Zip, Zap, Zop 4ever!
Review of WHAT ELSE IS TRUE? at Egg and Spoon Theatre Collective
When the house lights go down at David Rosenberg’s new play What Else is True?, we are immediately thrown into a national tournament for college improv teams. A team gathers center stage, breaking the fourth wall to ask the audience for random words, and then plays a word association pattern game. The game generates ideas for their improv set. Sometimes an improv scene can be comical and revelatory. While other times it can fall flat and be unbearable to watch. What Else is True? straddles the line between revelatory and flat.
Through a series of vignettes, we follow a college improv team on their path to the national tournament. The group welcomes Miles (Same Gonzalez), a college sophomore. He is bright and talented in improv but still harbors anxieties about his talents. The group is determined to win big this year. Jamie (Adam Langdon) and Samira (Olivia AbiAssi) are the group’s unofficial official leaders. They both love Miles and believe in his talent, but they also worry about “the magic” or cohesion of the group, and as the play continues, we see why it can’t always be magic.
What Else is True? is an ensemble play featuring very entertaining performances all under the direction of Jake Beckhard and Adam Coy. Gonzalez, as Miles, is a joy to watch on the stage. His performance has a fluidity that lends itself to the improv scenes. He has great moments of quiet vulnerability, as he does to Rebecca (Serena Berman) when he questions his talent and place within the group. Rebecca is supportive and understanding. She’s a former child star in the realm of Jennette McCurdy. She dreams of restarting her career as an actor, away from the abuse she endured as a child actor. Berman’s performance as Rebecca beautifully captures internal chaos while trying to put on a public face.
Adam Langdon’s Jamie presents an awkward guy who gets in the way of himself and the group. He dreams of making it big as an actor, and his insecurities lead him to impose any control he can capture on the group, an anti-improv trait. He and AbiAssi share a great moment on stage when Samira confronts him for bringing in an outside coach without consulting the team. Abiassi is very present and commanding in every scene she is in.
Rounding out the main troupe are Jawuan Hill as Zeke and Ema Zivkovic as Jeanna. Both characters bond over their outsider status. Zeke felt alienated from his friends in high school, and Jeanna is sexually androgynous. Hill as Zeke performs a parody song of T.I’s Whatever You Like inserting Chinese food into the lyrics. It is hilarious and delightful. The play has these great moments of nostalgia for those that came of age in the early 2010s. Grouplove’s Tounge Tied has been stuck in my head for days.
The group plays a round of “99 Problems,” based on the Jay-Z song of the same name. While the play doesn’t have 99 problems, it still has some problems. Rosenberg’s script suffers from too much going on and pacing issues. There is a whole scene of a Skype call with a former member of the improv group that adds little to nothing to the plot. Then we have the ending scene of act one, where the group sits on Zeke’s roof, contemplating their lives post-college. Zeke delivers a rather long monologue about their idyllic perfect futures. It’s supposed to be a comedic and thematic scene, but it loses effect as the scene goes on.
There is something incredibly joyful about watching this group of young actors play and give themselves over to the “yes, and” mindset. It brought me back to my own high school thespian troupe, playing Zip, Zap, Zop and performing group initiation theatre rituals. Improv is an eternal art and a great teacher. It requires one to submit their ego to given circumstances to reach the sublime. Individual desires and personal troubles always get in the way. What Else is True? poses compelling dramatic questions, but much like a disconnected improv group, struggles to create a strong succinct play.
What Else is True? is playing at the Jeffrey and Paula Gural Theatre at A.R.T./New York Theatres through August 26th. Buy tickets here.