Do you know which version of the story this is?
This is the question that lies near the heart of Shine On Collective’s Sweet Dreams. The latest show is the deconstruction of the Sleeping Beauty folk tale, rendered down into its component parts and rebuilt using the principles of immersive theatre.
Here the audience are cast as heroes of the tale, and yet we are not fated to be the protagonist. No. The writer/director team of Anna Mavromati and Marlee Delia have something more involved than that for the curious and brave.
One caveat before we begin, there are two versions of this show which are priced differently. The version which I saw is the more expensive “Heavy Sleeper“ ticket. According to the company, it involves a lot more one-on-one time. With that in mind, let’s begin.
Our journey starts when we meet Philip (Alexander Echols), who has enlisted the help of a Doctor (Dylan Little) to find his missing girlfriend Rose. It seems that Rose has disappeared from the world, not in a “from society” sense but in a “no longer on this plane of existence” sense. We’ve also been conscripted into Philip’s quest: because he needs heroes to join him in his search through the dreamworld to find the missing Rose.
For the “Heavy Sleeper” version of the tale, each of the three would-be heroes is sent on their own track through the dream world.
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My own started with being led by The Sister (Taylor Thorne) into Rose’s childhood room where our missing heroine was awaiting. While my search for Rose may have been concluded swiftly the quick connection meant that Hannah Faust’s Rose acted as a lighting rod, grounding me into her emotional reality.
With this connection cemented in place, its hard to imagine Sweet Dreams as anything other than Rose’s story. Yet I know that other tracks begin elsewhere of necessity. What unfolded for me was an examination of the rhythmic beats of the old tales, rooted in the figure of a young woman who had struggled with being trapped inside patterns of abuse for her entire life. The various characters having ambiguous relationships to those cycles depending entirely on which version of the story you believe you are in.
This is not subtext, but indeed text, as laid bare in frank kitchen scene with Rose’s mother, The Queen (Lyssa Samuel). In a less deft writer’s hands the conceit would be clunky, but Mavromati’s script rides the delicate line between the emotional and the intellectual. More often than not the cast is up to the task of staying with it — with Samuel and Faust proving particularly adept at the trick of being with the audience as they navigate both conversational and heightened text. Nor is it words alone that drive the action with the dangerous yet alluring Dragon (Stepy Kamei) acting as a button on many of the Rose-track scenes, part demon/part siren calling the heroes on to a much wanted doom.
Director Delia weaves the action altogether with smart traversal and transitions across the private Glassell Park compound where the work is staged. The only downside to the location is one of coincidence: it served as the playground for Nocturnal Fandango’s Therapy & Dreams (2017) not long ago. The perils of Peerspace, one might say. Those who haven’t been to the space may be shocked that such a thing exists just east of the 5, while devotees of the other company’s work will experience moments of deja vu.
While the press preview I saw wasn’t as tight as last year’s Devoted, this production marks an evolutionary step forward for Shine On. Delia and Mavromati are maturing as storytellers in this form, and the timeliness of a piece about the way in which sexual abuse can become an emotional pattern which acts as a lifelong trap cannot be understated. That the duo manages to address this scalding topic without being exploitative with a form that can easily slip into unnecessary extremes is a great grace.
At its best theatre makes us think and feel, examining the seams between the mind and heart. Sweet Dreams accomplishes this, drawing on the fabric of our shared culture to help us examine the personal forces at work within it.
Sweet Dreams runs Wednesdays through Sundays until November 12th at an undisclosed location in Glassell Park, Los Angeles. Tickets are $75-$100.
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