A year ago, Life and Trust opened and promptly closed after only 210 performances. This Emursive production was the successor to Sleep No More, a much longer running show. Pictured is the bar at the Conwell Coffee Hall, a shop that doubled as the lobby for Life and Trust. Located a block south of Wall Street, we met Dan there for lunch. He had been doing set construction on this project for almost a year. The set was huge, six floors, 160 rooms. Both of these Emursive productions are part of a new theater trend called immersive theater. In these shows both the audience and the cast roam about the set and are allowed to intermingle. Dan and Britt got to see Life and Trust before it closed. I tried to take us all to see Sleep No More before it closed but was too late. As it turns out Emursive owed their landlord $4.5M in back rent. This may also have something to do with the quick demise of Life and Trust, which closed after only a brief run. Its reviews were positive too. I am reminded of The Producers, a show about theater flimflam artists. Dan got paid and got comped tickets too.
Last night, we did dinner and a show. Dinner was at Big Sky, and the show was the Rep’s production of Emma. This rather campy treatment of the Jane Austen novel of the same name was written by Kate Hamill. It is chuck full of modern reference, sexual inuendo and features extensive breaking of the fourth wall. Emma is the story of a wealthy aristocratic woman with a penchant for meddling in other people’s lives. Set during England’s Regency period this show is a comical mix of 18th-century mores and modern sensibilities. It makes for an amusing and light fare, perfect for entertaining the holiday crowds.
We are a week out from Halloween, the height of the scary season. Decorations litter neighborhood lawns. So, it is natural or rather unnatural to expect spooky themed entertainment to abound. For a month now streaming services have bulked up on Halloween fare. The Reps latest offering, The Woman in Black, is similarly themed. Based upon Susan Hill’s gothic horror novel, as adapted for the stage by Stephen Mallatratt, it is currently the second longest running play in London’s West End. Cast members from that production performed in Saint Louis for this show. The cast is small, just three actors.
The Woman in Black is based on the Susan Hill gothic horror novel of the same name. It follows an accountant, Arthur Kipps, hired to review the accounts of the deceased Alice Drablow. He travels to Mrs. Drablow’s country manor house to discover, in the manner of all great ghost stories, disturbing noises and a mysterious woman in black with a skeletal face. The Woman in Black has all the tropes of gothic horror: a house in the middle of a formidable countryside, a room with a locked door holding a mysterious secret, and a woman gone mad haunting the house. And as Kipps explores the house, as an audience member, there’s an urge to shout, “Don’t open the door!” horror-film style—New York Theater Guide
This play makes repeated use of the jump scare, a technique in horror, designed to startle an audience by using a sudden, unexpected image or sound. These scares often rely on building suspense and then disrupting it with a loud noise or a shocking visual, like a creepy face, to elicit a physical reaction such as a gasp or a startle. While they can be effective when used with a slow build-up, they are often considered a controversial and sometimes cheap tactic, when overused.
I am not a big fan of horror. I find that there are more than enough horrible people in real life that reaching for something supernatural is superfluous. This play makes use of many tropes. In addition to that jump scare thing, its whole setting is bordering on the cliché “it was a dark and stormy night” territory. This play also uses the old play within a play crutch, or rather a rehearsal within a play, since what we are presented is supposed to be a rehearsal. Still, I can see why this show has aged so well. Its small cast makes it economical to produce. Its smaller set design makes it cheaper still. Horror has always been an avenue for low budget entertainment. If you turn off all of the lights, the audience is left alone in the dark with only their imagination for company. It is upon this facet that this show preys best.
This violin is the focus for the second of five automatons that Dan made earlier this year for a show in NYC. The first, a pair of opera gloved hands clapping was previously featured here. The gloves were my mom’s. As always when posting about Dan’s work I must be somewhat circumspect, but this week with the opening of the immersive theater show Masquerade the “gloves” have mostly come off. Masquerade is a version of Phantom of the Opera. Reviews have been positive. Playwright Andrew Lloyd Webber approved this production and even came to see a performance. Dan finished and delivered his five pieces before coming to the cabin, but while vacationing in Michigan all of the wheels came off sort-of-speak. Dan was able to put all to right upon his return to NYC. Anyway, he got paid and might also get comped tickets to see the show. This show has a dress code. He might have to rent a tux.
This is not Dan’s first foray into immersive theater. Last year, he worked for almost a year on another show called Life and Trust. We visited him in NYC near the end of his employment there. Emursive, the production company. had previously produced the highly successful Sleep No More and when we visited Dan, I got us all tickets for that show, but arriving at the theater that night we were shutout. Sleep No More closed quickly afterwards. As it turns out Emursive owed their landlord $4.5M in back rent. This may also have something to do with the quick demise of Life and Trust, which closed after only a brief run. Its reviews were positive too. I am reminded of The Producers, a show about theater flimflam artists. Anyway, Dan got paid and he also got comped tickets.
The Cottage is an airy—and gassy—comedy about cheating. Set in the English countryside of the Twenties, this Noël Coward style sendup is an amusing little farce. The title and setting of this play is a family’s country getaway. In the East and I guess in England such dwellings are referred to as cottages. While, here in the Midwest we call them cabins. These summer homes can range from modest affairs to fabulous mansions such as in Newport, RI. The set for this show would seem to indicate that this play’s cottage favors the latter.
Weird how MAGA went from “they must pay!” to “we must pray!” the minute they found out it was a white dude. Too bad the shooter did not fit their narrative. I think that it is time that we move on and release the Epstein files. It is what Charlie Kirk would have wanted.
Dan has repurposed a pair of formal ladies’ gloves that were once my mothers. They have been incorporated into an automaton that he created for an upcoming show. It shows a woman applauding. It is just one of a series of these unique automatons that he made. Other creations in this suite include a disembodied playing violin and a horse’s head. He likes the work. He is very good at it and other people seem to like it too. He has just finished this job and now has two more job offers. One of these jobs calls for building devices that are computer controlled, and he plans on using a Raspberry Pi for that. I assume that the noise of the mechanism will be drowned out by the music from the show, but I hope that the metronome will still be heard. He has been making these copper filament creations since art school. I find it interesting after all of these years of working in movies and TV, he finally seems to have found some traction with live theater. Lookout Broadway, because here he comes!
