We’re in a era of what I’m starting to think of as the “immersive hybrid”: productions that don’t use immersive techniques as a seasoning, but don’t use them as the main dish either.

Relics of the Hypnotist War is such a production, a two-hander that uses a touch of traversal and a lovingly rendered — and most importantly, explorable — scenic design to establish a very dialed in tone, and then delivers the bulk of its narrative and world building through a mostly traditional monologue format.

The world that is built is a broken yet oddly beautiful one: a place where once upon a time hypnotists arrived and put vast swaths of the population to sleep, drafted others into their armies of sleepwalkers, and then seemingly disappeared, leaving a reawakened world to piece together just what happened while they slept.

This is told to us by the Curator, who has gathered the relics on display, and who leads us at points through memory exercises of our own. At times the stories we’re told paint a picture of the world that seems factually inconsistent, but thematically on point. There’s something deeply resonant about the idea of waking up one day to find that your best years were wasted by the designs of other people. Those whose motives you can’t fully understand and whose faces you can’t quite recall. Finding yourself gazing into the mirror and see a familiar stranger who is at even more of a loss than you are.

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Thematically translated to our world the hypnotists might be the architects of the Forever War or the scions of Silicon Valley. Our collective will lulled to sleep by algorithmically crafted newsfeeds and bespoke political lies. Generations not so much mowed down by the tools of war as turned into quiet bystanders at best, pliant weapons of destruction at worst. The meaningless objects that have been left behind the only evidence we ever really existed.

As I noted at the top, the focus of Relics… isn’t to create a full immerse experience, but more of a little reality bubble in which the telling of the story unfolds. With that as its aim, I can say that it works, even if I’m a little disappointed. There’s so much craft on display here that it made me want more than what we were given. There’s a keen eye for world building and a poetic sensibility in the roots of this thing, and the performers do a damn fine job of conveying the feeling tone from the very first moments of the piece. It feels like if the team wanted to stretch themselves in terms of interaction design, they’d be liable to come up with some unique moments.

What we get works, and the piece is elevated by the these briefly articulated moments of interaction. Yet the sense that bolder choices could be made — and executed well — lingers.

Relics of the Hypnotist War plays at Automata, 504 Chung King Court, LA through November 22. Tickets are $20.

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