RESET

Described in press materials as a “sci-fi morality play,” Howard Ho’s Reset, the latest Moving Arts World Premiere, features an intriguing premise, a promising opening sequence, and a particularly appealing lead performance.

Unfortunately, things go downhill, way downhill, once a character known as “Old Man” shows up.

When 20something James Gamble (Tyler Perez) arrives in the Turbine Hall of Reactor 4 of Chernobyl (yes, that Chernobyl, the one that exploded in 1986) for a “life-changing journey into the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone,” he isn’t sure quite what to expect from this “journey of self-discovery.”

All he knows is that he’s “single with a shitty job,” and that what quantum physicist Dr. Lateen Anderson (Zachary Bones) and behavioral psychologist Aiko Tanaka (Greta Jung) are offering him promises at the very least to be something different.

Following a good deal of quantum physics talk about Schrodinger’s cat and baby universes and the inter-universe umbilical cord, most of which went over my head, Lateen instructs James to open a metallic container containing a message James is to “meditate on with all five senses,” upon which who should appear out of nowhere inside a glass-walled chamber but Old Man #1 (Carl Weintraub), a scraggly-haired, gray-bearded wreck of a man (looking a lot worse than he does in this pre-Opening Night production still) who, James learns, is James himself, thirty-four years in the future.

Well, not for long that is, since before you can say kick the bucket, that’s precisely what Old Man #1 has done, and 2023 James is apparently at least somewhat at fault for his demise.

But fear not. Where there’s one future James to be found, there’s at least one more waiting to make his appearance, and maybe even more.

It’s about at this point that Reset lost me, though it wasn’t until Old Man 4.0 showed up about an hour and ten minutes into the proceedings, a character playwright Ho describes as a “sleazy tyrant” (to which I’d add strident and obnoxious and grating as fingernails on a chalkboard) that I started wishing I could be anywhere but in the front row of Moving Arts Theatre.

Indeed, by the time said character finally, finally, finally met his end, I couldn’t even appreciate the clever last-minute twist playwright Ho has come up with to reveal what Lateen and Aiko are actually up to.

On the plus side, Ho’s brilliance as a sound designer is on full display here, director Anthony has fully committed to bringing Ho’s script to life, and as far as protagonist James is concerned, Ho and Anthony couldn’t have found a more talented, charismatic, instantly likable young actor than Tyler Perez (remember that name) to play him.

Bones and Jung give committed performances as the posh Afro-British Lateen and the brainy Japanese-American Aiko, and I’m guessing that in a different role, I might have taken to stage-and-screen vet Weintraub as well.

I have no quibbles whatsoever with Justin Huen’s impactful lighting design and his spare but striking set (the pneumatic mail tube is a clever touch), and Mylette Nora’s costumes are her usual topnotch creations, with special snaps to the yellow hazmat suit that James sports upon arrival. (Note: Some costumes appear to have been changed since production stills were taken.)

Reset is produced by Dana Schwartz. Annika Hoseth is assistant director. Ronnie Clark is fight choreographer. Chloe Brown is production stage manager. Scott Golden is publicist.

Following Dana Schwartz’s @Playaz and Harrison Harvey’s Jack Craddock Is Having A Party, I was hoping that Howard Ho’s Reset would make it three post-pandemic Moving Arts winners in a row.

I’m sorry to say it does not.

Moving Arts Theatre, 3191 Casitas Avenue, Los Angeles.
www.MovingArts.org

–Steven Stanley
November 6, 2023
Photos: Joey Solano

 

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