"Crime and Punishment" by Live Action Set, Dangerous Productions, and The Soap Factory

Friends, this one is out there. The interactive and immersive experience that is Crime and Punishment pushes the boundaries of what theater can be. Theater isn't always sitting safely in your seat in a dark room watching a story play out on stage before you. It can also be walking around an incredibly detailed environment, mingling with other audience members and actors as they create the story all around you. You're not just watching the show, you're in it, you're part of it. This experience may not be for everyone, and you do have to push yourself outside of the theater seat comfort zone, but if you're willing to don a mask and stumble around in the dark for an hour with an open mind, you will be rewarded with a totally unique and all-consuming experience.

A remount of last year's Fringe hit, this co-production of Live Action Set, Dangerous Productions, and The Soap Factory is co-directed by Noah Bremer and Joanna Harmon of Live Action Set and Tyler Olsen of Dangerous Productions, who is also credited as writer. It's loosely centered around the 19th century Russian novel Crime and Punishment (which I've never read), which serves as more of an inspiration for characters, settings, and situations than a literal plotline. It's not so much of a cohesive story as small vignettes with various characters in various situations, that all combine to create a surreal world that you won't soon forget.

The experience begins in a Russian tea room in the basement of The Soap Factory, where you sip tea from real cups and saucers while lounging on the shabby chic furniture. At the appropriate time (7 and/or 8:30 pm) you're called forward to put on your mask and enter the performance space. If you saw the show last year at the Fringe, you'll have a slight advantage in that the landscape is much the same, so you might know your way around a bit better. But it's a completely different experience every time you see it, and doubtless is for every person at every show. There are infinite ways you could experience the show, based on where you go, who you follow, and just what you get dragged into. The masks are absolutely essential to this experience because they a) differentiate actors from audience members and b) create a feeling of anonymity and freedom to explore free from self-consciousness (tip: if you wear glasses, ask for a special mask with larger eye holes).

Various stories are happening simultaneously, and it's up to you which one you follow. There's a poor woman and her drunken husband being thrown out of their apartment, a police inspector interrogating a suspect in a small cell, women selling goods at the market, a red light district where men and women slowly move and dance behind glass, a woman rejecting a man who loves her, a bloody murder, and lots of people yelling at each other and getting beat up. All of these things take place in a labyrinth of a set, with narrow hallways, cramped and cluttered rooms, an area hung with sheets, and various nooks and crannies, all impeccably detailed (interior set design by Sarah Stone and Donna Meyer). One could spend the entire hour just looking at the set, but the stories draw you in, sometimes literally as a cast member might take you by the hand and lead you somewhere. The cast of over two dozen is completely committed to the performance, and convey extreme emotions of anger, passion, despair, greed, love, and grief through dialogue and movement.

The set, the creepy sounds and lighting, the always in character and totally in the moment cast, all create such a complete, surreal, all-encompassing world that it's a bit jarring when the hour is up and you're abruptly ushered out and back upstairs to the real world. This is a new kind of theater (see also NYC's hit Sleep No More), one that requires more from the audience than just sitting and paying attention. I go to the theater to be completely immersed in a story with its specific world and characters, which usually takes a bit of suspension of disbelief to imagine that you're not really sitting in a theater. Thanks to the commitment of the cast and design team, it takes very little effort to believe that the world of Crime and Punishment is real. It's a completely unique experience, unlike anything else that's going on in the Twin Cities right now, and must be seen to be believed. If you're up for the challenge, purchase your ticket here and begin to receive lovely/creepy emails from Nastya to prepare you for the event. Crime and Punishment continues in the basement of The Soap Factory through April 27 (find more information and a list of the full cast and creative team here).

a photo of my mask and secret egg in the tea room

Fringe Festival: "Crime and Punishment"

Day: 7

Show: 25

Title: Crime and Punishment

Category: Something different

By: Live Action Set

Directed by: Noah Bremer

Location: The Soap Factory

Summary: It's something different all right - an immersive wild ride through a haunted house sort of adaptation of Dostoyevsky's novel Crime and Punishment.

Highlights: After seeing this show, or rather experiencing it, my initial thought was "I don't know what just happened, but I want to do it again!" I've never experienced anything quite like it; it takes theater beyond the boundaries we're comfortable with into a completely immersive experience that engages all of the senses (well except for taste, I was asked if I drank but wasn't offered one). The sights of many little intricately detailed spaces around every corner, the sound of people whispering in your ear or shouting from behind a sea of white sheets, the touch of a hand on your arm as someone pulls you into another room, and the sickly sweet and fruity smell of fake blood. Since I'm not familiar with the source material, I didn't get much of a cohesive story, which is not necessary or perhaps even desirable in this case. I'm not certain what was going on but I do know this - I was led by the hand into a small room below the stairs, a beautiful lady in a tiara and fur held my hands and looked meaningfully into my eyes, I leaned on a window sill and watched a drunken Russian, I was asked to buy wares from a market, and I'm pretty sure I glimpsed through the sheets a man with a sharp object protruding from his forehead. And did I mention that the audience members have to wear masks? At first I was less than enthusiastic about it but soon came to realize that the masks are absolutely essential to the experience. Not only does it differentiate your fellow audience members from the actors, but it gives you something to hide behind and not worry about your reactions. I cannot even imagine the logistics of making this work, with so many things happening in so many places, in the dark! Kudos to Noah Bremer and the cast and crew for pulling it off. Crime and Punishment is a crazy brilliant theatrical experiment.

I regret waiting until the last weekend of Fringe to see this, I really wish I had the opportunity to revisit it now that I have the lay of the land (literally and figuratively). If I experienced it again, I would pick out one of the "main characters" and follow them through the duration of the experience. I had a bit of a scattered experience because I kept getting pulled in different directions, which was still wonderful, but I would love more time to put all of the odd and surprising little pieces together. Just as I was getting into it, the lights went out, and then on, and we were unceremoniously told to leave. I feel like I could have spent hours exploring, but since there are only two shows remaining tonight and they're sold out, I can only hope for a post-Fringe revival. Until then I'm sure I'll be revisiting those creepy dark shabby rooms of the Soap Factory basement in my dreams, whether I like it or not.

"One Flea Spare" by Theatre Coup D'Etat at the Soap Factory

"Our lives are but a splash of water on a stone. I am the stone they fell upon, and they have marked me." So ends the hauntingly beautiful play One Flea Spare by Naomi Wallace. Theatre Coup D'Etat's production, currently playing in the cold dark basement of The Soap Factory*, an art gallery near St. Anthony Main, is one of those theater experiences that will stay with me long after the lights go up. Focusing on four people trapped in a house together in 1665 plague-infested London, the play takes a hard look at who people really are when the everyday distractions of life are removed, and there's nothing left but themselves and each other. It's a harsh but beautiful view of humanity.

A 12-year-old girl named Morse begins and ends the story for us. She has broken into her neighbor's home, that of the well-to-do Mr. and Mrs. Snelgrave, after everyone in her home perished from the plague. A sailor named Bunce has also sought refuge in the house, which has all been boarded up except for one room, the only room in which no one has died. After discovering this break-in, the guard Kabe, their only contact with the outside world, has ordered them to say inside for 28 days to ensure none of them are infected. So begins a long process of these strangers getting to know each other, and the long-married couple facing their long-buried issues. We're told by Morse at the beginning of the play that not everyone survives, so we wait to see who dies and how, like a 17th Century deadly version of Survivor.

Morse (Briana Patnode), Mr. Snelgrave (Jim Ahrens),
Bunce (Peter Beard), and Mrs. Snelgrave (Ellen Apel),

It doesn't get much more intimate than this space, with just a few rows of seats on three sides of the small square that serves as the stage. There's nothing between the audience and the actors, and all of their performances are almost too real. I was completely drawn in by them, almost to the point of feeling uncomfortable as if you're eavesdropping on some very intense conversations. As their true colors begin to show in this small room with nowhere to go and nothing to do, we learn that Mr. Snelgrave is hard and cruel, Mrs. Snelgrave is lonely and suffering from a long-ago hurt, Bunce the sailor is kind and tender-hearted, yet unwilling to tolerate Mr. Snelgrave's classist attitude, Kabe the guard is a selfish opportunist, feeding off the dead, and little Morse is curious and precocious, innocent yet knowing more of the pain of the world than any little girl should.

James Napolean Stone does a beautiful job directing this fine cast and so vividly creating this world. As Morse, Briana Patnode is utterly captivating and appealing, with her ever-changing emotions displayed plainly on her open face. Peter Beard's Bunce has a raw intensity boiling just below the surface of his calm demeanor. Ellen Apel is as sympathetic as Mrs. Snelgrave as Jim Ahrens is vicious and appropriately unlikable as her cruel husband. Last but not least Brian Joyce brings the right mix of humor and creepiness to the guard who occasionally shows up at the window. Helping to set the tone is the sparse set by Meagan Kedrowski, which consists of two chairs and one boarded up wall with a window. The surroundings are well-incorporated into the set, most effectively in the concrete floor of the basement that is momentarily marked by the water that is splashed on it, until it drinks it up. The beautiful period costumes by Barb Portinga range from shabby to elegant and help to define the characters (there's even some clothes-swapping as roles are reversed). I particularly loved Morse's too-large dresses, ragged and dragging on the floor.

"Our lives are but a splash of water on a stone. I am the stone they fell upon, and they have marked me." And this play has marked me. You can't ask for much more than that from theater - a beautifully written, thought-provoking, disturbing play with wonderfully real and raw performances by the small cast in a space that adds to the tone of the show, that has a lasting impact on the audience. It's playing for two more weekends and I highly recommend that you check it out as one example of the fine work being done by small theater companies in unusual spaces.



*It really is chilly in the basement, so bring a sweater. There is street parking around The Soap Factory, but leave a little extra time to drive around and find a spot.