Theatre in Review: Epona's Labyrinth (HERE) You'll find plenty of alluring, disorienting, or just plain disturbing imagery in Epona's Labyrinth, all of it the product of the video designer Keisuke Takahashi. Working with a four-sided set piece, designed by Shige Moriya, that moves and shape-shifts around the stage, Takahashi covers the walls with all sorts of oddly compelling visuals. A character walks downstage, followed by the wall, bearing fast-moving abstract shapes that look like fractals as designed by Keith Haring. It's like watching a tracking shot in a 3D film. When two characters get into an elevator, the stage is flooded with moving lines, creating a sense of rapid descent. A scene in an information technology center is defined by dozens of images of old-fashioned computer tape reels. When one character is given medication, the space is flooded with Technicolor shapes and human silhouettes, not unlike the title sequence in a James Bond film. Sadly, there comes a point in the 90-minute running time of Epona's Labyrinth when you have to turn away from the video and concentrate on the plot, and it's all downhill from there. The play, written by Ivana Catanese and Kameron Steele, begins on an intriguingly paranoid note, with the main character, known as Husband, in a state of distress because a mysterious ambulance has spirited his wife away to an unknown destination. He tracks her down at a vast and sinister hospital where bizarre sexual experiments are being conducted - practically everyone is masturbating or watching someone else masturbate, the head doctor is in need of a penis transplant; and the main object of lust is a 13-year-old girl who is slowly, painfully dying of a bone-wasting disease. The disconnect between the mysterious visuals and the lumbering and overly loquacious script is almost too much to bear. The more convoluted the action becomes, the harder it is to pay attention. What should have been a nightmare experience is lacking in any suspense or underlying sense of dread. The more clinical the action becomes, the sillier it gets, with revelations about patients who were created from artificially inseminated cows, and nurses who get an erotic thrill from urinating in front of others. It's a high-art porno science fiction drama, a combination of elements that resembles a chemistry experiment gone awry. Steele's direction does little to build any sense of tension. The cast members throw themselves into the action, doing whatever they must with all due seriousness, but the only impression is made by Ximena Garnica, who is unforgettably creepy as that dying young girl. When, late in the action, she is left alone to expire, the sight of her in stillness is more gripping than anything else on stage. The lighting, by Ayum "Poe" Saegusa, seems mostly designed not to interfere with the video, but in scene after scene it's hard to make out the actors' faces. It appears to be a deliberate choice but it does nothing to help draw one into the world of the play. The sound and original music by SKANK, including sirens, rainfall, and, yes, urination, is extremely accomplished. But Epona's Labyrinth is yet another example of a troubling trend in the avant-garde, in which work of considerable technical sophistication overwhelms frail material. The production is the collaboration of The South Wing, a Brooklyn-based group, and the Japanese Nibroll art collective. It cannot be said that their union has been fruitful. - David Barbour 
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