Theater review by Helen Shaw
On a spaceship that looks like a gigantic boom box, in a gleaming silver tracksuit and star-white flattop, Flobot Owens (Darian Dauchan) busts a move. It’s a move meant to bring “peace, love and dopeness” to us fools on Earth, and as such it’s participatory. If you’re the type who loves dancing along to sci-fi hip-hop merriment, then The Brobot Johnson Experience is for you. Otherwise, there’s always Dauchan’s elaborate loop-based music, which stays strong even when the show does not.
The concept-album-turned-solo-show revolves around the time-traveling Flobot—a robot specializing in flow—from Planet Nubian, dispatched on a rescue mission to our ailing world. He has brought us the “codes,” ancient concepts that our culture has forgotten: hygiene, connection, camaraderie. As he tells us about each of them, we watch beautifully shot video of Flobot’s ancestor android, the titular Brobot Johnson. Dauchan gives his script multiple “clocks” to create urgency: The ship’s time cloud is dissipating; we need to fill up Flobot’s B-Funk Meter; somehow he’s breaking the future and he needs to find out why. Paradoxically, though, all this stakes-raising dials the intensity down, shifting the show into children’s-theater mode. By the time we’re making a human chain to good-vibe Tinkerb—uh, Flobot back into space, the piece has softened into the merely sweet. The Experience is not unlike Flobot’s own busted spaceship, the LL Cool J: It looks great, but there’s sugar in the tank.
The Bushwick Starr (Off-Off Broadway). By Darian Dauchan. Directed by Andrew Scoville. With Dauchan. Running time: 1hr 30mins. No intermission.
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