My overall impression
Resonating with the unifying theme of fantastic worlds created out of loneliness and loss, INSIDE EDGE OF THE WORLD explores yearning, whimsy, cults, serial killers, and stuffed menageries without cynicism or judgement.
What might’ve descended into a muddled hodgepodge with too many moving parts in a lesser artist and director’s hands, is engaging and laser focused without hitting the audience over the head.
Pasquarelli’s direction establishes clear conventions that keep the show moving and focused while clearly delineating its diverse, overlapping worlds.
Lopez’s charm, physical abandon, sense of play and earnestness carry the audience effortlessly through the more fancifully implausible connective threads in this darkly sentimental and eclectic collage.
By turns weird, grounded, touching, profound and puerile in equal measure, in a town where franchise reboots are king, it’s worth pointing out that IEOTW is an engagingly meditative narrative that could only live and thrive as a piece of well-executed and imaginative theater. Which is good, since that’s exactly what it is. See it. It won’t be on Netflix. As far as I know.
