The cast and band of True Love Forever. Photo: Milan Misko
If the risk and the magic of live theater reside in its very liveness, the sense that the experience you are having today won’t be entirely identical to the experience an audience on a different night might have, then the kind of immersive, interactive movement theater that Third Rail Productions specializes in lies at the riskiest end of the spectrum (second only to improv, I suppose). It’s tricky to get right in all sorts of different ways–from the absence of narrative in a choose-your-own-adventure random-experience generator like Sleep No More to the mostly mindless spectacle of something like the Stranger Things experience (both of which, full disclosure, annoyed me greatly) to the kind of aggressive audience participation that makes me want to crawl under a chair. But done right, you do get magic: a compelling, weird, unique ride.
Third Rail’s long running hit And Then She Fell, an Alice-in-Wonderland inspired psychodrama of a piece, had the enormous advantage of a setting as creepy and labyrinthine as its plot; I was blown away by the intricate craft that went into the experience of each audience member at that show. Having now followed their work (particularly artistic director/creator/choreographer Jennine Willett’s work) from the abandoned hospital that housed And Then She Fell to a warehouse in Bushwick reimagined as a beach fantasy, a camper parked at Brookdale for a hot seventies summer experience, and the vast backstage areas at Lincoln Center’s Claire Tow space, I’m always intrigued by their particular recipe of simple but emotionally rich dance, resonant psychic landscapes, and interplay with the audience. At their strongest, their shows provide an indelible dreamscape where every person in the audience has a different journey that hits the same unsettling themes. At their weakest, dance, ambience, and text revolve in their own separate bubbles rather than integrating into a whole.
Their current piece, True Love Forever, is neither as ambitious nor as immersive as other work they’ve done, but it’s cohesive and purposeful, and it knows what it’s about: the cycle of romantic love from first glance to last tear. Created by Third Rail artistic director Willett in collaboration with musician Coyle Girelli, the show is part concert (performed by Girelli and an indie rock band of four other musicians), part dance piece (performed by an ensemble of nine actor/dancers costumed hiply by Alexandra & Juliana of Atelier Abene in vintage ensembles at the red end of the color spectum), part collective catharsis (the performers also serve as warmly empathetic emcees who guide the audience into remembrances of their own successes and failures in love). Girelli’s songs, with a little of Chris Isaak’s sultriness and a little of the intricate emotional wallowing of a high-brow indie band like The National, stay on target: the lyrics on the different facets of love, from tenderness to lust to heartbreak, form the thematic spine of the piece. Set in an event space decked with candles and moody red-glowing chandeliers (lights by Nicole Lang; production design by Willett and Lang),
The show hits all the high points of modern romance: Online dating: a witty movement sequence has the performers creating their photo carousels through a series of individualized emblematic poses, and then swiping right/left, with the rejected candidates crumbling to the floor and slinking snakelike off the stage. The meet-cute of a Craigslist style Missed Connections. The lust-fest of new love. The sweetness of slow-dancing with a new date or a longtime partner. And, of course, the turmoil of a breakup, in which every line is simultaneously a cliche and something that strikes to your very soul.
The immersive quality feels a little perfunctory here: We do participate in some surveys and polls about our experiences with romance, positive and negative. (One of the audience participation bits crowns the longest-tenured couple in the audience; ours was 65 years!) We move to another location in the space to work together on crafting sequences of breakup lines to match a prompt, which two of the performers then enact. It’s nice to be included, but the ensemble could get on perfectly well without us.
Willett’s choreography, as ever, is deceptively simple, built on lots of repeating patterns and lifts. But it’s rich with emotion, and you always feel the connection between her performers, who move in and out of differing pairs throughout. Girelli’s plaintive songs and the genuine tenderness between the dancers–and between the dancers and the audience, when we’re invited in–make for a sweet and heartfelt evening. It might not be pushing the risk-taking envelope, but it makes for a solid date night.