Philly Fringe 2018: Drip Symphony presents ‘Shelter’

The gorgeous murals and ornate light fixtures remain visible, but art director Dylan Cooper takes pains to suggest an august institution gone to seed. The audience sits onstage — the rows of plush-velvet seats in the auditorium are mostly covered with tarps — and enters the world of four artist-squatters, who take refuge in the theater’s sacred space to protect their integrity.

V (Emma Orr), the group’s resident actor and de facto leader, behaves mercurially onstage and off. Ernie (Jordan Dobson), a painter, expresses himself through his art, yet struggles with words. Donny (Nikolai McKenzie) combats his monotonous days with dancing. Walter (Barnett) underscores their existence with tense piano music.

What’s outside?

The ensemble-devised piece offers little sense of life outside the theater’s walls, or what forced the motley quartet inside. References to lack of food or lurking danger suggest a postapocalyptic situation, as do the group’s tattered, aged outfits (costumes by Jem Rubin).

The arrival of Cassio (Dan Higbee), a stranger from the outside world, throws the curated ecosystem into chaos. V grows territorial, while Ernie becomes smitten. As with all else, Cassio’s past stays abstract beyond stray references to alcoholism and an injured ankle. His mere presence is enough to rattle.

Schwasman and Barnett have an eye for stage pictures. Cassio’s arrival — employing the theater’s load-in door, which opens out onto the street — is stunning. Lighting varies from plunges into extreme darkness to an almost blinding brightness, and rain effects give the sense of nature wreaking havoc, scarring the stage with water damage. Kudos are due to technical director Raven Buck.

Ready potential

But as the 80-minute evening wears on, Shelter never fully establishes its stakes. The portrayal of V flirts with underlying mental illness, which tacitly suggests a scenario in which nothing we’re watching is actually real. But Orr’s performance mostly lingers on one note, making it difficult to define her motives.

Higbee’s restrained performance contrasts with the image of Cassio as a lord of misrule. Even when plied with alcohol, his behavior seems too mannered and controlled — he’s an actor playing drunk, not a man teetering on the edge of his personal precipice. Without a palpable sense of menace between V and Cassio, the action limps along to a predictable finale.

The evening contains a fair amount of music, mostly played live by Barnett (with Mike Jones on trumpet) and ably sung by the cast. Sometimes the music advances plot and builds character — a tender song performed by V to Ernie is the evening’s highlight — while at other times it comes across as padding for a thin evening.

Shelter evinces a strong sense of the theatrical, which Drip Symphony has not yet harnessed into something cohesive and fully enjoyable. The potential is there, waiting to be realized.