LEVEL 4: Game Over
A Theater Review by Julinda D. Lewis
At: TheatreLab, The Basement, 300 E. Broad St, RVA 23219
Performances: August 15-31, 2019
Ticket Prices: $30 general admission; $20 seniors & industry/RVATA; $10 students and teachers with ID
Info: (804) 506-3533 or theatrelabrva.org
Level 4, a smart and funny new play by Dante Piro that made its debut at TheatreLAB the basement is the second collaboration between Piro and director Chelsea Burke in as many months. (The Verge, was produced by The Firehouse and presented at The Branch Museum of Architecture and Design in July and August, https://jdldancesrva.com/2019/08/03/the-verge-good-things-come-in-small-packages). They make a great creative team.
That being said, I am entirely out of my element with Level 4, a clever and colorful play that takes us inside the world of a video game, Karma Quest, where we get to explore life, loss, loneliness, and very human characteristics and relationships as experienced by the Light Lord whose domain is a battle chamber. I am not a gamer. Since the ancient days of TRS-80, when we had to type in code line by line in order to play game, my gaming has been pretty much limited to Words with Friends, Simon’s Cats, Family Feud, and Wii Fit.. So yeah, the world of the Light Lord, Strobe, Mertens, Gauntlet, the Hero, the Heroine and Tammy is out of my league.
Nonetheless, thanks to Piro’s story – which struck a nice balance between drama and comedy – and Burke’s direction, that kept things moving along at a nice clip (the first act seemed to fly by, while the second act seemed a bit long to me), I was able to enjoy the action and laugh a lot.
The very strong and well-chosen cast consists of Chris Klinger as the likeable villain Light Lord, Adam Valentine as his loyal right hand man Strobe, Adam Turck as The Hero (a real-life human who apparently spends so much time playing the game that he eventually finds himself inside the game), Levi Meerovitch (who also seems to have been very busy working on numerous stages around RVA in the past few months) as the melancholy and introverted guardian of the armor and the giant Gauntlet hand, with Breezy Potter representing the under-represented female demographic as The Heroine and the unpopular gamer Tammy.
Interactions between Klinger and Valentine, Klinger and Turck, and Klinger and Meerovitch are especially interesting as the video game experiences glitches, the characters play the same scene over and over with various results, the game restarts, and, in the end, gets resurrected. Meerovitch and Potter sometimes appear as disembodied heads in windows on either side of Dasia Gregg’s video game set and the emotionally flat affect sometimes adopted by Valentine and Meerovitch was intriguing.
The simplicity of Gregg’s set and projections and the stylized movements of Klinger and Turck during the fight scenes suggests to this video game novice that this is a game from an earlier time period and is not one of the more modern programs. This is supported as the second act concludes with the revelation that time has passed. The Hero has married, his son is now an adult, but to tell any more would spoil the dramatic surprise of the ending.
Visually, Level 4 pulled the audience close into Gregg’s set. Lighting by Michael Jarrett included strobe effects and strands of LED lights, familiar Mario Brothers/Nintendo 64-era tunes infused the sound design by Joey Luck, and elaborate fight choreography by Emily Turner all enhanced the audience’s overall immersive experience. The one thing I thought didn’t quite fit – no pun intended – was Ruth Hedberg’s costumes. They looked somewhat like a child’s attempt to create a video game character’s garment. The Light Lord’s cape-like uniform was the most troublesome for me, closely followed by the shoe covers or spats that were simply socks with the heels and toes cut out. But the Light Lord mentioned that he had been planning to update the uniforms, so perhaps this look was intentional.
I enjoyed the intrinsic humor of the script and the pixelated quirkiness of the characters, but I am sure I missed major references and important nuances that would have been obvious to an experienced video game player. That anyone can enjoy Level 4, regardless of video experience of level, attests to the inclusiveness and universality of the subject as well as the strength of the individual and ensemble performances.
Julinda D. Lewis is a dancer, teacher, and writer who was born in Brooklyn, NY and now lives in Eastern Henrico County.
———-
Photo Credits: Tom Topinka
HANGOVER PATCH:
2020 CRUISE INFORMATIONAL MEETING: Sunday, August 25, 2019, 4pm at Ruffin Insurance, 3813 Nine Mile Road, RVA 23223
RVArt Review 
One thought on “LEVEL 4: Beating the Game”