The Under the Radar Festival Theatre Review: Sinking Ship/Theater in Quarantine‘s The 7th Voyage of Egon Tichy [redux]
By Ross
It all started on a Monday, when a space traveler by the name of Egon Tichy is thrown off course by a freak accident and sent spiraling about in space in a frantic time-warped frenzy. Who knew on that particular Monday that his mere existence in space was going to be the beginning of something so deviously different and wildly unique. The weird and wild tale is a wonderfully inventive descent into a delightfully ridiculous paradox steeped in a heady delirium of hilarious deliciousness.
The 7th Voyage of Egon Tichy [redux], in partnership with the 2025 Under The Radar Festival, is an expertly crafted fifty-minute Kafkaesque trip crammed inside a multi-functional white-walled closet and expanded across two phenomenally utilized screens, brought to you, this time live and in-person by Theater in Quarantine and Sinking Ship Productions. Created with a slanted wit and dementia by director Jonathan Levin, playwright Josh Luxenberg (Sinking Ship’s A Hunger Artist), and performer Joshua William Gelb (Theater in Quarantine’s Blood Meal), the diabolical slapstick science-fiction space adventure spins out wickedly and wisely into the unknown universe with elevated aplomb. It’s a ‘Who’s on First’ twisted tale that slides neatly inside our collective minds, crawling through our mind worms, and giving us a solid good laugh with its absurdist metaphysics and layered tricks of the projected trade.
During the days of the pandemic, I streamed a similar version on their YouTube channel, but now, for the Under the Radar Festival and our ultimate viewing pleasure, director Levin, playwright Luxenberg, and performer Gelb, have rewritten, expanded, and reconceived this Voyage into a whole new formulation. It’s a behind-the-scenes exposure that elevates the craftmanship of this unique in-person theatrical experience, giving us insight into the chaotic creation that is now being presented at New York Theatre Workshop’s Fourth Street Theatre (83 East 4th St, Manhattan) and extended, by popular demand, until February 2nd, 2025.
Utilizing the same one-closet set-up that made the streaming version so inspirational and vital viewing for anyone feeling constrained by the limits the pandemic placed on theatre creators, this expansion elevates the time loop entrapment of this solo space traveler to fascinating duplicating proportions, giving video feedback reframings that face off with other day-versions of himself that keep multiplying one by one as days ticks forward and a newer version of self pops up and in to add more chaos to the frying pan fire.
Based on “The Star Diaries” by Stanislaw Lem, as performed by the elastic and energetic Gelb, The 7th Voyage of Egon Tichy [redux] expansion unpacks layers upon layers of multi-dimensional H.A.L.-like deconstructed silliness, all played out magically inside Gelb’s personally transformed 2′ x 4′ x 8’ white box, mimicking the closet he once used inside his East Village apartment. The inventive reframing becomes home to this one-person spaceship show, layered in upon one another, that careens off into a minefield of intergalactic time vortexes.
After his craft gets hit by a small “lima bean” sized chunk of interstellar debris, he must find a way to save himself from what’s going on inside and out of his damaged proverbial closet ship, all by himself, with “all those horrible people” that are popping up all around him. The production is technically ambitious and fascinating, backed by some pretty compelling original music & sound designed by Florian Staab (Irish Rep’s On Beckett / In Screen). But it is in the scenic and costume design, crafted by Peiyi Wong (TFANA/Woolly Mammoth’s Public Obscenities), alongside the lighting design by Marika Kent (Arena’s POTUS) and video design by Jesse Garrison (Automata’s The Woods), where the magic is truly electrified and layered on top of one another, with the singular space adventurer flying solidly out and crawling himself back in only to run into himself deliciously again and again, all to delight in. Should he trust those time vortex versions of himself? Or should he stay alert and wary of the frying pan problem? That is the dilemma, and inside that closet spaceship so expertly captured digitally for projection and refraction, Egon Tichy must find his way through the wisecracking aloneness and crowded self-sabotaging environment he has created for himself, knowing full well that this is a two-man repair job, and those others are only himself trapped in the same time loop, as anxious and mistrusting as himself. Each of them knows only a little bit of the future, but not the whole story. What’s one to do?
The 7th Voyage of Egon Tichy [redux] is fantastically funny, absurd, and intelligently written, produced, and presented, finding a way to make sense of the days of the week in a universe where he’s “going to regret that tomorrow” but find trust in himself, while delighting us tonight with its brilliant inventiveness and abstract humor. And thank God for that.
New York Theatre Workshop, in association with Lucille Lortel Theatre, proudly presents the Sinking Ship and Theater in Quarantine world premiere production of The 7th Voyage of Egon Tichy [redux] in partnership with the 2025 Under The Radar Festival until Feb 2nd, 2025 at New York Theatre Workshop’s Fourth Street Theatre, located at 83 East 4th St in Manhattan. The running time is 50 minutes with no intermission. Tickets are now on sale at www.nytw.org.
