After you and your 15 fellow recruits in the Defender program have suited up and been given your code names, you’re split into sub-teams. But the only competition in this wildly immersive experience is against the clock. All of you will have to work together the mutually assured destruction of the world outside this bunker in all-out nuclear war.
It’s hard to know exactly what to call the House Theatre’s latest, other than awesome. But what it really is is a high-design room-escape game. Working with Chicago puzzle designer Sandor Weisz and comics artist Chris Burnham, director Nathan Allen has crafted an incredibly smart and detailed Cold War-era environment that requires each of the teams to solve an initial set of puzzles at a retrofitted arcade-game console. From there, the proceedings get only more complex, and everyone has to work together (sometimes literally everyone at once) as you race to prevent a nuclear launch.
If anything, The Last Defender might be too smart. By the time I played, a few weeks into the run, one of the stagehands who give you silent guidance throughout play told us afterward that only one team had so far fully solved the puzzle; the 90-minute time limit allows about a dozen “performances” a week. (My team was not the one that saved the world.) Part of you wants to go back for another shot, but you also know it wouldn’t quite be fair, or as fun, to return with any of the knowledge you gained the first time. Uniquely challenging and exhilarating, The Last Defender is exciting new territory for the House.
The House Theatre of Chicago at Chopin Theatre. Written and directed by Nathan Allen. Running time: Approximately 1hr 30mins; no intermission.