Geoff Sobelle, Quinn Bauriedel, Trey Leford by Jacques-Jean Tiziou
Imagine actually sitting in the audience of the door-slamming show within the show in Noises Off!, the one in which everything that can go wrong does. That’s pretty much what happens when you buy a ticket to see machines machines machines machines machines machines machines. The key to the show is right there in the title: Why repeat something once or even three times when you can do it seven?
Three men, all annoying in their own ways, are hiding out in an elaborately constructed bunker, outfitted with all kinds of insane gadgets. Liam, the first one awake, doesn’t bother flipping a switch to turn the lights on. Like the board game Mousetrap—which is so complicated no one in my family could ever bring themselves to buy it—everything that needs done has been rigged like tumbling dominoes. Liam pulls a string, a ball rolls down a chute, knocks off an obstacle that tumbles into something else, and the lights come on.
And that’s pretty much it for 70 interminable minutes—10 minutes for every machine in the title. As Liam (Trey Lyford, who also provides running sound effects), Phineas (Geoff Sobelle, wearing a kilt and hamming it up with a thick burr) and The Chief Commander (Quinn Bauriedel, doing a Jimmy Stewart impression) set about their daily business, we’re treated to complicated bits of machinery that should work and don’t. Of course, since dialogue accompanies every bit of action, the actors are forced to babble endlessly while they try to force their gadgets into action. The threadbare conceit, that man relies too much on technology, wears down to nothing after the first 20 minutes, as things fall apart and the ad libs increase in desperation.
There may or may not be a plot; the men talk an awful lot about their comrade Patrick, who almost died in the Chief Commander’s arms a decade before, but there’s so much extraneous chatter as the machines malfunction that following even the slightest of conversational topics becomes impossible. Somehow, reminiscences about Patrick end up covering Bauriedel in shaving cream and toothpaste, which remains on his face for the rest of the show.
Machines is the kind of mindless wink-wink show that a college theater company puts on, with its air of DIY-theatricality and the chance to involve their friends in the audience in the failure of the contraptions. Either way, rent Noises Off! instead. At least that chaos is controlled.
>machines machines machines machines machines machines machines
Through June 27, The HERE! Arts Center, 145 6th Ave. (betw. Spring & Dominick Sts.), 212-352-3101; times vary, $20–$28.
Three men, all annoying in their own ways, are hiding out in an elaborately constructed bunker, outfitted with all kinds of insane gadgets. Liam, the first one awake, doesn’t bother flipping a switch to turn the lights on. Like the board game Mousetrap—which is so complicated no one in my family could ever bring themselves to buy it—everything that needs done has been rigged like tumbling dominoes. Liam pulls a string, a ball rolls down a chute, knocks off an obstacle that tumbles into something else, and the lights come on.
And that’s pretty much it for 70 interminable minutes—10 minutes for every machine in the title. As Liam (Trey Lyford, who also provides running sound effects), Phineas (Geoff Sobelle, wearing a kilt and hamming it up with a thick burr) and The Chief Commander (Quinn Bauriedel, doing a Jimmy Stewart impression) set about their daily business, we’re treated to complicated bits of machinery that should work and don’t. Of course, since dialogue accompanies every bit of action, the actors are forced to babble endlessly while they try to force their gadgets into action. The threadbare conceit, that man relies too much on technology, wears down to nothing after the first 20 minutes, as things fall apart and the ad libs increase in desperation.
There may or may not be a plot; the men talk an awful lot about their comrade Patrick, who almost died in the Chief Commander’s arms a decade before, but there’s so much extraneous chatter as the machines malfunction that following even the slightest of conversational topics becomes impossible. Somehow, reminiscences about Patrick end up covering Bauriedel in shaving cream and toothpaste, which remains on his face for the rest of the show.
Machines is the kind of mindless wink-wink show that a college theater company puts on, with its air of DIY-theatricality and the chance to involve their friends in the audience in the failure of the contraptions. Either way, rent Noises Off! instead. At least that chaos is controlled.
>machines machines machines machines machines machines machines
Through June 27, The HERE! Arts Center, 145 6th Ave. (betw. Spring & Dominick Sts.), 212-352-3101; times vary, $20–$28.
