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Saturday, September 3, 2011

Review: Red Rovers

By Ellen Dunkel

You get your nametag at the door. Then you settle in for a conference, hosted by two scientists from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who are drivers for the Mars Rovers. The two, David Disbrow and Christine Zani, turn out to be a couple who is splitting up both personally and professionally, while trying to hold the conference together.

In Red Rovers, a world premiere dance-theater piece presented by Headlong Dance Theater and Chris Doyle, the audience is heavily involved in the performance. They are divided into groups to create and perform a small dance or write dialogue for the actors, based on text messages.

It should be fun. We get out of our seats, we collaborate, we are offered snacks. The set is cleverly designed, with a desk, garbage can, and bits of trash floating as though in space. Rover replicas roam the stage. Disbrow and Zani appear in person, on screen, and in short dances, including a cute one about Donkey Kong. The themes are timely: While NASA’s space-shuttle program has ended, the Rovers roll on. Relationships come and go. 

But the script introduces and drops details. (Wasn’t she supposed to be evaluating his performance? The whole time I thought they were just dating but it turns out they’re married?) And while there’s an excellent chance that any Live Arts/Fringe performance might include audience participation, it adds nothing to this piece. Most of all, the 70-minute performance drags. 

$25-$30. 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday; 9 p.m. Saturday and 9/9; 7 p.m. 9/6, 9/7, 9/8, and 9/10; 10 p.m. 9/10. Live Arts Studio, 919 N. Fifth St.
Posted by Ellen Dunkel @ 12:34 AM  Permalink | 1 comment
Comments   
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 3:08 PM, 09/06/2011
    Hey. Saw it Sunday night and believe me there was no dragging. My wife and I loved it, and the kids around us were having a ball. Great work Headlong. You're always a treat.
    — Jake L


1 comments
About Philly Stage
Howard Shapiro reviews and writes about theater for The Inquirer, and has been on staff since 1970. He's had many posts at the newspaper, including cultural arts editor and editor of the Weekend section. He's twice been the editor of the Travel section, for which he writes frequently. He began writing theater criticism a decade ago, and has been a Nieman Fellow at Harvard, an Internews fellow in Greece, and a fellow at the National Endowment for the Arts' Journalism Institutue in Theater and Musical Theater, where Robert Brustein was among his mentors. He teaches arts criticism and travel writing at Temple University, and is Broadway critic for the NPR-affliated stations of the Classical Network.


Toby Zinman's night job since 2006 is theater critic for the Inquirer. She also is a contributing writer for Variety and American Theatre magazine. Her day job: Prize-winning prof at UArts, author of four books about four playwrights (Rabe, McNally, Miller, Albee), and doer of scholarly deeds (winner of five NEH grants, Fulbright lecturer at Tel Aviv University, visiting professor in China). Her 'weekend' job as a travel writer provides adventure: dogsledding in the Yukon, ziplining in Belize, walking coast-to-coast across England, and cowboying in the Australian Outback.


Wendy Rosenfield has been writing freelance features and theater reviews for The Inquirer since 2006. She was theater critic for the Philadelphia Weekly from 1995 to 2001, after which she enjoyed a five-year baby-raising sabbatical. She also writes the ArtsJournal blog Drama Queen. She was 2009 and 2010 Guest Critic for the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival's Region II National Critics Institute, a 2008 NEA Fellow in Theater and Musical Theater, and a participant in the Bennington Writer's Workshop. A graduate of Bennington College, she is inching toward a Master's degree in Liberal Arts at the University of Pennsylvania. She also is a fiction writer, was proofreader to a swami, publications editor for the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and a Brownie Girl Scout troop leader.

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