REVIEW: The Motion (Arena Stage)
Science fiction thrillers, like horror, are a rare breed in the theatre. And this reviewer thinks that shouldn’t be the case. They ask tough questions and require a certain level of creativity to be able to execute the appropriate ambience. So when someone like Arena Stage puts something on to this sort, especially a new work (by playwright Christopher Chen) that features a mild interactive element (bear with me!), I can’t help but pay attention.
Book
Welcome to Intelligence Squared, a debate organizer that pits the world’s leading subject matter experts against each other to debate a controversial topic in the field. Tonight at [insert venue here], a moderator poses a motion: Ban Animal Testing Now.
In this corner, we’ve got Dr. Sarah Matthis and Prof. Neel Bahara, in opposition to the motion on the grounds of necessary scientific advancement and the improvement of welfare over the last century. In the other, Dr. Alan James and Prof. Lily Chan, ethical academics who support the motion via the elevation of animal rights. (Ding ding ding, fight!)
And for the first thirty minutes or so, that’s what we get. A pretty run-of-the-mill debate on the ethics of animal testing. It’s fun, somewhat convincing, but nothing extreme. In fact: it gets a little (see: a lot) boring. But of course the other shoe drops, and in a very Woolly Mammoth-style blackout, the entire scene changes alarmingly quickly and introduces layers upon layers of magical realism, science fiction, and dystopian thriller. Where my frustration lies is how this play manages to turn that into the lowest-energy, momentum-sucking 45 minutes of theater possible. The tension from the obvious impending tone shift during the debate absolutely craters when these elements get established, and the second and third quarters of the piece become a very extended version of the first ten minutes of Up. The questions asked by the play become less thoughtful, the characters hold less meaning, and the extended sections without dialogue are detrimental to a piece ostensibly about creating just that. The thing about craters, though, is that there are peaks on each side of the abyss, and when The Motion eventually reaches it, the atmosphere and mental stress return en masse in a riveting final ten minutes. There’s a clever turn the story takes in the end that I won’t spoil; but even despite my enjoyment of that, I wish the play had started with this event and worked from there. Instead, the audience is left on a river of ennui for half of the nearly two-hour production. 2/10
Acting
The core quartet of Nikkole Salter (Matthis), Nehal Joshi (Neel), Peregrine Teng Heard (Chan), and Barzin Akhavan (James) are a strong web of delusion and pedagogical chutzpah, creating by far the production’s strongest element. Each character feels uniquely theirs, the only downside being that the book tends to favor Neel and Chan more than the others, but the time that is spent there is spent well. Additionally, DC favorite Nancy Robinette appears as the moderator, particularly in a pivotal scene in the latter half. If her first half presence seems wasted, just stick around. 7/10
Production
The staging device of the show being an actual debate that canonically takes place at [insert producing venue] is pretty neat. House lights and direct dialogue make you feel like a spectator, and subsequently a participant. There are two times (there should be more) that you can actually vote on the topic at hand, using paddles at provided at each seat. If you’ve ever thought participation was cool, but shudder at the idea of going on stage or otherwise drawing attention to yourself, this is your kind of show. Over the course of things, the Mickey Mouse platform swaps in and out, from a Venn diagram of a suburban house to a crystalline science lab. The former is plainly decorated, with its well-designed soullessness part of the appropriate scenery. The latter is plain in the other sense, full of milky white knick-knacks that aren’t engaging or pushing the story along. There’s an abundance of projectile fog in the latter third, too, which became uncomfortable quickly — if you get bothered by that, maybe don’t sit on the west side of the stage. In all, the production suffers from its abundance of reliance on the weak material, sitting around waiting for the text to provide meaning it is unable to do. 3/10
Viz
The Fichandler’s set up with a chilled, academic sterility that I was a little conflicted about. It sets the stage for a televised debate, but there’s not much going on visually besides diametric desks and a giant neon Mickey Mouse silhouette; the outline of the fictional debate organization bears a resemblance, and the org’s logo itself also looks a little familiar.* Meanwhile, a lot of the art for this show has lots of glitchy text and cybergreen hues around it, leading to believe it’s more computery than it actually is. Had I not known better, I’d have thought this was related to last season’s Data. 3/10
Verdict
The Motion doesn’t seem to have a lot of its namesake, with long periods of rest and forced naiveté squandering its solid cast. 15/40
