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What I liked

The actors were really giving it their all, Athena Reddy as Caligos especially. Everyone performed with conviction without leaving nuance behind.

The idea of a dam being the setting of a genre play is also really strong and part of what sold me on going in the first place.

And I thought the description of a certain fictional videogame was especially apt and relevant- it felt very true to the experience of being a kid and playing something weird and a little offputting (and it transitioned to another realization in an interesting way I’d never seen before), and also very relevant to the genre and motifs of the play as a whole.

Generally the anecdotes each character described of past moments in their lives felt very vividly personal and human.

The use of sound effects for something near the end (different sound effects relevant to different people), was a very poetic yet direct way to resolve certain things, and helped tie together the monologues to the plot in a more definite way.

I appreciated the use of a character whose main genre-role is that they’re Not affected by the thing that everyone else is- it’s an underrated trope that provides a lot of interesting contrast and helps make the world feel lived-in.

I also appreciated some of the representation, which I won’t get into for spoilery reasons.

What I didn't like

The plot felt a little faded and disappeared in some parts, and overall it’s very monologue-based, and somewhat hard to follow at times as a result (the anecdotes of past moments were a bit easier than the more existential/lore parts).

It felt like it could’ve used a bit more propwork as well- most of the time the stage was completely empty of anything aside from the actors and maybe one handheld object.

(Aside from one rolling chair, which I have to give credit to as one of the more visually interesting parts, even if I don’t fully understand why it was used as much as it was- but it was a unique character trait, which was a plus.)

The actors also really went all-in on shouting some of their lines, which echoed a bit in the theatre and at times made it harder to hear what was being said (I do also have Auditory Processing Disorder, so I’m more likely to have this problem in general- but it seemed to get in the way more here than in any other play).

I also feel like the vagueness of the dam maybe worked against it a little bit- I’m very familiar with some of the media cited as an influence on this play, so I understand the idea of plot minimalism, or the power of implication- but I don’t feel like I ever fully got a sense of what genre the dam was, other than “horror.”

Did it eat people? The thing it’s revealed to have- was that always there, or was this just the latest weirdness? Was it really on other planets? Suggestions of what it was- including the most interesting possibilities- seemed to float in and out of the equation without much commitment to any specific one. There were some things that implied it was alive, and others that implied that it was something else.

My overall impression

The show is hard to summarize, with strikingly good writing for basic experiences, but a bit more fuzziness around the more complicated or plot-important concepts.

I think it’s one of those mixed bags that’s worth seeing with other people and then discussing- it has a lot for that.

Despite the lack of much in the way of props or setpieces, the ambiance somehow still remains strong- most likely in large part due to the actors themselves.