Fall is a great time for seeing live theater, as the Indian Summer winds down and temperatures drop into that horrible 50-60° range, warm theaters are a welcome sanctuary. Katie & Brittany are on a roll, seeing all kinds, even though they’ve been overall less impressed than they hoped to be, but more on that later. Here they are with a report from Hush at Z Space:
Andrew Ward (top) and Felipe Barrueto-Cabello (bottom) perform in Hush; photo by Margo Moritz
Z Space is one of our favorite live performance venues in San Francisco, not just because it’s a beautiful warehouse theater, with not a bad seat in the house, and an art gallery in the lobby but also because there is always something new and different. Last week they premiered Hush a dance-theater piece created by the Joe Goode Performance Group. It had been featured on the cover of Theatre Bay Area and has been generally buzzed about, so we were very excited at opening night . . . maybe too excited.
Brittany: There were a lot of good things about this show. They were all really talented dancers. The foley and music was awesome. I loved watching the sound effects happen live. The set was pretty cool. The problem was the story was disappointingly trite, so the piece didn’t live up to the hype.
Like any play, once the plot was established I felt like the relationships between the characters should be driving the piece, but that didn’t happen. They established that there were specific relationships between specific actors, and that those people were playing the same roles throughout the play, but they were so focused on dancing they didn’t let the relationships develop. Great dancers don’t necessarily make great actors I guess. It felt like the piece lacked an emotional through line.
If this same story was told in 30-40 mins, instead of an hour fifteen, I would have probably walked away feeling like this was a perfect dance-theater piece, but for me it dragged.
Katie: Right! Wow, I couldn’t have said it better . . . so I won’t even try.
The Verdict: Do you love, love, love dance pieces? You need to see this show! Are you more into a well told story that happens to have beautiful movement and awesome music, then we don’t think you will be blown away by this piece as a whole.
The Drama Talk: All the elements to make an amazing dance-theater piece were there: talented people, a very awesome space, insane cool music and sound effects, however this was one time the whole was not greater than the sum of its parts. Falling short on the storyline, and indulging in few too many artsy repetitions of dance movements, made the show a little long and as a whole get a little . . . [we so don’t want to say it, because we HATE this word] boring.
The Drinks: Since the characters worked a dive bar we thought it would be best to go to the Homestead a few blocks away. We got our usuals and poured one out for unrealistic expectations.
Hush runs through 10/5 at Z Space, and tickets can be purchased through their website. Ticket prices vary. You can get seats way in the back for $15-20, but the best seats in the house will run you closer to $65-70.
