One shouldn’t go so far as to call Miss Jezebel a bawd, but what one finds inside a modest room inside 60 Out’s DTLA location would shock a proper lady. Shock and, one hopes, gets a good laugh out of.
This summer 60 Out’s Brian Corbitt introduced the character of Miss Jezebel to what is already the most idiosyncratic location in the chain’s seven store lineup. Tucked next to the Tiki Time! Room and operating in the former Krampus space, Miss Jezebel has caused an entirely new category appear on 60 Out’s website: immersive theatre.
To be clear: the experience is a hybrid that leans on the structure of an escape game to put guests into the roles of detectives investigating a suspected black widow killer. Usually in an escape room the presence of the killer would be made manifest through puzzles and decor, but here Miss Jezebel is very much a force to be reckoned with.
Now one shouldn’t seek out Miss Jezebel with an eye towards a spiritual revelation or a complex, richly rewarding narrative. This is more sketch comedy than Chekhov. In fact the inventive vignettes that make up the spine of the experience make the whole thing reminiscent of character-driven sketch. Corbitt has even talked about spin-off stories for the character.
The role of Jezebel is triple cast, with each of the actors bringing their own flair to the character. That puts a bit more pressure on the design and script to do the heavy lifting to define the Jezebel experience than, say, your average character driven sketch comedy bit. This sometimes pits the dynamics of the escape room format — you’ve got 60 minutes to solve the case — against the best feature of the room: screwing around with the actors. Jezebel’s presence functions as a “time out” on searching for clues, raising the stakes on time but also making it so that the best way to “win” is to get the room’s most charming feature to leave as soon as possible.
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One thing Jezebel makes clear is that having actors who know their role cold and who can wing their way through banter is table stakes for sandbox immersive experiences, even when the structure is backed up by puzzles. At this point I’ve played through once with one actor and observed another in the role, and its clear that the team Corbitt has assembled is up for the task of carrying the raunchy, slightly creepy, vibe through the runtime.
Jezebel is best in the middle when the ribald humor laced through the game takes a turn for the absurd. There’s a deep joy in play reflected in the ridiculous, character motivated puzzles which make up the middle act. If there’s a soft spot in the whole thing it’s at the beginning, when the “Okay, now what?” endemic to escape rooms is compounded by the scenario in a way that keeps players from tossing the joint the way they might normally. Yet once that fades away, the back and forth with Jezebel combines with puzzle solutions that are essentially punchlines to drive the comic antics forward.
As an evolutionary path for escape game companies, Miss Jezebel unlocks some interesting paths. My hope is that Corbitt keeps tinkering with the formula here, as there’s more juice that can be squeezed from putting a comic actor into a play environment. This is, after all, the essence of what we chase here — plays that you can play — and as escape game companies mature and diversify their offerings there’s even more that can be mined from creating hybrids like Jezebel.
Miss Jezebel is currently booking at 60 Out’s 2284 S Figueroa location near DTLA. Tickets are $45 per player, 18+ only.
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