F(ord Focus) is the 5th of 26 planned interactive theatre experiences from writer/director Annie Lesser, following A(partment 8), B(arbershop), C(ovell), D(istillery), and E(levator). The world is Annie’s stage and few stages capture the spirit of interactive theater, with its power to break down the barrier between the audience and the performer, as well as this one. My night begins as I somehow find myself in a commercial/residential neighborhood in Silverlake with someone I don’t remember ever meeting before when who else but Annie Lesser appears from out of the shadows to help explain my predicament.
It seems I downloaded a generic rideshare app and ended up getting a ride from a guy with no rating or profile picture. To make matters worse, I agreed to ride with another group to save money and now my phone was dead. It was going to be a long night. I see that he’s parked right around the corner so I head over to the car where I’m greeted by Timothy (Mike Merchant), or at least I think that was his name. He didn’t seem completely sure but there weren’t any red flags outside of that and the other ones, so I get in and head out for my unspecified destination. I hop in the passenger seat and the mysterious woman I’m with gets in the back with a couple (Bonnie He & Jinny Ryann) who seem to confound our driver. They won’t stop arguing and this does not match his expectation of how lesbian relationships play out from his extensive research.
The decision of where to sit ends up being an important one since you’ll spend about half the performance mostly interacting with those around you. Despite being in such a confined space, the performance is so dense and the stimulus so constant that you really only have the chance to absorb one half of the entire experience and we both ended up coming out of it with very different stories even though both sides converge towards the middle. Luckily, the characters are all entertaining in their own right and offer their own unique insight into the narrative.
F(ord Focus) is co-written by Drew Petriello, whose absurdist play, How to Be Lazy and Not Feel Guilty, ran at the Hollywood Fringe Festival and you can certainly feel the influence of absurdism here. It’s a farce at its core with exaggerated characters that complement each other’s madness, with Merchant and his preoccupation with porn and wrestling contrasting He and Ryann’s portrayal of a super woke lesbian couple who are trying to align their chakras in-between bouts of shouting. Matt Vorce rounds out the cast in a role that I can’t really get into but which adds another level of surprise and complexity to the story’s structure.
The show runs about 25 minutes and while it could certainly be extended to take us even further down its rabbit hole, there are a number of ways it ended up diverging from my expectations and was overall a fun and exciting experience. Considering each performance is only able to accommodate 2 people, the $45 price is also quite reasonable. Fans of Lesser’s more emotionally-charged efforts might not find exactly what they’re looking for but you can’t make it through the entire alphabet without a bit of levity and even with its light-hearted mood, F(ord Focus) still manages to leverage its unique setting to create something conceptually engrossing.
Get your tickets here.
