By Glenn Whitehead
Revelations
Created by Revelations Collective in association with Outside the March and Horseshoes & Hand Grenades Theatre
Ottawa/Toronto | 120 mins
If you want to test your survival skills and see if you’re prepared for impending doomsday, Revelations at the undercurrents festival is something to check out.
Revelations brings a gameshow experience to the theatre in a disaster survival scenario shaped as an escape room. Alongside the fun lights and sounds of the gameshow is a dramatized story from the perspective of a doomsday prepper. At a runtime of a little over two hours, the show’s host Griffin McInnes does a terrific job twisting the prepper story into the gameshow.
McInnes shows the audience how world-ending scenarios are happening all around us, and gets you questioning how prepared you may be for these doomsdays. The show also toys with the idea that maybe there is a concept of being too prepared and becoming paranoid because of it.
Scene from Revelations. Photo by Griffin McInnes.
There are two ticket types: a Pay-What-You-Choose audience experience, or a $50 Player Party ticket (valid for up to eight players) with a more interactive involvement with the (game) show! Several participants in the show I attended played the game onstage in the performance.
The performance itself was phenomenal—McInnes’s performance was great and the show worked well with the Player Party members, making their involvement with the show feel fluid. It was nice that, as an audience member, I could see what the interactive players were doing.
I would have enjoyed a little more time with this part, as their gameplay was done in another room, with occasional glimpses into their decisions through a projection screen. I was interested to see how their doomsday prepping went. Also, if you were a participant, you didn’t experience McInnes’ acting chops.
By the end of the show, everyone in the interactive group and the audience were very comfortable and involved. Everyone banded together and discussed the survival strategies of the interactive groups, which even got the audience involved in some decision-making.
I cannot recommend enough to see this show. I believe interactive and audience-viewing experiences would be equally as enjoyable. I enjoyed the storytelling from McInnes, however, getting involved in an escape-room-like experience blended two types of theatrical activities into one.
Revelations is at undercurrents until Feb. 15. Tickets are pay-what-you-can, ranging from $10 to $50. For more information and to purchase tickets, see the undercurrrents schedule here.
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