I sip an amaro and bourbon beverage called Awaken the Spirits out of a clear skull, as a spectre of a woman with a white beehive wig, satin dress and corset gently caresses my left shoulder—then floats on. Short ribs and a parsnip purée suddenly appear before me.
I’m at the launch of IMMERSIVE: Los Gatos. This inaugural show, The Haunted Dinner: A Spooktacular Dinner Theatre Experience (Blood Moon Rising), set for Mondays through Wednesdays for the next month, is a broadside of dark curiosities.
I just spoke with a woman from San Francisco, who told me she’s a recent transplant from New York. She had terrifying daggers and rotated them in a tantalizing fashion. I hope she doesn’t try to swallow them… A cherry-red heart appears before me. It’s oozing with a black substance that has a tangy blackberry taste. You never know what to expect next.
Throughout the evening there are magic tricks, plates spinning on sticks and a woman in high heels rotating upside-down on a crescent moon. I can’t stop thinking about the beautiful dark wood construction of Selene’s violin, which has a slender neck and action that is surely easy on the fingertips. I’ll later learn she composed the music setting the ambiance. She told me she was from Paris. I told her, with the pageantry, the evening reminded me of attending the Place de l’Opéra in the 9th arrondissement, years ago.
Even the audience is in on it: there’s a devil, an angel and someone who looks like Caesar Augustus. After the macabre conclusion, Donovan Friedman, the producer, tells me this is just the beginning.
“This thing is doing 22 nights,” he said. “People are starving for this.”
What Friedman meant was, in an era of vile polarization, connecting over the arts is the crucial potion we all require.
That’s why, this weekend, they’re rolling out Music to be Murdered By, seven hours of dancing and drama, starting at 7pm, to run Thursdays through Saturdays.
Layers are still being added to the space.
“We have like 30 more dolls going up in this area,” Friedman says, pointing above one of the bars.
He motions to busts above the other bar, explaining they’ll soon have projections mapped onto them.
The IMMERSIVE reality of illusions is the culmination of what he’s been doing for years. And this mélange of steampunk, hot topic, Moulin Rouge and Studio 54 is theatrically satisfying.
For information, visit immersivelg.com.
