Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – The kids aren’t alright: Vox Motus’s FLIGHT and Lindsey Ferrentino’s THIS FLAT EARTH

• By drediman
• April 13, 2018
• No Comments

A recent crop of shows in the past month or so have curiously depicted kids under severe duress. Alex Lubischer’s play Bobbie Clearly and the Bengsons’ musical The Lucky Ones both feature communities coping with the violent deaths of teenagers. Joining these two works are Vox Motus’s mesmerizing Flight at the McKittrick Hotel and Lindsey Ferrentino’s This Flat Earth at Playwrights Horizons.

A scene from Vox Motus’s “Flight” at The McKittrick Hotel.

Vox Motus’s singular Flight (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED), adapted from Hinterland, a 2012 novel by Caroline Brothers, at the McKittrick Hotel (the home of Punchdrunk’s long-running hit Sleep No More) completely disarmed me. The lovingly handcrafted, actor-less experience – the work is essentially an elaborate, immersive diorama – tells the panoramic story of two young Afghan refugees who flee their war-torn homeland and journey across mainland Europe seeking asylum. Thankfully, these kids’ eventful travels, which are fraught with constant hardships, are hardly romanticized, despite the hourlong piece’s elegant, stylish storytelling. This clarity of purpose, combined with gorgeously realized landscapes – both internal and external – impressed and moved me tremendously. No wonder it was a big success at the prestigious Edinburgh International Festival. I highly recommend making a journey to the McKittrick before Flight plays its final performance on April 20th.

Ella Kennedy Davis and Lucas Papaelias in Lindsey Ferrentino’s “This Flat Earth” at Playwrights Horizons.

This week also saw the opening of This Flat Earth (SOMEWHAT RECOMMENDED), Lindsey Ferrentino’s new play about a fictitious shooting at a middle school, at Playwrights Horizons. I really wanted to like the play given its urgent topic, but unfortunately, the play and this production of it (directed by Tony-winner Rebecca Taichman) are woefully uneven. Even more so than her previous plays, Ugly Lies the Bones and this season’s Amy and the Orphans – both of which enjoyed Roundabout Theatre Company productions – This Flat Earth is less than the sum of its admittedly fascinating parts. Although I appreciated how the play ultimately explores how time and human memory intersect with such horrific events, I found the scenes leading up to this through-provoking denouement to be consistently awkwardly written and performed (some of the performances were just plain shrill), as if suffering from insufficient self-awareness.

FLIGHT
Off-Broadway, Play
Vox Motus at The McKittrick Hotel
55 minutes (without an intermission)
Through April 20

THIS FLAT EARTH
Off-Broadway, Play
Playwrights Horizons
1 hour, 45 minutes (without an intermission)
Through April 29