THEATER REVIEW- Attempt 3.4

Attempt 3.4 is one of those shows more accurately termed an experience; critic Tom Powell at Broadway Baby aptly describes it as more of a “live art installation rather than theatre.” The cast lays out the ambitious and mystifying intent of constructing “the city” in 60 minutes. The posters describe the four as the “architects of the apocalypse” and I’m waiting for something mildly religious and the poster of a fireman makes me think that it will have a feel-good message about the nobility of the human spirit….not quite.

From the first step of demarcating the square outlines of their performance space, the cast extends an invitation to the audience to participate in the commencing abstraction. The rest of the show is an emotional drive-by through the chaotic, personal, emotional, sensitive, lovable, laughable, and pathetic. Imagine if you took a box of magnetic poetry, scattered the words on the ground, and spent the rest of the day picking up the pieces out-loud; every strand and loose thought is either the beginning of a Nicole Krauss novel, or just a stand-alone quirky statement of how a poodle’s diet gets their hair so curly (spaghetti). Particularly potent are the themes of needing another’s attention (a voyeuristic window crush is abandoned), to being invisible in our trembling secrets.

In the square there is form, rules, and in this, a meaningful freedom of creativity and raw expression that Raz-mataz failed in achieving through their contrastingly shapeless production.