The lights descended on a feather capped fellow, standing solemnly at center stage. As he began his song, the firmaments foundations seemed to shake. Before he could let off a single note, I look down to see the Earth's molten core spilling into empty space. Beneath the sparkling nightmare riggled a sullen figure. Between the scorching magma, icy cold chunks of soil, and a drifting actor still wailing his lines of “God, the almighty and all-knowing, has misplaced a Constitution?!” I, alone and afraid, grabbed my notepad and frantically scribbled these notes here. If time were to end, if this was the last breaths of life itself, I will be certain to still get my word-count in.
All around us swirled the obsidian black scales of a twisting horror. His first stage production was a soaring masterpiece, untouchable in the pantheon of stage-plays. Is this how Lin sought to outdo himself? Has he communed with deep and baleful creatures for a bit of extra pizzazz? If so, high marks for originality. What a brilliant risk, to wager humanity itself for yet another chance at Broadway glory. It now seems as though something has gone terribly wrong however. The curtain has swirled up and out into the pitch-black night, now visible through the crumbling roof. The stage manager is trying to yank the singing star back down to Earth. Worse even still it looks like the actor has forgotten the next line, what a shame. If this is an intended part of the play, I’m thoroughly engrossed. Even audience members are getting in on it, what immersion!
The stage dressing was simple, bare almost. Maybe that was just what I remember before a vacuum opened before me, consuming all before it into a swirling, yawning maw. But, it was certainly not ornate. Dull perhaps, hoping to lean on the costuming and writing instead. The costumes were, before they were peeled off the poor hapless souls sucked into an infinite abyss, delicate, precise even. Colors sparkled against the burning, and chaos surrounding them. Shining almost brightly enough to distract me from the pitch-perfect screams of the performers before the spawn of the deep, the spectral haunt, the nameless bane of existence, swallowed them whole. So, points for that.
I cannot, in good conscience, give it credit for the writing. We only got one line into the play before a creature untouched by the weight of time, or burdened by anything other than cold-blooded horror, consumed all before it. It was a shame to watch Lin Manuel Miranda have his flesh sucked from his bones by the cosmic demon, erased from all of knowing as easily as a deep breath taken by a toddler. Watching him disappear, such was the force and power of the abyssal creature, I forgot him ever existing. Were I not to have taken notes, his name would be gone, lost. Still he drifts from my mind. And now. Nothing. Peace.
I myself am drifting off. Away. My seat is falling beyond the atmosphere itself. My notepad is all that's left. Was this the last piece of art ever displayed before the stage of history? Are we worthy of that honor? Instead could we not have shown a child playing with their parents? How can we surpass the simple grandeur of a cat with a newfound piece of novelty. Batting it here and there. All the work and money spent to produce this? A Spam-fisted (pardon the pun) attempt at novelty? A quick grab for a pile of cash now useless? It was, if anything, a truly unique theatrical experience however.
Four out of five stars.