Fringe, Reviewed: Safe Space
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
"Some of the best moments are when lines blur, and the actors are moving from LARP to character and back and forth."
[ theater ]
Safe Space, by Apocalypse Club
Attended: Weds., Sept. 10, 8 p.m., Doug's House, 19th and Latona streets; closes Sept. 19
A play about environmental science students and their live-action role-playing global warming game.
WE THINK:
Who wants another fantasy of apocalypse when we can have a play (within a play) like this? Safe Space takes place on the second floor of Douglas Williams’ (one of the three playwrights) house. Its basic framework is a group of college students LARPing a game scenario where rising oceans have flooded much of the East Coast and created millions of refugees and an outbreak of disease, leaving only a few safe havens.
The acting of the six member cast is flawless. As the actors shed and take on persona after persona, we see them as their LARP characters (Mayor Nutter, Wolverine, Shaman, etc.), their “real” characters within the game scenario, and their “real” characters beyond the game scenario, where we find the heart of this high farce.
Some of the best moments are when lines blur, and the actors are moving from LARP to character and back and forth, and kooky exuberance (the hilarious script is replete with all manner of nerdy pop culture references from John Wayne in The Searchers to Sharknado to Gandalf the Grey) collides with quiet heartache and longing, and alliances, loyalties, romances and friendships are forged, strained, and reaffirmed; and you catch a lingering glance from actor to actor and you’re not sure whether you’re watching the actors themselves, the characters within the play, or the characters within the game scenario within the play. Like Corneille’s The Illusion, Safe Space keeps establishing its own artificiality while casting its spell over you. This is great theater in the deep sense of that word.
The only thing here that can even be said to be a negative is that because some scenes take place simultaneously in different rooms (though they generously repeat to let you move around and see more), choices have to made, scenes missed, and because the actors are so brilliant and the writing deft enough to reveal background and characterization in brief episodes, one feels every missed moment almost like a physical distress.
