SHADOW (OF A) PLAY

Visually striking and radiating love and sincerity, Manual Cinema’s shadow-puppet show Ada/Ava, which attempts to explore septuagenarian Ada’s inner turmoil   after the death of her twin sister Ava, leaves one emotionally unsatisfied; for all of the production’s lovely elements the story is dull, the show boring.

Ada (Julia Miller) and Ava (Kara Davidson) have been inseparable all their lives. They live in and maintain a lighthouse, drink tea and play chess, until one day, when Ava nods off and doesn’t wake up. Ada, despondent, finds herself at a carnival, in a hall of mirrors, and ends up going into a nether world in search of her sister.

Were this a true journey the show might have worked despite its questionable premise: Ava dies in her 70s of natural causes, maybe it’s not all that imperative that her sister drag her back up from the underworld. But instead what we get is Ada encountering a bunch of random spooky things’”like people turning to skeletons’”instead of overcoming obstacles. The intention here is to illustrate her emotional and psychological states. In fact it’s weak, lazy writing. It doesn’t take much to come up with wacky hallucinations for a character; it’s much more difficult to invent a meaningful plot in which a character’s actions carry dramatic weight. Credited not as written but as created by Drew Dir, Sarah Fornace, Ben Kauffman, Ms. Miller, and Kyle Vegter, Ada/Ava desperately needs the services of a competent playwright.

Ada/Ava’s dramatic failings bring out flaws in the production which would have been forgivable otherwise, such as the fact that the puppeteers are in plain sight throughout the performance, even though their presence adds nothing to the show. And although most of the imagery’”created with hundreds of cutout puppets on 4 old fashioned overhead projectors’”ranges from clever to inspired, there are occasions when it is redundant and sloppy.

Still, with all its flaws, Ada/Ava is a curiosity that is worth a look, boasting an evocative, multilayered sound design by Ben Kauffman, as well as excellent music by Maren Celest, Michael Hilger and Kyle Vegter; especially captivating is Ms. Celest’s dreamy singing.

photos by Howard Ash

Ada/Ava
3-Legged Dog and Manual Cinema
part of The Tank’s Flint & Tinder
3LD Art & Technology Center
ends  on July 5, 2015
EXTENDED to July 26, 2015
for tickets, call 212 645-0374 or visit  3LD NYC