The company of Shadowbox Live dazzles in their reincarnation of the 90s off-broadway rock musical Evo. Many of the banners throughout the stage were from the original show. Director Stev Guyer decided to bring this show he wrote with Jimmy Mak back, and I’m glad he did since I was not here to see the first version.
Today’s Evo has been updated. The ‘everyman couple’ has been scrapped for a more casual lead narrator, Stacie Boord as the super kick-ass Ringleader, to take the audience through thirteen vignettes on the hows and whys of life and what it means to be you. The evolution of one’s self, perhaps.
It works. You don’t need to have characters going on a journey to feel very satisfied by the emotions presented in this production. The vignettes follow the same format, introduction, sketch, song/dance, and there aren’t many jokable moments. Instead, the vignettes are so touching – some a very piercing look at the way society treats groups of people.
Take women for instance. In From One Seed, you feel all of the pressures today’s society puts on women regarding pregnancy and what it means to be childless and if that’s even an appropriate choice for a woman to make. Three women lead the songs, Nikki Fagin, Myah Shaffer, and Stephanie Shull, while three others dance: Edelyn Parker, Rebecca Heimlich, and Jessica Rigsby. It’s so beautiful, and your heart aches for them.
There’s also some fun. In To the Top, things start to get dicey when a husband and wife take on a knife-throwing scene, that’s very edge of your seat!
The darker topics lend themselves very well to wonderful company dance scenes, choreographed by Katy Psenicka. Several of the darker topics take on a tribal song vibe, of which Culling (taking on the question of what to do with those who are weak and no longer contributing to society in a positive way) really stands out.
The costumes are beautiful works of art designed by Linda Mullin, Myah Shaffer, and Lyn Walker. Done in a carnival-theme, they feel reminiscent of a side-show…a place where someone runs off to to set out on their own and find their new family. Not to say that some of us have quite a support system with the family we are born into, but I think in this day and age, with people being more transient, you have to create your own family out of people you meet along the way.
Evo pushes forward questions about how our society functions and how each of us fit in (or don’t) to that expectation in a fun and flashy way that makes for a quite enjoyable show.
Photos courtesy Shadowbox Live.
Evo runs on Sundays at 2pm and 7pm through November 2, then again January 25 through February 8, 2015. Tickets are $20 to $25. For more information, visit ShadowboxLive.org.