What I liked
The props and lighting, as well as when the actors would physically change their body to switch from narration to dialogue, helped differentiate the two roles each actor had.
What I didn't like
I would love to see even stronger and more dramatic changes in the actor’s physicality when they are switching from being the character to narrating, so that it reads super clearly on stage. Particularly for the role of the Nun, her narration can be quite similar to the character’s voice because the character is also eloquent and well spoken, so it can be harder to separate the two. I would love to see an extreme shift in maybe the nun’s cadence, tone of voice, how she holds herself, etc like we did with the role of the Stranger. Additionally, I think microphones might help with clarity in future performances. There’s a lot of text and I didn’t want to miss any of it, but the distance from the audience to the stage mostly contributed to that, you both projected very well otherwise.
Some of the lighting cues were responding to descriptions in the text, but I wish all of them would have happened when the line was spoken. Some of them happened just a bit before or just a bit after. I feel like writing for the stage in the style of a novel works really well when paired with technical cues that are very snappy. I also would have loved some sound design, and I think it would have contributed to building the atmosphere that the two narrators were describing to us.
I really enjoyed this performance overall!
My overall impression
Spooky and Atmospheric, with writing that felt like a staged book-reading. Very cool concept.
