SHORT ON WICKED; SHORTER ON LIT

While Knott’s Scary Farm has been doing it for decades with its haunted mazes, interactive theater is gaining ground nationwide as a way to address dwindling and/or disinterested theatergoers. Live performances are battling with the internet’s popularity: The performing arts need audiences, and audiences are intrigued by the notion of interacting with the production. Could this type of theater, such as Chalk Rep’s Mommune  and Moving Arts’ Car Plays, one day electrify L.A.’s perpetually troubled theater scene? The jury is still out.

Wicked Lit, now playing through Nov. 14, offers three short plays–adapted from literature–that are  staged at a mausoleum. It is a most uneven affair, yet I can completely understand its popularity.

There is one í¼ber-playlet that is used as a “frame” for the other plays–it has a storyline based on two Edgar Allan Poe short stories, but “The System” feels like a device to a) proffer nuts-and-bolts info  about getting around the mausoleum at night and b) give patrons  something to distract them during breaks. Instead of creating a fourth play for these purposes, we endure  silly, largely improvised dialogue and actors who ask questions that very few people I saw felt like answering (“What is that strange device you use there?” referring to iPhones). The three main one-acts are staged  in a spooky graveyard, a gorgeous mausoleum, and a side chamber and outdoor garden.

I firmly believe that Wicked Lit  has become a hit because audience members move through beautiful darkened halls lined with the entombed  in the Mountain View Mausoleum and Cemetery,  creepily lit by KC Wilkerson, with awesome projections by Adam Flemming. The logistics are jaw-dropping (22 actors, 7 stage managers and more) and the effects are phenomenal with plenty of sound, smoke, shadows, and sleight-of-hand. But the  plays seem like they are written  to be timed with other scenes more than what is best  to tell the story (which means you have a lot of “Good God!”s, inner monologues, and some dialogue right out of Dungeons and Dragons). I’m not saying there aren’t some funny bits and spooky moments,  but with  the poor script construction and inconsistent acting, “The Grove of Rashomon” (based on Ryí¼nosuke Akutagawa’s “In a Grove”), “The Fall of the House of Usher” (Poe), and “The Ebony Frame” (Edith Nesbit) are never particularly scary or engaging. I was reminded of some Night Gallery episodes which were forced to stretch out a  one-minute storyline (by the way, this evening runs over three hours, which seems even longer due to the draggy intermissions).

As with so many immersive productions I’ve seen, the event’s interesting gimmickry or technological wonders are trumped by mediocre  playwriting and mixed acting. As such, these “events” are rarely thought-provoking and fail to move or touch me emotionally’”and I’ve seen dozens and dozens, partly because I want so badly for them to succeed. As with conventional theater, the most successful “events” are those with a strong script and potent performances, such as Off-Broadway’s Here Lies Love and Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812. Even We Players’ Macbeth,  presented in San Francisco’s Fort Point underneath the Golden Gate Bridge, had some pretty awful acting, and sacrificed storytelling for staging, but it had (speaking of literature) great dialogue, and it was a thrilling environmental tour-de-force that never let up.

So with a lot of average entertainment out there, it makes sense that viewers are willing to give up great theater for atmosphere, but had these Wicked Lit pieces  been on a proscenium stage with no effects, my true fear is that it would have been dreadful.

photos by Daniel Kitayama and John Thvedt

Wicked Lit 2015
“The Grove of Rashomon” “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Ebony Frame”
Unbound Productions
Mountain View Mausoleum and Cemetery
2300  N. Marengo Ave. in Altadena
Thurs-Sun (and some Wed) at  7:30
ends on November 14, 2015
for tickets, call 323.332.2065 or visit Wicked Lit