This week we split time between London, NYC, and L.A. for everything from a projection takeover of the seat of Catholicism in England to a burlesque speakeasy in Hollywood. All that and one of NYC's hottest indie shows in ages.
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Big Feelings (New York City)
Most Unwanted Productions
$40; The Cell, Manhattan; June 29th to July 23rd
Set in a 1st grade classroom, Big Feelings is the newest work from Most Unwanted Productions, the company that brought us the wacky interactive experiment Dirt. This time, the audience plays students of the class as Ms. Joy joins us for her last day of teaching and slowly reveals the troubling reason for her departure.
The genius of this show is the structure of the classroom. Most of the work is set as a typical school day with written exercises, lessons, and moments of participation. This works beautifully because Ms. Joy (played deftly by Julia Greer) can field just about any audience response with the gently condescending tone of a 1st grade instructor, so any cleverness or awkwardness that the audience participation engenders fits perfectly into the context of the story. When this comes together, the show shines. Greer is masterful at delivering the classroom content while periodically weaving in just enough oversharing and embarrassing details to trigger your adult sensibilities without breaking the setting.
But when Big Feelings strays from the format, it loses its way. The story of Ms. Joy is interesting and the secrets she reveals are a complex story that’s both darkly funny and disturbing and leaves you interestingly conflicted about the character. But to reveal that story, the play largely drops the classroom frame using a couple of less effective tropes. There’s an invisible student that Ms. Joy talks to at times to deliver some story content, but there’s no real reason that character needed to exist – Greer was good at interacting with us and was certainly capable of managing that content with the audience. And much of the full story is revealed through monologues of exposition that simply feature Greer talking in a spotlight. It doesn’t work as a technique and the bluntness of this approach is a too sharp shift away from the more subtle tone of the teaching moments.
Despite these issues, Big Feelings is another intriguing piece from Most Unwanted. The well-crafted interactive frame and skillful acting of Greer created an original audience experience that gave us a whole new way to play along. I’m excited to see what they teach us next.
— Nicholas Fortugno, Senior New York Correspondent
Building (New York City)
Colin Quinn, Vincent Piazza, and John Fitzgerald
$40; Pioneer Works, July 7th-8th
Building is a multimedia play exploring various workers and business people of the 1970s in New York City, using the construction of the World Trade Center as its focus. After watching an initial video of scenes from the development history glossed with historical quotes, the audience is brought into a large room where the action of the play happens on screens and with characters that are scattered along the perimeter of the space.
Building is primarily concerned with its time period. It’s a picture of New York in the 1970s, dealing with the aftermath of Vietnam, the reaction to city’s economic and crime struggles, and the networks of real estate power that governed municipal development. Each scene of the play features one or two characters somehow connected to the construction project: workers on the site, food truck operators, politicos who made the deals to get the permissions and funding. These scenes ranged in quality. There were a couple of weaker performers, but the strongest work came from the comedy of Joe Perrino and Vincent Piazza, who had hilarious monologues exploring pride and petty struggles. Images on the screen supplemented the scenes with video content of the time period, providing references and setting for the different stories.
The play worked best as an invocation of the time period and its themes of hidden power and working angles connected all the scenes loosely, even though there was no strong narrative arc. My main issue with the piece is that the immersive staging wasn’t really purposeful or effective. This was largely a problem with the location. Pioneer Works' set for the piece is a large windowed room that didn’t leave much space for mounting monitors or stages, so the action was scattered and the room felt sparse and empty. I would have liked the screens to be more present throughout the space. Also, the audience was forced to stand for more than an hour and almost everyone I went with complained about back or neck pain from having to constantly look up at action around them.
Nonetheless, Building was an interesting experiment in naturalism and history. As a meditation on the way power worked in 1970’s NYC, it was a solid and often funny show, even if it wasn’t best immersive one.
— Nicholas Fortugno, Senior New York Correspondent
Down the Rabbit Hole (Los Angeles)
Tableau Productions
$55-139; The Hollywood Roosevelt; Ongoing
Each corner of the iconic Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood seems to hide a historic surprise worth exploring. The Cinegrill Theater is easy to miss behind a stairwell just off the lobby, but through a hidden door in a bookcase is a 1936 time capsule that provides the perfect setting for Down the Rabbit Hole, an exploration of whimsy and Wonderland through dance and burlesque.
The two-act show takes loose inspiration from the classic story of “Alice in Wonderland,” emceed by the Cheshire Cat, who introduces you to the familiar characters one by one. It’s quite a bit edgier, sexier, maybe arguably the same amount chemically induced – sort of a journey through a curious Tinseltown, with a dark undertow just beneath each glimmering facade.
The seven dancers in the performance are incredibly engaging, heightened by clever production design and use of the Cinegrill Theater’s multiple levels. I noticed a strong Fosse influence in the choreography that felt fresh and evocative of the golden age of Hollywood. Certain moments in the show felt reminiscent of Cages, the immersive musical from Woolf and the Wondershow, employing projections that blended seamlessly with the performers. (The producers let me know a large LED screen was non-functional during our performance, so I can only imagine how much more that would have added.) The costumes were creative and instantly recognizable, without being too Wonderland cliche or on-the-nose.
Your level of immersion depends on where you sit – the front row gets the most attention, with a few audience members getting invited onstage to dance with the cast. But the dancers roam, and even a back row barstool might get you an unexpected close-up moment, like Alice whizzing by along an overhead track. There’s virtually no bad seat.
The Roosevelt serves up specialty cocktails, mocktails and bites accompanying the performance, including a squash and mushroom flatbread, and tea sandwiches with beets, goat cheese, and candied pistachios. We were genuinely blown away at how delicious these were (and I would like that tea sandwich recipe, please and thank you).
This is a perfect date night or Girls Night Out, but it’s strictly 18+, so leave the kids with the sitter. Down the Rabbit Hole is a seductively steamy tea party of good fun – and it alternates Saturday nights with Tableau Productions’ cabaret revue with attitude, Harlow Gold: Redux.
— Briana Roecks, L.A. & Social Media Correspondent
LUMINESCENCE (London)
LOTCHI.
From £32.50; Westminster Cathedral, through 26 September 2026
There are times when projection overlays are blurry affairs: inoffensive, unimaginative, a way to see the darker crannies of a space lit up but generally a modest light show put to some music.
LUMINESCENE doesn't fall into that trap.
Producers LOTCHI. began their production concept in Europe to celebrate and help raise funding for historic buildings, and their transfer to UK venues this season seems to be well received. A hyper-site-specific production, Westminster Cathedral’s high fidelity 3D mapping tech and dozens of pinpoint devices means every inch of visible vault and wall space is painted in an hour's worth of constantly-evolving imagery. We're treated to the history of the cathedral through the ages through visuals of what the arch mosaics once were, what they were designed to be, what they could one day become.
There were one or two dips in the energy (the “Keep Calm and Carry On” segment felt lazy) but the Blitz movement was truly haunting: the ceiling blown off with a lightning storm raging before planes began droning overhead and the thunder replaced by bombs. This eventually melted into a gorgeous segment with the ghostly images of proposed statues and reliefs in every alcove, figures so well presented we were surprised when the show ended and the sculptures weren't actually there.
While there is some general pre-recorded narration by Hugh Bonneville, it's the live choir that fills the space with the vital resonance that reminds visitors why humans build houses of worship of any denomination: to fill them with light and song and the effervescence of being human. The overt climactic inclusion of Ode To Joy (the EU anthem) seems the only real political statement made by the producers other than to promote and preserve beautiful buildings.
Late start times (past 9pm in London) are necessitated by the summer setting of the sun, but at only an hour's run it's still ample entertainment with plenty of time to catch trains home. Just be prepared to be staring joyfully up for the entire time.
— Shelley Snyder, London & UK Curator
Timewalk (London)
DEM Museums
From £28.50; Immerse LDN, through 30 September 2026
Freshly installed in Immerse LDN (with a rumored and ambitious five year lease) comes Timewalk, an eye-catching histori-tainment sideshow with heavyweight tech suitably placed to welcome the conventioneering masses on the ExCel centre waterfront.
The show is essentially a processional dark ride: five wraparound projection rooms with diaphragm-rattling sound systems and artistic wire mesh sculptures filling the spaces as we’re escorted through by guides costumed from different eras. Our individual headsets provide reassuring narration about the past civilizations that soar around us; I’m not sure if our guides actually say anything because between the earphones and the rumbling ambient soundscape I’m struck immediately by a feeling of sensation overwhelm and it’s difficult to focus. The first room features stony plinths with artifacts showcased in shadowboxes that we’re meant to hold our headsets up to in order to “listen in” but I’m so busy watching the walls and trying not to trip on anyone that I miss my chance before we’re moved on. Indeed, the wall & floor projection quality is so sharp that I find myself occasionally seasick, grateful for the occasional scattered seats and the mesh sculptures of a castle, boat, trees, and Easter Island head to focus on as we’re swept through the millennia.
Had Timewalk arrived in town about a year ago before FKP Scorpio had flooded the market with their own exhibitions it would probably have made a bigger impression on the local industry, but unfortunately DEM Museums’ edge here is mostly contained to the high quality of their tech and heavy use of AI content design. It’s a sparkly diversion with cutting-edge flair.
The throughput rate is smart business, ushering groups from room to room with set delivery timelines (the whole experience lasts about 45 minutes) and with 25 languages to choose from Timewalk is well-placed to entertain at the city’s major convention centre.
— Shelley Snyder, London & UK Curator
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