Ashley Busenlener and Noite (photo by Keegan DeVetis)
Reviewed by Monya De
Last Call Theatre
Through May 16.
RECOMMENDED
Michael DiNardo speaks with an audience member (Photo by Keegan DeVitis)
After COVID, many wondered when the art-responses would come. One presumed an onslaught of moralistic films, books, paintings, theatre; this mass killing event resulted only in a few masked-up episodes of one-hour medical dramas.
But the lingering effect of COVID was a sense of uncertainty and urgency. Take the trip. Buy the Bitcoin. Write the play. And so, a few years later, when immigrants and their children watched as protests mounted against ICE being deployed as a violent Russian-style secret police, they wrote.
That Livieria Lim’s The Liminary, running through May 16 in Koreatown, is an undefined, interactive, immersive experience seems almost inevitable. It is almost the anniversary of the ICE protests in Los Angeles which brought a sort of unifying doom to everyone’s scrolls, much as the Eaton and Palisades fires had. Lim, holder of a BA in theatre and a master’s degree in social justice, gives their audience a formal introduction outside the show that effectively builds anticipation and a bit of community, and takes us into the back rooms of Hatch Escapes, situated atop a delightful Disney-like elevator ride. There, we find ourselves in the titular club, the lair of a group of resistance fighters. The environment’s warmer and more hopeful than one might expect; there’s an arts and crafts corner for audience members to add to the decor, a cozy nook to sit on couches and watch a video. Artifacts both from the actors’ real immigrant homes, as well as props they specifically requested to represent characters’ backstories, line the room.
We had received emails to peruse before the show and enjoyed the experience more with the context. Lim has taken the injustice of Trump’s renaming (“Gulf of America,” etc.) to a logical extreme; 2042 Los Angeles has been renamed, immigration and travel tightly restricted, nonwhite or disabled people oppressed. Darah (the mononymous Noite, with a personal style so stunning and extreme it is no wonder she was cast) is the activist founder of the Liminary safehouse. Audience members can align themselves with a personality such as a freedom fighter or a member of a marginalized community, and start the experience by talking to the relevant character. Shy people can also indicate they want to just observe the proceedings.
There are puzzles, decent ones, and you need to be focused if you want to get to them all. I saw a couple trying to break a code and moseyed over to help with the subtlety of a moth to a flame. Despite my cracking, we unlocked a sequence too slowly to announce a certain reveal to the group ourselves, and the actors staged it dramatically instead, once the clock hit whatever internal time point was their cue.
The acoustics in the room, while decent when actors speak at normal volumes, can’t support yelling, and Bryan Siu as “The Leader” in a casting swap, was difficult to understand much of the time. Lim has written a compelling “human” story for his character; I would have liked more emphasis on the characters’ relationships and who they are as people early on to build up to the climax. Michael DiNardo, as a reformed cop, could have leaned more into the learned hardness and intimidating presence of a police officer, even one who is now a raging liberal.
The performance felt slightly raw with line flubs here and there and the challenges of managing a free-roaming crowd. “The Liminary” is likely smoother and tightened up now, and still a worthwhile catharsis for anyone still smarting from the ICE raids. Of note, the company is donating part of concession sales to immigrant right groups, and one craft project you can do on site is creating hygiene kits for donation. That’s the kind of immersion we want.
Last Call Theatre, 1919 3rd Ave., LA; Thurs.-Sat., 8 pm; thru May 16. Running time: 90 minutes without inermission. https://www.tickettailor.com/events/lastcalltheatre/2135418
