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Review: Overseers

Overseers: Applied Mechanics' dystopian walk-through play, directed by Rebecca Wright, is a Fringe pick well worth exploring. says Wendy Rosenfield

    by Wendy Rosenfield
    Published 
By Wendy Rosenfield
  Applied Mechanics’ newest theatrical production-as-installation, Overseers, supports its mission statement, which also happens to be the definition of its parallel branch in the physical sciences: “Applied mechanics examines the response of bodies or systems of bodies to external forces.” The ensemble’s performers, stationed on platforms, stairs, in a trunk, inhabit a dystopian future in which those external forces stage a battle royal for humanity’s health and well-being. Think Margaret Atwood meets The Prisoner (though the show’s text draws on writers ranging from Emily Dickinson to Sun Tzu to Don DeLillo), and you’re headed in the right direction.
  While the actors -- as a doctor, priest, bureaucratic functionary, revolutionary and artist (all excellent, all co-creators of the piece, and all willing to have some fun while delivering their message) -- respond to the growing threat of a disease infiltrating their “Sector,” the audience must also respond.
  Sometimes you’re invited to eat cake and drink gin, you move to another station as the action shifts, or occasionally, you simply need to get out of the way fast enough to avoid being stepped on by two-foot high stilts supporting Kristen Bailey’s Pater B.
  You choose your own adventure, with deft guidance by director Rebecca Wright, who brings up the volume of a discussion in one corner while softening another. Some clues slip past, but there’s enough repetition and overlap to avoid frustration and thread together a coherent narrative. 
  Maria Shaplin’s design contributes mightily to Overseers’ unified otherworldliness: The cast wear cultish cream-colored raw linen jumpers; Mary Tuomanen’s scientist sports elongated fingers and bustles with the no-nonsense, head-down demeanor of a woodland creature, analyzing slides from atop a wooden perch. There’s a bit of style over substance here, but that style and the creative means by which it’s delivered make this a Fringe pick well worth viewing and, of course, exploring.
$15.  9 p.m. 9/11, 8 p.m. 9/12 and 13. The Machine Shop, 2037 Washington Ave.
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    Wendy Rosenfield