THE HANGOVER REPORT – Robin Frohardt’s immersive THE PLASTIC BAG STORE is a playful but clear-eyed depiction of a bleak future

Robin Frohardt’s “Plastic Bag Store”, commissioned by Times Square Arts and produced by Pomegranate Arts.

This past weekend, I was lucky enough to snag a coveted ticket to one of the final performances of The Plastic Bag Store, theater artist Robin Frohardt’s sneakily urgent cautionary tale that took over a vacant storefront in the heart of Times Square. Commissioned by Times Square Arts and produced by Pomegranate Arts, the environmentally-minded work was one of the more ambitious and successful pieces of in-person theater – in this case, a hybrid of art installation, puppetry, film, and immersive theater – to be mounted so far in New York since the coronavirus pandemic hit the city in mid-March (to address health concerns, each hourlong performance was limited to an audience of only 12 people, down from the 50 that was originally planned pre-pandemic).

Upon entering the space, I was immediately amused by how accurately Ms. Frohardt and her creative team had recreated a New York bodega. But upon closer inspection, I eventually noticed that each product – from the fruits and vegetables in the produce section, to the deli meats, to the frozen foods – was painstakingly sculpted from plastic bags and discarded single-use packaging. The installation ultimately struck me as whimsically satiric, as well as a clever visual representation of the alarming amount of non-decomposable waste we generate (the production’s opening interestingly coincided with New York’s reinstatement of the plastic bag ban). Thankfully, The Plastic Bag Shore stayed away from boring facts and figures to make its case, instead opting to engage the audience’s curiosity to peel back the show’s quirky layers.

Indeed, after exploring the grocery store, the space then magically morphed into, of all things, a puppet theater. For this second segment of the experience, the audience was brought up to speed with the show’s “plot” via four short, poetically-rendered puppet vignettes. Although Covid necessitated that Ms. Frohardt’s meticulously handcrafted work (I was a fan of her gorgeous puppet play The Pigeoning from a few years ago) be conveyed through film, the resulting cinematic experience admirably retained the theatricality and intimacy of live performance. The last “act”, smashed the artifice altogether (no further spoilers here), bringing the journey to a satisfying, albeit disorienting, close. Despite its bleak vision, The Plastic Bag Shore never felt off-putting or didactic, managing to remain simultaneously playful and clear-eyed.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

THE PLASTIC BAG STORE
Off-Broadway, Immersive Theater
Pomegranate Arts / Times Square Arts
1 hour
Closed

Categories: Off-Broadway, Theater

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