Review: Promising Signals from the Hollywood Fringe
a review of an interactive experience set in the world of the SCP
Last Father's Day I was looking for some immersive theater. We eventually found an escape room, but I wanted something more playful, where we could act as well as play. USC’s game guru Jesse Vigil pointed me to No Proscenium and Everything Immersive — Solid Gold! — which would lead us this year to Last Call Theatre’s Signals, a delightful interactive entry in the Hollywood Fringe, running through June 26.
Signals is a two-hour immersive experience based on the mythology and arcana of SCP. (Don't know about that? Rabbit hole alert!) I must say that I had very little knowledge of the world of SCP but in conversation with experts, the show stays faithful to some of the core content of that universe. The show involves about 15 actors and a handful of support staff. The experience: one wild mix of quests, plot twists, and emergent play!
Spoiler-free Review
A quest-based immersive experience, Signals is most fun if you’re ready to play and see what you can make happen, rather than sitting back waiting to be led. Quests and missions do a lot of work to structure your experience, but if you open yourself up to the sandbox nature of the show, you’ll find maximum delight.
Before I experienced the show, Noah's No Proscenium review (with the help of Kevin Gossett) had warned me that this would not be on the polished Disney Star Wars hotel side of immersive. In fact, he said you'd have to make your own fun. Those are like my trigger words. I was in.
After a short orientation, we had our context: We were new recruits to the the Foundation, here to aid in the study and containment (and protection of and from) the unworldly, anomalous and potentially dangerous SCP creatures. Oh, and also to traffic in office gossip. (Love it!)
And so began the missions!
Most of my missions centered on the Site Head and his relationship to the other characters. He was an easy point of focus and was played as bunglingly inept by Mikey Takla. He was caught in a bit of a love triangle and possibly a little mismanagement of the operation. I’ll let you pursue that if you will. Each of the other heads of departments had missions for us and lower status characters were happy to send us on runs for them as well.
We were also allowed into interview the SCPs, a menagerie of creatures drawn from the online crowd-composed world.
The good
The world of the Foundation is well drawn even if with minimal props and costumes, a bit of pipe and drape. And there’s some standout acting, perhaps most notably by Jason Pollak as the Plague Doctor, albeit a part designed to be dialed up to maximum thespian. Though I should be honest about how much I enjoyed lower status characters.
The joy for me came on my first mission. I was sent by the HR Manager, played withe laser game master focus by Riley Cole, to get some intel on another character and that intel (freely given up, btw) led to my afternoon of mischief. (Details below in the spoiler section.)
Moving from room to to room, character to character, revelation to revelation, I discovered many avenues to follow, leading to branching points as players who had attended on other days told me after had led to radically different endings.
And as Noah and Kevin pointed out in their review, these actors are game to play and create with their guests, which is all the rope I needed.
The bad…
I am a pretty forgiving participant in emergent art, and I was having too much fun to hold the plot itself up too much scrutiny, but I did wish the central love triangle had a bit more depth and commitment. I won’t go into details, but it just seemed a bit thin. (light spoiler below)
Also, not everyone observes immersive theater decorum. Some players would press their way into rooms for their missions, which was not terrible, but could have been short circuited with a bit more mission control and team building in particular. If we each had to rely on one another, it would be less about cuing up for the same amusement park ride and more about collaborative and interdependent story discovery and construction.
But I was most happy about the commitment to a complex story world. In the photo below, you can see one of the stronger parts of the show as a romance storyline is being advanced in the background, even was we interview a character in the foreground.
Begin Spoilers: Good and Plenty.
On my first mission, I discovered that the security officer liked Good and Plenty's best. That seemed like a rather arbitrary token that I dutifully delivered to the HR manager. But, when I noticed the bottom shelves in the lab had bags of candy, that kicked off a chain of bribery and favor trading that allowed me to unlock further scenes. It also helped that I had no indication that I was allowed to just take things from these shelves, which, you know, forbidden Good and Plenties = Truly Scrumptious!
No regarding acting. Even though the Plague Doctor stole the show, Chris the Intern (Haven Schneider), Agent G.O. the security officer (Kale Hinthorn), and Westley Brown the Janitor (Michaela Skaribas) were my favorites to interact with. Agent G.O. seemed focused and improv ready at every weird turn I threw at her. Westley the Janitor also had some downright cooky ideas about the world but was such a humble character, I felt she likewise lifted the pressure on me to perform my missions with so much seriousness.
But Chris was the biggest surprise. As I chatted with the intern, he told me his elaborate backstory, which very well may have been penned on the spot. Child of an SCP, Chris was destined to work there and one day become site head. And who was the SCP mother?
Dolly Parton!
Excuse me? And that parentage made Chris half SCP, at least according to Chris, as evidenced by an ability to manifest one of the other characters out of his imagination. Most of the other characters seemed bemused and rather caught off guard by all this info. In retrospect I don't think they were doing bad Yes-Anding so much as not quite sure how to process this.
That interaction led to my favorite moment. After Chris had been (voted to be) lobotomized by the Plague Doctor, Chris was well, not all there. When I expressed concern, the HR rep sent me to suss out his mental capacity to see if there was any chance of restoring them. In retrospect, this was not so much of a mission as a humoring of my own wish to restore them.
When I found Chris next for some proof, the Plague Doctor asked them to demonstrate the set piece of his limited brain functioning (clearly as set piece as I had seen it repeated quite a few times).
But I was determined. I took Chris aside, armed with my one piece of key backstory, and began singing various Dolly Parton songs. When I got to 9-to-5 they began quietly at first but then clearly to hum along. Although not enough to warrant the possibility of recovery (according to Sybil, the HR manager, who did not miss a beat explaining to me the brain location of music memory), it did prove that this game was fully responsive to any weirdness I could bring. And I can bring it.
I should mention, when I tried to take Chris’ baton toward the end of the show (not sure what my plan was), I found my first real boundary, as I was swarmed by actors asking why I was trying to do that. I had found the fence. Recalling the warning that misbehaving players would be ushered out of this Willy Wonka operations tour, I quickly complied!
Takeaways:
While still a bit raw, Signals shows what some strong station and quest based immersive theater can offer players, especially when a cast treats no bizarre inspirations as, well, anomalous! Up for some play? Don’t miss it, LA.
Signals plays in the Hollywood Fringe at the Thymele Theater, 5481 Santa Monica Blvd: Monday, June 20th @8:30pm, Thursday, June 23rd @9:30pm, Friday, June 24th @9:30pm, Saturday, June 25th @7pm, Sunday, June 26th @8:15pm. Get tickets here.
