“Dungeons & Dragons: The Twenty Sided Tavern” reviewed by Mark Reinecke

*** Even nerdy gamers need to get off now and then. Plus, you need a strong imagination, which is required to get through this live version of a popular role-playing game now playing at the Broadway Playhouse at Water Tower Place.

For years after it was invented in the 1970s, Dungeons & Dragons was a niche game that mostly nerdy boys played at home with friends. Fast forward several decades D & D (as it’s known in hip parlance) has emerged as a spectator sport for other people to watch. Created and developed by David Carpenter and Gamiotics, The Twenty Sided Tavern asks the audience to control where the evening goes. This truly unique theatrical experience blends elements of tabletop D & D with improv theater in an attractive venue.

Every show is different up to a point. The stage setup is a tavern, with a bar that doubles as a play space for the two dungeon masters. Additionally, there are three improv characters who work to keep up with the audience and take whatever is thrown their way. Using a QR code, the crowd votes on key decisions for a frenetic, silly, and for most of us, a fun and dicey evening. This is not the stuff of a sturdy dramatic narrative, ensuring a cohesive meaningful story. This is pure spectator sport.

Under the direction of Michael Fell, The Twenty Sided Tavern coasts on strong performances, good stage design, and crowd engagement for the duration. Compelling, comedic actors improvise and play the game as they “wing it” with quick wits, and a strong sense of the absurd (and they are supposedly drinking alcohol).

You begin with a sticker in your program identifying the player with whom you will be associated. Don’t turn off your phones. You will be voting on a variety of choices or responses. The browser-based voting software, designed by Gamiotics, is smoothly integrated into the production, and more importantly, it’s bug-free. Sometimes you are voting on what you want the actor to do. Or your reflexes will be put to the limit as the audience collectively taps their phones just enough to beat a challenge within a set timeframe without going over a certain limit. (That’s not as easy as you might think.) And there are challenges, which you will flunk if you are not paying attention. There is a lot of randomness so things have the potential to go hilariously wrong given the crowd’s crazy decisions and call-outs. There are big events, too, where the actor will be required to roll a giant 20-sided die on stage. Depending on the response from the audience, they can give the actor a bonus to their roll or penalize them.

How this works and the various rules can be tedious to explain, especially for the unenlightened. Nevertheless, everything you need to know is carefully spelled out from the stage. Most in the audience found the production to be hilarious. Admittedly, much of the fun is watching the actors on stage struggle with the curveballs thrown. In short, this show is a lot like the D & D sessions played at home, only it’s on stage with witty, over-the-top personalities and a lot more friends.

The story is skillfully guided by two enthusiastic emcees: dragon master, Conner Marx, and his campy sidekick, Alex Stompoly, the tavern keeper. They dole out rewards and consequences to the three other improv actors, Diego F. Salinas, Jasmin Malave, and Madelyn Murphy. On an objective level, a show like this cannot be evaluated by typical standards of theatrical performance. Assessing a show heavily dependent on improvisation, audience participation, and a predisposition for game playing, means this is a one-time-only event both narratively and viscerally. No one will dispute the uniqueness of the experience. My lone experience left me feeling less than enchanted. And that feedback goes directly against the enthusiastic, hyped-up vibe in the house; the theater was filled to the brim with D & D “adventurers”.

The story was somehow all over the place. But the cast members were quick. Engaging. High energy. Amusing. And at times funny. Obviously, the cast is talented, charming and likable. Each actor takes pains to make sure everyone is having fun. Even the introverts, only a few of whom I saw in the audience, were a bit stony-faced but alert. It was a night for the geeks.

As the game was in progress, I lost track of the specifics a few times — I’m old by geek standards and admittedly not a player. At those fleeting moments of cluelessness (which was cruelly underscored by the vast majority of people on the edge of their seats), I would simply sit back and enjoy the hanging-out-with-friends-in-a-bar feel of it. Or, if I missed an important vote, I was often stuck on the colorful lighting (Mike Wood), sound (M. Glenn Schuster & Alex Attalla), costume and scenic designs (K.C. McGeorge). These beautiful visual and auditory elements come together in a fantastic way to transport the crowd into a make-believe world of frivolity and imagination.

The Twenty Sided Tavern is a cross between a reality TV show and a truly epic sci-fi fantasy.
Good theater, though, typically has a meaningful story. This was lacking, or perhaps was not the point. Nevertheless, I heard numerous high-flown literary references to Hawthrone, Twain, Harper Lee, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, Robert Frost, among others. Good story tellers. At moments, I felt I was in a time warp transported to a boozy college dorm room with some very smart kids.

To bring the show full circle and to a close, the dragon master shares an emotional, deeply earnest monologue about the world being a better place free of evil and intolerance. This abrupt shift into sincerity after all the self-mockery and irreverent humor ultimately left me figuratively speaking down the garden path. Charge up your phone and get ready to play. We are now officially in the cult-like age of Dungeons & Dragons.

Playing at:
Broadway In Chicago’s Broadway Playhouse
Water Tower Place, 175 East Chestnut Street, Chicago

Performance Schedule:
Performances through September 28 are :

Tuesday through Thursday at 7:00 pm

Fridays at 7:30 pm

Saturdays at 2:00 pm & 7:30 pm

Sundays at 1:00 pm and 6:30 pm.

Ticket Information:
Individual tickets for Dungeons & Dragons The Twenty Sided Tavern are now on sale and range from $50 – $70 with a select number of premium tickets available. Additional fees apply for online purchases.

For more information and tickets, visit www.BroadwayInChicago.com

To see what others are saying, visit www.theatreinchicago.com, go to Review Round-Up and click at “Dungeons & Dragons: the Twenty Sided Tavern”.