By DCist contributor Seth Rose
Reminds us of: A significantly less coherent Sleep No More
Rating: Flop.
, she took me back so tenderly is a show with a lot to say that ends up without a voice. The final production and sort-of funeral dirge for banished? productions (a self-described avant-pop performance company), the show takes place in a small house in Takoma, with a guide leading audience members from room to room where five different pieces, five to ten minutes each, take place. They range from dance pieces to audience interactive rituals on loss to an exhibit on cyborgs.
Many of the pieces show some individual cleverness, but the perceived gap between them is the show’s crippling flaw. The obvious comparison is immersive theater juggernaut Sleep No More, but Sleep No More ties everything together through the connection to Shakespeare, making the experience feel coherent without necessarily having to follow a linear path., she took me back so tenderly ditches the non-linear conceit without drawing more than the vaguest of lines between the pieces themselves. The result is a feeling of confusion as audience members shuffle from one piece to the next without time to consider or digest what they saw and no way to discern any sort of consistent story. Some well-constructed moments of atmosphere that might make up for this feeling are wasted because they just don’t connect to anything substantial.
The show ends with a fire pit in the backyard where a company member hands audience members props and costume pieces from previous shows the company has done and asks them to either burn them or take them inside to be filed and catalogued. It’s an interesting convention that might carry some emotional weight if preceded by any sort of lead-up. But because none of the previous four pieces had anything to do with the producing company (at least as far as anyone in the audience is told), it’s a moment more awkward than touching. That’s a descriptor that could also apply to the show at large.
, she took me back so tenderly is playing at Rhizome DC in 30 minute intervals on July 23 from 7 to 9 p.m. and July 24 from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m.
See here for more of DCist’s Capital Fringe 2016 reviews.
