Three reviews this time out and while usually we find some thread to pull it all together, that’s just not happening this time around.
That said: feeling super-jealous of Blake right now. (Check out the Montauk Project review below.)
Let’s get into the penultimate Rundown of 2021.
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Cold Case — Phoenix Tears Productions
$15 or $20 VIP; Remote (Zoom); Run concluded
Posthumous, a fictional digital afterlife company established by Phoenix Tears Productions, summons old and new employees to work on a Cold Case together. Like its prequel, Posthumous, Cold Case is an interactive Zoom show, where the participants are recruited as the employees of the company and are encouraged to engage in conversations with the characters to piece the story together.
In the Posthumous universe, people have figured out a way to live forever. Once the physical body expires, a person’s memories can be downloaded into a cloud. They are then returned to an avatar of that person. Reunited with their identity, the “soul” can then enter the great beyond.
Cold Case encourages us to help untangle the personal drama of two of the company’s clients. The participants, now all employees of the Recovery department, are divided into two groups led by bubbly Beatrice Gilmore (Megan Markham) and buttoned-up Freya Calderon (Madeleine Baum). The task is to watch a playback of a memory (a conversation with another person), after which we can ask that person questions to put together a portrait of our client, which we then carefully piece back together in a separate session with them.
This strange type of work of returning a person their memories turns out to be more morally complicated than we thought. Should we sugarcoat traumatizing events or avoid mentioning them altogether? How do we interpret their behavior towards their partner? The conversations flow in the chat as our team is trying to be honest, yet gentle.
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I appreciated the care with which the emotions of both the characters and the audience members were addressed. Trigger warnings were seamlessly woven into the instructions, the option to keep our cameras off was also available, of which we were reminded after especially emotional scenes.
(Recovery, taking place in the same Posthoumous universe plays through January 23rd)
— Asya Gorovits, New York Correspondent
Montauk Project — Myss Tic Rooms
$35+; Brooklyn, NY; Ongoing
My mother always complains when I broach doing an escape room with her, asking what the price even goes to? Besides rent and labor, of course, how can you justify the cost? While this may be true in some less ornate escapes, one of the strongest virtues of Montauk Project is that you absolutely see the money on the plate. From everything from set design to some spectacular puppet work, there’s an emphasis on seamlessness and verisimilitude that elevates it into the high-tier, luxury escape room Myss-Ticc promotes itself as. Taking a Stranger Things inspired plot about finding a key card to close a dimensional portal in an 80’s small town, the bulk of the room emphasized exploring perfect 80’s kitsch sets, with many small, copyright-legal references to the show.
Certainly, some bits worked better than others. One puzzle had an ambiguous answer that I still barely understood how we got to even after the show. Still, the delivery of that puzzle was such a wacky surprise I remember it fondly. A tent we had to crawl into for a handful of puzzles was far too small for some of our party to comfortably enter, but was also a beautifully true-to-life backyard fort. For each little misstep, Montauk Project has such a glossy sheen more than capable of charming and delighting even jaded escape room veterans. The difficulty is moderate; a fairly experienced team like ours still needed a majority of the time, with hints delivered by a responsive and helpful staff that seemed to know just when and where to nudge our team.
Overall, Montauk Project achieves all its goals. With good puzzle/story integration, spectacular sets, and unexpected set-pieces, I can unreservedly recommend Montauk Project as a strong example of an elegantly designed classic escape room.
— Blake Weil, East Coast Curator At Large
The Sleepover — Sisters Freehold
$20-$35; Remote (Zoom); Through Dec. 12
The Sleepover is a Zoom experience taking the format of a digital slumber party, and you’re invited! Audience members play party games, tell ghost stories, and learn about the lives and connections among the party hosts. At almost two hours run time, it is probably the shortest “sleepover” I’ve ever attended, but also the longest Zoom performance, which was a tough sell after a long work day — I found myself watching the clock and wondering when I would be able to log off more than once.
Although the performers are highly committed and engaging, the writing leaves a lot to be desired: the characters are shallow archetypes and the plot is meandering at best. I really wasn’t sure why we were there outside the guise of the sleepover and many twists and turns at the end were sudden, confusing, and underdeveloped.
The highlight of this production is actually the process — this is the piece’s fourth phase of devising development after ideating about having a sleepover with a younger version of yourself and community sourced art about female centered gatherings and traditions. While the intentions are sweet, the product needs a bit more development.
— Allie Martotta, New York City Correspondent
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