Choose Your Own Misadventure

The flashiest theater event since the shutdown is an interactive mixed bag.

- By Helen Shaw

Just in case you haven’t had enough of elections, the show now at the Park Avenue Armory, Enemy of the People, invites you to cast a few more votes. Isn’t it fun to pick a future with limited information? Doesn’t all that individual choice make you feel informed and optimistic? At various moments in Enemy of the People, audience members seated at scattered tables are asked to choose between two options by hitting a big X button or a big O button. Brisk discussion is encouraged (a menu-size tabletop screen features a countdown clock), so the whole room buzzes like a restaurant. In the background, Mikaal Sulaiman’s score plays, a convincing dupe of the tension music from shows like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. High in the vaulted Park Avenue Armory, gigantic billboards show the tallied results live. The first question is about preferring coffee or tea, and I’m glad to report that my table smashed our button as one with the majority. There is an immediate choose-your-own-adventure effect: More people voted for coffee, so the story that night began with a reference to a coffee cup.