Action/Adventure Theatre’s Fall of the House is a serialized
show following a group of roommates and their friends. Each week lays
out a new episode—a literal little slice of what it’s like to be
a twentysomething in this city, dating and fucking around and trying to
negotiate a social landscape full of borderline personalities who drink
too much. And because the cast and crew of Action/Adventure seem
comprised of these very personalities, they handily mine the milieu for
all the humor and emotional currency it’s worth. If you’ve ever smoked
out of a bong that has a name, slept with someone for exactly the wrong
reasons, or graduated from a good college into a shitty service
industry job, you’ll appreciate this show. (I was immediately won over
by the ceramic unicorn head sitting on the set’s side table, having
lived at various times with ceramic unicorn heads of my own.) It’s
gratifying to see your experience represented onstage, without having
to sift through layers of history and metaphor to find something to
relate to.
Of course, the thrill of self-recognition fades quickly, and
wouldn’t mean much if the execution wasn’t solid. But given the freedom
to improvise within a pre-plotted narrative structure,
Action/Adventure’s ensemble is consistently quick and surprisingly
witty, bringing depth and complexity to familiar personality types
(Patrick Alan Coleman as the affable but clueless Brian is particularly
well drawn).
If you’ve missed previous shows, a recap at the beginning of each
episode will quickly bring you up to speed: While I only saw the second
episode, I think I can safely assume that each installment deals with
some combination of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll (the recorded
soundtrack is courtesy of a familiar roster of local acts, including
the Builders and the Butchers and the Crosswalks).
Episode 2 ended on something of a cliffhanger, but the individual
episode had a pretty complete little narrative arc of its own.
Unfortunately for those of you who have yet to discover this gem of a
show, there are only two weekends left. Hopefully, though, we’ll be
seeing more from Action/Adventure in the future—Fall of the
House is a cult classic in the making.