goestoshow

The Aleatory Project: an experiment in fate (I keep accidentally typing faith there, and for good reason) is a play that is partially constructed as it’s performed. Supposedly the variables in the play make it so there are as many as 512 variations. The variation we saw was, in my opinion, pretty poignant. The basic premise, that supposedly all performances have in common, is that there are two people in a hotel room for a night and they play a card game that’s designed to help them get to know each other better. The relationship they have to each other and even their characters are determined by things like the coin toss that happens at both the beginning and end of the play, the card game, and the time on the clock when a particular event in the play occurs.

I like the idea. Normally I’m not very fond of improv (because it’s usually either extremely rehearsed *cough*Who’s Line is it Anyway?*cough*, or just really bad *cough*Theatresports when I’ve gone*cough*), but this struck a pretty good balance. Especially interesting was what happened when they got the Joker the first time (they got it twice). They swapped roles, reversing the decision made by the first coin toss of the story. Some of the cards seemed underdeveloped or even like they didn’t really know what to do with them, but mostly it was pretty interesting.

At halfway through the play, a ticking clock noise signaled what I think was a freezing of the characters so that no more ‘discoveries’ were made through the cards, and the plot started to evolve on it’s own, and that’s where it really becomes interesting.

I’d definitely see this one again, and one of the interesting things about it is that in order to prove that it’s really different every time *they give away tickets to the next showing* at the end. So if their claim holds true, you can actually see two plays for the price of one, which is a pretty good deal. Unfortunately, tomorrow’s showing is at a time I can’t do, so we didn’t grab tickets for it. But I would have taken them otherwise.

The Bible: The Complete Word of God, Abridged was pretty damn funny. It only got two stars in The Journal, but I think the review was needlessly harsh. Despite being largely about making fun of the Bible, it does it in a pretty respectful way, and when they claim that they are “one christian and two jews,” it’s pretty believable. So I actually kind of recommend it to religious folk, who may get more of a kick out of it than I do.

It was funny, and it was worth the $10. Not much more to say about it than that.

Yellow Fever was one we meant to go to, but we made a point of going to it when we found out that an old colleague of Nancy’s was involved in making it (and it appears to be basically a family production). It’s supposed to be about growing up as a a Japanese-Canadian girl and some other related stuff. And it might very well be. But unfortunately, I’m really not very good at all at interpreting interpretive dance. I got the childhood stuff from some origami things she did (at the start a crane, at the end one of those finger toys kids use to do fortune telling (Nancy says it’s a MASH game, for “Mansion, Apartment, S(omething), House”). And there were bits where she was dancing like she was having sex or something. But other than those bits I really have no idea what was going on, so I can’t say anything more than that. The dancing was well choreographed though.

Twisted Things was just plain strange. The description in the guide involved a woman and her crack-addict cat, which was definitely intriguing. I was expecting more zany and less angst, though. The premise is that there’s a woman who lives with her deranged, jealous, and lame (literally) cat. She’s more or less permanently depressed due to the death of her boyfriend quite a while back (he died at a rave by drowning after taking ecstasy). She goes out one night and meets a guy — identified primarily by the statement: “Pump. 28. Scar.” — and of course her cat gets jealous. Making the cat, and pump for that matter, even more jealous is the fact that she’s also starting to spend time with the unloved dog next door.

Basically, nobody ends this play really happy. Let’s just say the cat does something really nasty, Pump gets what he wants and then leaves, and the end is even more depressing than the beginning. But that’s all well and good for the type of play it is. If you’re in the mood for that, it’s great.

What could potentially kill it (at least for me), is the crows (yes, even more anthropomorphism) who act as chorus. Unfortunately, their random jumping around stage and throwing of a step ladder and bad-Poe-style rantings make things a bit more juvenile than they really need to be. The rest of it mitigates the crows, but I’m not sure it’s really good enough to rise above it.