Thaddeus Phillips takes his passport around the world in 17 Border Crossings (photo by Johanna Austin)
New York Theatre Workshop
79 East Fourth St. between Second & Third Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through May 12, $79
www.nytw.org
Watching Thaddeus Phillips’s 17 Border Crossings, making its Off-Broadway premiere at New York Theatre Workshop, is like sitting through a friend of a friend’s narrated vacation photos. There might be a handful of cool stories, but most of it is just not that interesting to strangers. The Denver-born theater creator has traveled all over the globe, and he has compiled stories of seventeen of his international transits through particularly fraught spots in 17 Border Crossings, including East Mostar to West Mostar, Venezuela to Colombia, Syria to Greece, Israel to Jordan, and Egypt to Gaza. Directed by Tatiana Mallarino, who previously helmed Phillips’s ¡El Conquistador! at NYTW, the ninety-minute show begins with Phillips, who designed the set, sitting at a desk, talking about the history of passports. When he turns his attention to his crossings, he moves around the stage, operating a pulley system with a suitcase on one side and a horizontal row of lights near the center, pulling them up and down depending on what’s called for and manipulating the rest of David Todaro’s lighting design as well.
David Todaro’s lighting design steals the show at New York Theatre Workshop (photo by Johanna Austin)
Phillips, who has also staged Red-Eye to Havre de Grace, The Archivist, and other works with his Philly-based Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental company, occasionally randomly speaks into a microphone. (The sound design is by Robert Kaplowitz.) A few of the tales stand out: a trip from Singapore to Bali with a woman with a Croatian passport and on board a train going from Hungary to Serbia on which Phillips is joined by a mysterious man who does a very mysterious thing in their cabin. But most of the anecdotes don’t have much of a point, and the writing is not sharp enough to sustain the length; you might think that he would delve into the refugee crisis, but that doesn’t come up that much, although he shares the story of Mozambique stowaway Jose Matada, which of course is not one of his own. Eventually, you might find yourself counting what crossing he’s up to and checking the list tucked into the program, hoping you’re getting near the end. It’s a pleasant show — which has done a lot of traveling itself, playing on five continents and was presented at BAM’s Fishman Space in 2015 — but it’s more like a nice day trip than an epic journey.