Theatre in Review: The Downtown Loop (3LD Art and Technology Center)

	Greg Carere and Mia Jessup. Photo Todd Carroll

The weather is cooling, but you can still take a tour of Manhattan in The Downtown Loop. Ben Gassman's play is set on one of those tour buses that can be seen all over town, and because this is being staged at 3LD, the physical production is spectacular. The audience sits on the top level of David Ogle's set; through the Plexiglas floor, you can see a bedroom inhabited by a woman. Surrounding the audience on the right and left, and also straight ahead, are projection screens showing images of Midtown Manhattan as seen from a moving bus.

You can't find a more immersive theatre experience in New York right now. Thanks to the video designs of Jared Mezzocchi, you'll feel every twist and turn of the bus as it wanders from the Village to the Theatre District. Backed up by Jon Bernstein's sound design, which captures the full range of ambient street noises, it's the next best thing to hopping a ride on the Gray Line. And for an extra touch of authenticity, there's a hot dog vendor available just before you take your seat.

Indeed, the physical production is so accomplished that it threatens to overwhelm Gassman's rather slender play, a comic sketch about the life and hard times of a character known only as Tour Guide. As the bus passes the Marble Collegiate Church, he references Norman Vincent Peale, but Tour Guide is no believer in the power of positive thinking. As the night wears on, he offers an increasingly barbed commentary on the commodification of New York City. He points out the site of the former Vanderbilt Horse Exchange, now an Applebee's. He notes how St. Vincent's Hospital is being replaced by a luxury condominium. And, occasionally, he stretches out on the floor of the bus and slips into a fugue state. "Sometimes I just want to lie down in a monster bin of heirloom tomatoes," he says. "But then who would give the tour?"

Adding to his angst are his encounters with, among others, an overenthusiastic trainee, who insists that New York is like "a demon god," and an especially accommodating Finnish tourist, whose blasé attitude about sex is upsetting to Tour Guide. "You Scandinavians-or-almost-Scandinavians can be vicious, man. I still have feelings," he complains. And then there are his repeated encounters with Her, apparently the girl who got away (and who, I believe, is also the inhabitant of that bed under the stage). At one point, she tells him that she is now living with "this guy I met at the orphanage where I volunteered...he's in private equity but he's so down-to-earth." All of this is mildly amusing, but Tour Guide isn't a particularly compelling character; nothing really happens to him, and he and his companions tend to fade in front of the enormous projections. More than a few times, I found myself gazing at the scenery rather than the actors.

This is a major problem in a theatre scene that has gone projection-happy. More than once in the last few months I've seen shows that featured enormous, impressive, technically accomplished, and often quite beautiful projected images. So impressive were they, however, that I lost interest in the actors on stage. I have nothing against projections -- in fact, I can name several instances recently in which they were crucial to the success of a production -- but they have to be used carefully. Only the strongest scripts and the most gifted actors stand against this technology, and even then it may be a losing battle.

That said, Greg Carere is a most excellent Tour Guide, both live and in the video scenes that show him in more intimate (though hardly more satisfactory) encounters. Everything else about the production, including Sarah Johnston's lighting (surely not easy, under the circumstances) and Emily Blumenauer's costumes are also fine.

I have no idea if The Downtown Loop was always intended to have the kind of production it gets here or if Meghan Finn, the director, read it and saw the opportunity for a technical extravaganza. It would be interesting to see if the play seemed stronger in a different context. As it stands, it is, for all its pleasant moments, a trip to nowhere. --David Barbour