IT’S LIKE LASERIUM BUT UNDERWATER AND IN FRONT OF YOU INSTEAD OF ON THE CEILING

Dodger Theatricals, one of the major New York commercial producing companies, just opened this large five-theater facility called “Dodger Stages” on what is basically the Off-Broadway Theater Row, far west 42nd Street 50th Street between 8th/9th Avenues. (My bad; thought it was somewhere else. Oops. ) The first two shows include Bare: A Pop Opera and the return engagement to New York of what has been a sold-out show everywhere it has gone: Basil Twist’s Symphonie Fantastique. The show takes place in an enormous tank of water

Basil Twist is a puppeteer, but just calling him a puppeteer negates a bit of what critics and audiences have raved about for a few years. He and his company have been touring with this show for a few years, I believe, having started at HERE Arts Center in SoHo. Now if you’ve never seen his show (and I haven’t, but I plan to rectify that in the next couple weeks), you have a chance to check-it-out.

I actually have a slightly different memory of Twist, although he would never remember me because we never actually met. But Twist grew up in San Francisco (like me) and he went to a private high school in the city that one of my best friends also attended. Sometime in 1996 or ’97, Twist starred as Don Quixote in this high school’s production of Man of La Mancha. I went to see the show because my friend was also in it. This is going to sound really stupid, but since I was a big-time theatre-geek in high school, I paid attention to these kinds of things, and at the time, I remember thinking that his performance in this little high school show was really kind of amazing. Between my school’s excellent theater department and his, Twist’s Quixote was one of the best acting jobs I had seen in my four years. Yeah, in the grand scheme of acting, that’s not saying much. And is it really applicable here anyway, what with marionettes and all?

Who cares. Check out the show, and I’ll let you know more after I’ve been.