Dungeons & Dragons: The Twenty Sided Tavern, developed and created by David Carpenter and Gamiotics, is an interactive, cosplay extravaganza, featuring (left to right) Tyler Nowell Felix, Madelyn Murphy, and Diego F. Salinas.
The Twenty Sided Tavern, inspired by Hasbro’s tabletop game Dungeons & Dragons, isn’t easy to categorize. It’s a combination of comedy, mystery, improv, and puzzle, and at times it looks and sounds like a television game show. At Stage 42, where The Twenty Sided Tavern has been running since early this season, Dungeons & Dragons aficionados (many of them repeat attendees) recognize one another by their D&D togs and tattoos, and exchange the greeting “Ale and well-met” (the catch phrase of the show).
As Trickster and Warrior, respectively, Murphy and Salinas interact with members of the audience.
Theatergoers of a certain age, untouched by gamers’ online networking, can’t be faulted for assuming the show has been in town on the down-low all this time. But with support from a fanbase of millennial and Gen-Z enthusiasts whose oxygen is social media, the producers don’t have to spend vast amounts on old-school Off-Broadway advertising. Yet this is a production that should be known beyond its ready-made constituency of D&D devotees, because it’s an indicator of things to come for New York theater.
In tabletop Dungeons & Dragons, competitors deploy varied dice, including a 20-sided model, to determine the course of an adventure narrative. Twenty Sided Tavern depicts a rowdy role-playing session of the Hasbro game taking place in a 20-sided public house. The establishment is overseen by a Tavern Keeper (Alex Stompoly) and a Dungeon Master (Connor Marx); and the hilarity of the fictive proceedings are supposedly fueled by sundry spirits and brews. Despite the onstage references to booze and boozers, what’s noticeably absent here is humor that relies on drunkenness or sloppy behavior. And, except for the occasional vulgar word that creeps into an ad-lib (difficult to prevent now and then in an improvisational setting), this is a show for all ages, suitable for families and birthday-party outings.
As a Trickster, Murphy creates roadblocks for the warriors and heroes. Photographs by Bronwyn Sharp.
As in the tabletop game, the principal characters of the stage show are warriors and heroes pursuing quests, confronting challenges, and evoking the quaint charm of the Harry Potter franchise. Also on hand are wizards and villains who create elaborate impediments to the mortals’ progress, especially riddles that have to be solved. With fanciful cosplay and arresting animated projections by Derek Christiansen and Ruby O’Brien, "forces of good” compete against “forces of fear, violence, and hate.” It’s no spoiler to disclose that the evening’s lessons are summed up in a prosaic yet potentially self-motivating apothegm: “Tomorrow’s story is still unwritten, and you are its author.”
The narrative course of each performance of Twenty Sided Tavern is determined by spectators making choices from a series of menus via their iPhones. (As in seemingly everything else these days, a QR code is involved.) In addition to soliciting plot-related decisions from the audience, the actors administer surveys and conduct trivia contests. Tallies of audience voting appear on a screen above the stage. Anyone uneasy about immersive theater may take comfort in the extravagant care the cast takes to avoid embarrassing spectators or putting them on the spot.
Scenic designer K.C. McGeorge (who also designed the costumes and props) has created a fanciful tavern so intricate and cluttered that one is unlikely to notice every detail. The set also conjures mountain passes, castles, and sundry other locations. Mike Wood’s lighting and M. Glenn Schuster’s wacky sound design (with whimsical original music by Benjamin Doherty) imbue the proceedings with a sense of magic.
Sarah Davis Reynolds and David Andrew Laws (a.k.a. DAGL) are cocreators (with David Carpenter) of The Twenty Sided Tavern and, as resident gamemasters, keep the show’s wild and woolly humor on track.
At intermission, as well as before and after the performance, audience members browse a vast array of Twelve Sided Tavern merchandise. Everything on sale (except the snacks) is related to the play and its themes in one way or another, and much of the merchandise bears the slogan, “Ale and well-met.”
In both the auditorium and lobby of Stage 42, playgoers are swept up in a carnivalesque spirit that could become familiar, even commonplace, in the historic playhouses of old Broadway. Game developers such as Wizards of the Coast, the division of Hasbro responsible for both Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering, are well-situated to supply the live-entertainment industry with programming that weds gaming to the “legitimate stage”; and several established New York theater figures are already involved as members of the above-the-title producing team for Twenty Sided Tavern. It’s imaginable that next Christmas’s most popular tabletop and digital games may soon be competing for a home on or off Broadway. In the meantime, Twenty Sided Tavern is winding up its New York residency soon in order to head out on tour. If you’re curious, you should catch it while you can.
Dungeons & Dragons: The Twenty Sided Tavern runs through May 11 at Stage 42 (422 W. 42nd St.). Evening performances are Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday at 7 p.m., Saturday and Sunday at 7:30; matinees are Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m. For tickets and information, visit thetwentysidedtavern.com.
Playwright/Executive Producer: David Carpenter & Gamiotics
Direction: Michael Fell
Scenic & Costume Design: K.C. McGeorge
Lighting Design: Mike Wood
Sound Design: M. Glenn Shuster
Projection Design: Derek Christiansen & Ruby O’Brien
