Fake Lake: The Neo-futurists Get Wet

By Margaret Lyons in Arts & Entertainment on Aug 20, 2008 7:12PM

Trying to make sense of "a life so easy if feels hard," playwright and performer Sharon Greene heads camping with a group of people she barely knows. What could have been the hook of a teen horror movie is instead the basis for the Neo-futurists' new site-specific production Fake Lake, performed in the Welles Park swimming pool on Lincoln and Sunnyside. Even though the facility has all the markings of an artificial environment—the weird humidity, the stinging chlorine smell, hell, even a Park District lifeguard—the play and the staging are fantastically evocative of the wilderness: bare, hypnotic, foreign and a little exhilarating.

Greene, who stars as herself, was between jobs at outdoor sporting good stores, and when a guy from her gym—"I called him 'Towel Guy'"—invites her camping with his friends, she accepts because she doesn't want to be the kind of person who declines. The play weaves together the narrative of the weekend and a history of Utah's Lake Powell, the "fake lake" of the title, a man-made reservoir turned recreational boating/camping area. Lake, with varying degrees of nuance and success, explores the discord between the natural beauty of the wilderness and the fact that that natural beauty isn't actually natural.

But about that pool thing.

I expected cheap or gimmicky uses of the water, but the staging is actually really evocative and lovely. For a scene at night on the water, the lights are off and the performers, sprawled on an inflatable raft, are illuminated only by floating LED lights; it's stunningly beautiful. The show could only be performed in this setting—minus the pool, Lake wouldn't make sense. Lake would be worth seeing just for the gee whiz factor, but luckily, there's a really solid story in there too. Unfortunately, the show opens with a goofy water ballet sequence which misrepresents where the play winds up going—it's definitely not ironic or cheesy. If anything, it veers dangerously close to too sincere and tidy. The pacing is off, and some of the character epiphanies a little trite, but none of the negatives come anywhere close to outweighing how absorbing and different the Fake Lake is.

Fake Lake runs Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays through September 19. The show starts at 8pm, and tickets are $15.