Show: Trip Open
Company: Batting Eyelashes
Venue: Acadia
Die Roll: 13
Well, here's a show that I mentioned briefly before the festival got started. This is the show wherein the Director...no, wait...he calls himself an Experimental Designer...Anyway, in which the Director claims that with this show he is creating a "new paradigm of theatre."
Okay, making a statement like that is bold. It is akin to calling yourself a genius. A very few people can get away with that. So, I went into this show wanting to see if this theatrical whipper-snapper was going to make good on his promise.
What exactly was that promise? Well, in his blurb in the program he claimed to not be directing, but designing an experience for the audience. This is the point at which he lost me. First, you can't design another person's experience. You can design something to be experienced, and you can anticipate the experience that might be had, but you can't design a person's actual experience. My experience with this play is that I started to nod off part way through. Did he design that?!
What this production lacked was a director. Someone to guide it down a cohesive path and make the actors work together toward a vision and goal. Someone to watch what was going on and make sure it worked.
This is a play with potential. It needs at least one more rewrite, as there are huge leaps in the dialogue, the characters spout knowledge of each other that they have had no way of gathering. The banter is often forced, and there's a good bout of why-should-we-care going on. But, with good direction, some of thsoe weaknesses could have been addressed.
I'm not sure that this new paradigm was supposed to be, but what I found it to be was a production at the level of a college class project. I'm pretty sure that's been done before.
RATING: "d6 - Has Some Merit"
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