Note: several spoilers follow in the review below.
The experience begins as soon as you enter the lobby of the abandoned school in Brookline that serves as the production's venue. The lobby replicates a speak-easy from the 20's, complete with band and period-style drinks. This 'club' serves as a safe-zone, a liminal area between the outside world and the world of the play. As you enter the space, audience members (from here on, I will call them participants) are given masks that serve both practical and artistic functions. For one thing, the only people not wearing masks are the performers themselves (ushers wear black masks) so that they can be identified easily by participants. The masks also create an anonymous audience unable to see each other's reactions to the environment or acted material. As we moved through the space this alienating effect profoundly changed the way participants moved and interacted with each other. Participants are also discouraged from talking on their way into the space, thus fully controlling the ambient sounds in the environment and heightening the distancing effect.
Once released into the theatrical environment, we discovered that space was organized into discrete rooms based on imagery and thematic elements. Hallways themselves often served to increase feelings of continuity or discontinuity between rooms, therefore producing an overall design effect that perfectly balanced the disjointed chronology of the acted performances with painstakingly-produced detail. Indeed, the level of detail present in the design convincingly entraps the participants in this dream-like and labyrinthine world, the sheer scale of which overwhelms the imagination.
The performances themselves take place on tracks that make up over ten hours of acted work over the course of an evening. The performers (at least, that we saw) were silent, at times cognizant of participants and interacting with them, and at times seemingly ignorant of their presence. The silence of the performers focused all the attention of the participants on the actions and imagery surrounding them, while the interactions (or lack thereof) with the audience destabilized their perceptions of the same, since it was impossible to judge when or where such interactions would take place. Participants were able to follow actors from room to room, or not, as they wished. For me, this convention effectively called up specific lines and situations from the play out of step with the chronological context of the original play, and each 'scene' presented a novel and bold exploration of the space and metaphor that seemed to be its subject.
As the evening progressed, a kind of psychological terror set in. As mentioned before, wearing a mask limited the ability of participants to see and differentiate each other. Additionally, the labyrinthine and massive qualities of the space seemed to be designed to confound our ability to get from one point to another with efficiency. Not only is the action of the play decidedly non-linear, but the very act of moving through the space inevitably enhances this concept.
All in all, I will be going back to see more of this remarkable and ground-breaking experience. This kind of immersion proves again that theatre has much more to offer experientially than any other medium. Indeed, the piece harnesses every possible sense and artistic medium to create its powerful effects.The power of the interactions in this space have profound consequences for the way one thinks of Shakespearean imagery, and I think, successfully brings it to life through means I have never imagined. I will continue to update my experience with the production as I continue to attend.
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Paul! I love the concept of your blog! mwah!
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