Metaluna and the Amazing Science of the Mind Revue

Description
WNEP's Soirée DADA, its recurring series of nonsense cabarets, has become the company's signature product. Metaluna, first mounted a dozen years ago, plays out like a Soirée with (kind of) a plot; Joe Janes's script doesn't aim for cohesion so much as some hooks on which to hang the ridiculous. Like the Soirée series, Metaluna is chockablock with clever absurdist set pieces performed by an engaging cast. But the variety-show Soirées work because their performers establish personalities as opposed to characters, which then can be plugged into dissonant scenes; here Janes creates actual plotlines but then refuses to resolve them. That's Dada, we guess, but it's also deflating.—KV