What I liked
A truly challenging piece for its cast. Every actor is tasked with portraying duel roles, and in a way that seems utterly disparate for much of its runtime. This means that the actors have to convince you of two stark realities, two sets of fully-realized characters, and get you invested in both as you watch the scenes toggle back and forth between the two storylines until they ultimately converge. That’s a hard thing to do under any circumstances, particularly in a micro-budget micro-tech black box play. Kudos to all four of them for rising to the task.
What I didn't like
There are moments where the transitions took me out of the experience, though it seems inevitable when there are so many moving pieces and only 4 actors (who also serve as the play’s crew) to accomplish them. It was not prohibitive to my experience of the piece, just the one element that I can point to that I felt tugging at my engagement with the work being done during the scenes themselves.
My overall impression
I went into this experience completely blind, not knowing what to expect. What I found was a play that intended to keep me in that intellectual and emotional space of queasy uneasiness through most of its runtime, right up until its ambitious, cathartic, and ultimately transcendent climax. This play is akin to a rollercoaster that is built inside of a pitch black room – like Magic Mountain or The Mummy – you don’t know where you’re going and often you can’t completely sense where you are, but that disorientation only serves to make the story’s banks, drops, and thrills more effective. It will certainly not be every audience’s cup of tea (not for the faint of heart, both viscerally and thematically), but for those who can give into the play’s unique, intentionally oppressive, power, a deeply thought provoking and moving piece of theater lies waiting for them as the lights rise and the talented cast takes its bow.
