A small town girl trying to run away to the big city in a historic train station, only to never leave in the most grizzly way imaginable. Shadow of the Run: Chapter 1: Wanderlust skillfully thrusts the audience into this trope and fills in many blanks of why she ran and what will happen to her throughout the quaint community of historic Bedford, Ohio.
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This multi tracked experience begins in the well maintained train station of Bedford with a prologue. Lily, the main character running away from town enters, hides her suitcase, and asks us to keep her secret. Once she leaves, the two separate halves of the story begin, where the audience is split to either follow a police officer or a journalist to get more of the story of Lily in Bedford. I personally followed the Journalist. After the bifurcation was made, the story would fill in Lily’s backstory in a non-linear way, as well as giving you a preview of her implied fate. Once the groups would come back together, we were then taken by bus to a local aqueduct where two more performers would provide us with a cliffhanging coda to all we had experienced over the previous hour, before returning us to the train station.
This piece embodies some of the best aspects of the intersection between Site Specific and Immersive work. Basing the larger narrative in a historic series of murders of the 1930’s which thrust Elliot Ness into fame, there will be many possibilities for future locations around the Cleveland area. But beginning in Bedford added a quaintly eerie, almost sepia quality to the entire experience. When the old musty smell of the basement of the Historic Society hits you as you walk down those stairs, it adds an authenticity that most immersive theatre wishes it would have. In addition to the blessing of the physical spaces, all other design elements worked in excellent consort, even during the ride to the Aqueduct, the sound design there filled in so many of the larger narrative points, I wish it were a little bit longer so we could get more details. All of this being said about the physical production, the embodiment of every character whom you encounter has a lived in familiarity. Whether awkward, longing, creepy, or hopeful, the shift in gears of the pacing of scenes successfully ratchets up the tension until the reveal at the end. Some of the strongest performances on my tracks included the aloof drink concocting doctor, the optimistic young typesetter at the print shop, and Lily herself. As this is many cast members’ first time working in immersive theatre (as was explained to me post show), Wanderlust has found a treasure trove of excellent performers with which to build a company.
Despite the very strong creative work, there are some aspects of craft which could elevate this (and future chapters) to a transcendent level. Most basically would be to figure out a way to costume support staff. When walking through the experience, seeing staff walking around in simple “STAFF” t shirts amongst period dressed cast members was somewhat disconcerting and took me out of the experience slightly. A trickier issue is an issue which I fear is common to communities which don’t have as thorough experience with immersive theatre, and that is defining the parameters for audience involvement and participation. Some members of the group I saw Shadow of the Run with, while enthusiastic, behaved as if they were in a cross between Tony and Tina’s Wedding and an escape room, as opposed to a tracked narrative piece… Blurting out whatever they thought they’d need to say at the most inopportune times, and trying to “solve puzzles”, even when there were none to solve. This could be ameliorated by a more thorough “on-boarding” process at the top of the piece. I add that these criticisms are intended to be encouragement to add power to some initially strong work, not just a petty takedown.
Most cities would be lucky if there was a theatre company willing to tell their history as immersive theatre. That this is some of the first immersive work in Northern Ohio, while not entirely surprising, is a bit of a bummer. But hopefully this brief run will be successful for the Wanderlust team so that they can round out this story with future chapters… Chapters I, for one, can’t wait to see!
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