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 The most fun I’ve had in the theater in a long time. Period.

 

Hoo-rah!

  • Straightforward, snappy, hour-long storyline expertly executed with a game-for-anything cast and crew.
  • Projections were a well-incorporated absolute joy to look at. A perfect blend of 8-bit video games with a retro-comic book overlay.
  • Not only were the projections a blast to look at, but they had such fine-details as becoming a genuine audience-interactive game at one point, as well as featuring moving mouths for the 8-bit versions of the characters that were talking in real life.
  • Music was catchy, well-sung, and another wonderfully-retro device. I never thought I’d end up with a chorus line stuck in my head with the lyrics ‘The nearest chemo center in a fifty-mile radius!’
  • Amazingly, the very well-established through-line of ‘modify a plant virus to fight cancer cells’ is based on real science being put out by Nicole F. Steinmetz, Ph D.
  • The Nanoman as a character was gloriously poorly-acted, and I was rooting for him hard to work up the courage to take on the evil macro-phages. I also loved his costume.

Blech…

  • Dr. X’s German accent, while genuinely hilarious, was inconsistent enough to be distracting at times.
  • Venue was not ideal– a bar doesn’t real feel like a conference center, and because the production is so short and so sharp, it’s better if drink orders are not being taken and distracting from the show.

 

Tales from Backstage:

I was here on invitation from someone I met when I gave my VR lecture at the Microsoft building. After establishing that we both loved theater but often didn’t have anyone to go with, we became theater buddies! Her friend from San Francisco, Danielle was flown in to do the show.

 

Most every aspect of the production was created (and even performed) by Krista Knight and Barry Brinegar, a writing partnership calling themselves Knight and Brinegar. I will be following their work with interest for a very long time.

 

I was there on opening night and found Dr. X’s limp and need for a cane to be entirely convincing. Turns out Krista had fallen down in the subway that morning and actually needed the cane!