Hollwood Fringe Review: Last Call’s Worlds Collide

Review Headline followed by introduction

Billed as a “mash-up of settings, genres, and character-archetypes” from previous Last Call Theatre productions, Last Call’s Worlds Collide is an improvised narrative fueled by having audience members draw strips of paper from a hat to provide a setting, a plot, and some characters. These elements fan service to those familiar with the theatre company, but the resulting story is pretty much a stand-alone thing, not a multi-verse mélange of established characters into each other’s worlds while their universes collide. Since the draw from the hat can yield hundreds of permutations of plot, setting, and character, each performance can be quite different.

What does remain consistent is the theatre company’s established approach. Last Call’s Worlds Collide features plenty of up-close interaction, a fair degree of audience autonomy, and a template that that binds the improvised threads together: group activity at the beginning, middle, and end provides a sort of three-act structure which prevents the multiple, simultaneous individual interactions from spiraling into a tangled mess. This approach is definitely not for audiences who expect that cast to do all the heavy lifting, but those eager to take action will find it fun.

There are, however, some limits, which we tested to the best of our ability, in response to an issue we have encountered with some Last Call productions: namely, if we don’t particularly care for any of the characters, we find it difficult to engage with the story, which really requires you to align yourself with someone or some faction and follow their thread; otherwise, you end up randomly dropping in on conversations whose relevance to the overall narrative is lost on you.

In this case, our story, set inside a fantasy castle, involved a magical matriarch selecting a successor from among her children. We didn’t really think any of her heirs deserved to ascend to the throne, so in an effort to overthrow the monarchy, we went around lying to all of the contenders, detailing nefarious schemes their brethren were plotting against, in the hope of setting off a chain reaction that would explode into something exciting. Alas, it did not work. Maybe we’ll have more luck next time with a few confederates helping to sow discord. Fair warning, Last Call Theatre!

To be fair, the rest of the audience did not share our disdain for the royal lineage, so clearly Last Call’s Worlds Collide works for audience members who like playing an active role in the proceedings, and the cast managed to drive the story to a good ending, involving a magical duel among to determine the new monarch. So it was definitely a good time, just no on par with our favorite Last Call production, Abandoned, which for us is the gold standard for interactive theatre.