‘Theater of the Mind’ immerses and intrigues
“Theater of the Mind” — 3.5 stars
“Theater of the Mind” is not your grandparents’ theater.
The 75-minute immersive installation by the ever-curious, multidisciplinary artist David Byrne, writer Mala Gaonkar and director Andrew Scoville, in collaboration with the Goodman Theatre, is disorienting, compelling and ultimately deeply comforting (more about that later).
Occupying 15,000 square feet of Chicago’s historic Reid Murdoch Building, the experience includes a series of sensorial neuroscientific experiments, including an audio illusion involving tritones and another related to taste. Devised to challenge participants’ perceptions, the experiments complement a loosely structured narrative in which a man named David (inspired in part by co-creator Byrne) has the opportunity to “revisit the unresolved memories” of his life.
Carefully curated and creatively staged by Elmhurst native Scoville, the precisely timed event runs like clockwork. That’s crucial to a production where performances commence every 15 minutes. Each begins with audience members — no more than 16 at a time — filing into an anteroom where they randomly select identities they will assume for the duration of the show.
Each name corresponds to a friend or acquaintance of David, the guide for this theater-science hybrid. For the record, each performance features a different David who’s played by James Earl Jones II, Elizabeth Laidlaw, Helen Joo Lee, Em Modaff, Victor Musoni, AJ Paramo, Shariba Rivers, Kelli Simpkins and Lucky Stiff.
We meet David at his funeral. That’s where his story begins. It unfolds backward in time as David, played by the deeply empathetic Modaff at the performance I attended, recalls scenes from his life that play out across the various rooms of his consciousness, or “memory palace.”
Conjured by designer Neil Patel, the sets range from familiar to slightly surreal. Among them is an alt dance club that recalls 1990s Smart Bar and Neo, the well-manicured backyard of David’s childhood home, its outsize, mid-century chrome and Formica kitchen, and the musty-smelling, cobwebbed attic filled with his family’s once-treasured belongings.
Central to the experience are sound designer Cody Spencer and lighting designer Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew, who deftly evoke a slowly setting sun and the pink-hued interior of David’s brain.
An intriguing examination of perception, memory and identity, “Theater of the Mind” reveals, through disorienting yet harmless neurological experiments, some fundamental truths. First: Our senses play games on us. Second: Our perceptions are unreliable, calling into question not only our memories but also our sense of self.
As Modaff’s David says, “What we see is sometimes not what is really there. We are what we think happened to us.”
Poignant monologues chronicle significant moments from David’s life: a broken romance, faded friendships, a father’s declining mental state and a mother’s absence. Reflecting on those memories as his life draws to a close — with the wisdom that experience, maturity and self-awareness afford — leads David to more fully understand not only himself, but the people closest to him.
“Theater of the Mind” concludes on a hopeful note and with a grace I found consoling. To me, the final moments emerged as a kind of absolution, encouraging audiences to not be so hard on themselves, to recognize their imperfect perceptions and maybe not beat themselves up over the past.
As David says during the show’s final moments, “Going back into the past? We can’t change anything. But what I now understand … we’re never stuck.”
“You can change the story anytime,” he says. “Isn’t that nice?”
Very nice indeed.
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Location: Goodman Theatre co-production at the Reid Murdoch Building, 333 N. LaSalle St., Chicago, (312) 443-3800, TheaterOfTheMindChicago.com
Showtimes: Performances commence every 15 minutes beginning at 6 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday; 2 p.m. Wednesday; 5 p.m. Friday; noon Saturday; and 12:30 p.m. Sunday through July 12
Tickets: $66-$96
Running time: About 75 minutes, no intermission
Parking: Paid lots nearby
Rating: For teens and older