Philly Fringe 2016 review: Almanac Dance Circus Theatre's 'Exile 2588'

The old story is the Greek myth of Io. Almanac’s ensemble of performers and designers set the tale over 500 years in the future. Their theater-dance-movement-music adventure certainly feels new — and also honest, sincere, transformative, incisive, mysterious, spiritual, and fun. English is a few superlatives short of how beautiful this show is.

Low-budget aesthetic

Part of Exile 2588's success is its simplicity, which keeps our focus on the characters and story. Peter Smith’s set pieces, white panels bordered in black, provide lighting designer Robin Stamey with a multifaceted landscape to light colorfully (and his set also serves Tribe of Fools’ Antihero, running in repertory with this show, very well). Natalia De La Torre’s vaguely futuristic costumes allow an impressive range of movement and define multiple characters.

Nicole Burgio plays rebellious Io, who after 500 years of immortality and subjugation to “the consensus” — rules meant to provide the comfort of order, but which prove stifling — decides to break out. Narration and songs by Chickabiddy provide information and set moods delicately, but the story mainly occurs through movement.

Io’s partners perform a Tai Chi-like morning ritual, but with more acrobatics. When she busts out bold solo moves, they’re flummoxed and need to be “regulated,” which resets them to emotional neutral. When a friend taps Io to assist his suicide — after 500 years, one man (Mark Wong) sees no point in living longer — the group feels they must punish her. Death, they realize, would just repeat her sin, so she must be exiled.

To infinity and beyond

Io is given a spaceship, plus two GADFLYs (Gene-Altering Droids that Fabricate Life and Youth) to watch over her on her infinite solo journey. Played by Wong and Lauren Johns as precocious nanny machines, they’re distinguished by clever flexible costume pieces, basically harnesses and spines with LED lights. Io’s journey is both humorous and harrowing, including a futile search for a hospitable planet. The excited command “Open the door!” inevitably reveals something dreadful, and revelations come to life vividly through dance that combines gymnastics and acrobatics with heavenly grace.

What finally happens to Io is, of course, “the best part of the story,” as Cromie and Schuman occasionally interject about several scenes, expressed abstractly but not ambiguously. Nick Gillette and Ben Grinberg also contribute fine performances, and Nick Jonczak and Pig Iron Theatre Company's Dan Rothenberg were "outside eyes" for the ensemble-driven process.

I confess, I’m predisposed to like science fiction on stage and see far too little. But I’m also a stickler for good science fiction, stories that go far beyond generic genre trappings and action or monster movie tropes to really speculate about what the future could be, and how change will challenge humanity. Exile 2588 exceeds my high standards, with both little flourishes and grand ideas that show Almanac's ensemble not just using an old story to create new spectacle, but bold, original science fiction.