Saturday, August 12, 2023

"The Willows" is an interactive psycho-drama that casts visitors as dinner guests at a sinister Los Angeles mansion



Tickets once again available for shows in Los Angeles. From the start of the LA Times' review last year: 

Just as a recent production of “The Willows” was starting to reveal its intentions around a dinner table, the immersive theater endeavor ripped me away from the action. I was being scolded by the matriarch of the house, and the butler was quick to order me out of my seat. My offense? Resting my elbows on a dinner table. I didn’t even have time to nod a goodbye to my partner as I was instructed to stand, leave the dining room and sit alone in a cramped, red-lit closet.

The first thing that caught my eye was a crumpled paper, which read, “I’m bad because I put elbows on the table.” While I wasn’t asked to write a confession, such a clever detail made it clear that I was now part of a lineage of poorly mannered guests at this haunted house.

As lights and audio flickered, the setting was eerie — bordering on sinister. I was told I had two minutes to sit and contemplate my actions

Hollywood Reporter from 2017:

[Producer Justin] Fix himself drives the blindfolded audience (in a creepy white van) to the location of the show from a meeting place on a street corner.