it intertwines the three storylines, (spoiler) taking place in 1929, 1938 and 1960, bending the border between reality and imagination. But at the same time it has resounding clarity, culminating in the resolution of the cases. I deliberately don’t want to go into the details of the plot to reserve the pleasure of uncovering a mystery for future audiences. After all, retelling a personal experience with some immersive shows is a little bit like explaining a magic trick. I sincerely hope that NOIRTOWN will be produced again after its short, sold-out festival run. So let’s keep it a secret for now. Which doesn’t prevent me from sharing what exactly made the show a success and what can be further explored by the creators.

NOIRTOWN would benefit from a location that could better accommodate a few dozen audience members more than it currently hosts, or by decreasing the size of the audience. There are three main spaces where action takes place: a theater with a bar, a detective’s office and a warehouse, all connected by corridors. The rooms themselves are big enough, but you can’t squeeze through the hallways without bumping into somebody. When the scene unfolds in one of those transition spaces, it is nearly impossible to catch a glimpse of it unless you happen to be one of five people in its immediate proximity. It reminded me of a situation when something happens on the street and a crowd of onlookers starts gathering around. Those who join late can at least ask the person next to them what happened. Unable to talk, we didn’t have the pleasure of socializing over an incident. Not knowing, in some cases, maintains the suspense. In this situation it is just frustrating and disappointing. I saw a lot of people jumping off to a different track in moments like this, which might prevent the emotional investment into a character’s fate.

As for the minimalistic scenic design by Lauren Barber, one can tell that it is born out of budget limitations and the necessity to unfold and fold the scenery momentarily for quick turnaround. But the barebone approach works, largely due to the aesthetic of the existing space. Parquet floors, tall arched windows and heavy doors painted in government-issued white evoke nostalgia. Seats in the theatre are spread cabaret-style to allow the actors to move between them. Red velvet wings frame the stage area and there is a functioning bar to the side of it. The walls of the “warehouse” are covered with plastic sheets and there is no furniture save for a bench and a payphone on the wall. The detective’s office consists of a desk and a coat hanger. These scarce site-evocative design elements are just enough to create an outline, an idea of certain room, creating a surreal effect of suspension in a dream, a memory or a fantasy.

The usage of projections isn’t always clear or necessary, largely because the setup interferes with minimalistic set design. There are sizable projection stations in both the “warehouse” and the “detective’s office” with stagehands manning them and the lights. Planted close to the middle of each room, they attract unnecessary attention, an effect not justified by the content of the videos they play. In the detective’s office, the projection shows the inside of the office window, with Beckett’s name on it, a mostly decorative shot. Bridging the gap between film and theatre is a daring artistic move but it needs more attention to both the idea behind it and its execution.

The chiaroscuro lighting with its strong contrast between shadow and light is signature to film noir aesthetics. The lighting designer, Elizabeth M. Stewart, did her research well and was able to achieve the thrilling dramatic effects with very modest means. Sound by Trey McGee and Jamie Amadruto contributes to the atmosphere with the period music. Even the performances of the cast, directed by Charlotte Murray, are styled to mimic the classic noir films of the 40s and 50s, with articulated, rapid speech and dialogues reminiscent of a fencing match. The tension between a cynical private eye and a mysterious femme fatale is palpable in nearly every scene. From that alone the sense of danger and urgency spreads out, contaminating the room, making me want to follow the characters running.

As the play progresses, scenes are getting shorter and I find myself moving faster, my heart pounding. It’s fascinating how even without engaging the audience members through interaction or role playing, NOIRTOWN makes me a part of the story by simply allowing me to synchronize my biological rhythm with the rhythm of the show. I saw some people getting discouraged by the claustrophobic bottle-neck effect created in the hallways and switching to a different character or simply staying in one room. And I saw some people elbowing their way through, Sleep No More-style. I can’t account for their experiences but I imagine the “easiest” way to watch NOIRTOWN would be to simply follow a single case. It’s not always easy to do for reasons external and internal: crowds and FOMO (fear of missing out). So I found a compromise to enjoy the show that worked for me.

On several occasions the characters of all three stories come together on stage in delirious nightmare-like scenes (dance choreography by Kellyn Thornburg) and then scatter again. I found that this is the best time to jump onto a different track, because all the scenes would start at once, so I wouldn’t be walking into the middle of a dialogue. My attempt to follow all three plotlines created a bit of vertigo, a sensation quite appropriate for NOIRTOWN. By the end it all came together, yet I’d love to come back to dive deeper into each of the plotlines and find myself, once again, in the atmosphere of dangerous, seductive and oneiric world of film noir.

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NOIRTOWN plays as part of the Rave Theatre Festival at Teatro Latea,107 Suffolk Street, 2nd Floor, NYC through August 25th. $45. Limited tickets remain.

(This review was published on NoProscenium.com on 8.19.19) 

Review: "Those Before Us"

A site-specific dance and audio piece by Rebis reclaims the history of Governors Island for its marginalized inhabitants.

It's a short ferry ride from Manhattan to Governors Island, but it feels like you are in a parallel universe once you get there. By the time you reach Nolan Park, the location of Those Before Us, the city becomes a distant mirage. Time stops, trapped in shabby red-brick buildings drowning in the sea of greenery. Rebis, a collective of immersive experiences creators led by Katya Stepanov and Jesse Carrey, were able to harvest the sleepy, suspended energy of the island along with its history and pour it into Those Before Us. This meditative multimedia experience combines live dance with pre-recorded audio, delivered through Bose glasses, to expose the flaws of the past and set an intention for a better future.

Kerime Konur in Those Before Us. Photo by Mike Esperanze.

Besides smart glasses, audience members are supplied with a marked paper map of Nolan Park with specific locations for the experience. The hi- and low-tech combo is representative of the experience itself. Although it is about the past, it is set in the fictional "Terrarium," a place where nothing is real and memories roam around like ghosts. A male voice introduces the rules of engagement as we start, and pops up at the beginning and at the end of each audio track. This broader narrative frame smartly claims the public park as the space of the show. The quick intros and outros of the (several-minutes long) fragments help to navigate the experience (but can also take you out of the story in a way).

Audience members can follow one of the “memories” (one of the four dancers) from one location to the next to hear their story unfold sequentially. Or they can choose to stay in one location and listen to the fragments of the other three narratives. The dancers wear ribbons around their wrists, indicating the colors assigned to each story. The signs on the map and ribbons around the trees marking the locations have corresponding colors, so it’s easy to follow. The two-hour running time of the experience is enough to listen to every single track. I tried both modes, following two of the stories as they were danced out in front of me, and listening to the other two in random order. There is no right way to do it.

The beauty of Those Before Us is its flexibility. Those who reserved Bose glasses don’t even need to scan the codes, as the device reads geo-location and starts the appropriate track. However, if the technology fails or if there are not enough smart glasses, you can scan the QR code with your phone and use your headphones to get the same experience. (I can picture a version of the show without dancers, reduced to just the QR codes on the trees, which anybody can explore.)

Among the performers, Daan Bootsma is particularly expressive; he plays Marcus, the nephew of the West India Company owner who is sent to Governors Island (Noten Eylandt back in 1637) to oversee the construction and operation of a sawmill. From this character, we learn about the terrible treatment of the indigenous people by the corrupt local government, and I could see the confusion and pain coming from the powerlessness of this character. Another character from the island's past is Laura, whom we meet on the morning of her wedding day in 1878; as if listening to her thoughts or reading her diary, we learn about her many concerns regarding this marriage-for-status to a person she doesn’t love. The third voice is of a black soldier from 1917, who is stationed on the island but is bound to dirty service work and bad living conditions because of segregation. The final story is of a gay man in 1964, coming to terms with his sexuality and struggling to remain closeted.

Spanning the course of one day or several years, each personal story is representative of the oppression of colonization, patriarchy, racism, or homophobia. It is painful and bitter to listen to these stories, yet it is empowering to hear history told by those who were once on its periphery. The only thing that didn’t sit right with me is the fact that a white ally was the voice for the struggle of indigenous people, especially compared to the three other marginalized characters, who spoke for themselves. This discrepancy is even stranger considering the emphasis that the production puts on restoring justice for Native Americans (it ends in the American Indian Community House and lists the organization as an advisor).

Those Before Us reminded me that theatre is most powerful when it gives a voice to those who didn’t or don’t have it in their everyday lives. The voices of those before us are the roots of this experience. Site-responsive choreography creates a strong, magnificent trunk, and the technology supplying it is a lush canopy of leaves. Even if it changes, the remaining tree won’t lose the grace of its shape.

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Those Before Us played in Nolan Park on Governors Island through August 11, 2019. The running time was 2 hours with no intermission. For more information visit experiencerebis.com.

Those Before Us is by Rebis: Stephen Carrey-Chan, Jesse Carrey, Kimberly Dodson, Alex Spieth, and Katya Stepanov. Directed by Jesse Carrey. Produced by Jesse Carrey, Becca Barrett, and Rebis. Lead Experience Designer is Katya Stepanov. Costume Design by Olivia Hearn. Sound Design by Alex Ryaboy.

The cast is Daan Bootsma, Mallory Galarza, Kerime Konur, and Ashton Muniz. Voice actors are Jesse Carrey, Ashton Muniz, Grace Rao, Vincent Lidie, and Zach Fifer.

(This review was published on theasy.com on 8.7.19)