‘Stand Up If You’re Here Tonight’ Review: Participatory Poignancy

Even before the show begins, “Stand Up If You’re Here Tonight” throws its audience off balance.

The play, which opened Jan. 20 at The Huntington Theatre’s Maso Studio, encourages entrance through a back alley in order for theater-goers to “step outside of routines.” This initial journey is just one of many that the audience goes on over the course of the next hour.

Written and directed by John Kolvenbach, “Stand Up If You’re Here Tonight” depicts a Man (Jim Ortlieb) struggling to find connection and searching for it with each and every person who comes to see the show. This man plays a multitude of roles: He is sometimes an actor, sometimes a character, sometimes a life coach, and sometimes a patient — but most of the time, he is somewhere in between.

In this way, he personifies a key aspect of the play: a refusal to give into specifics. Rather than a puzzle-like character study into the mind of a particular individual, the show instead uses the Man as a charismatic ringmaster, inviting the audience to participate actively rather than experience the show passively. This kind of role requires an incredibly deft hand, and Ortlieb delivers with gusto.

Over the course of the play’s scripted hour, Ortlieb has the audience read scenes with him, answer questions, chant, and clap — coaxing the audience to become one with the production. What quickly becomes evident are the two main characters of the show: the Man and the audience.

Sometimes windmilling his arms, sometimes feigning death, sometimes gallivanting around the theater, Ortlieb revels in the show’s extremities with humor and extravagance. When he pulls back to deliver the monologue of a depressed lover or a wayward son, these moments come just as easily as his comic bits. The show never becomes too outlandish despite all this dramatic rollercoastering, in large part to Ortlieb’s restraint as well as Kolvenbach’s source material. One can imagine a version of the play that becomes smarmy or pretentious with its own rejection of convention. Instead, all the moments where the play addresses the existence of the audience and the expectations of theatrical experience feel humorously honest. Kolvenbach keeps the pacing extremely tight — no segment feels too long, something especially critical when the audience is regarded as (or literally become) a scene partner.

As Ortlieb hammers away at the barrier between audience and performer, the technical elements assist him in his efforts. Scenic designer Kristine Holmes has outfitted the Maso Studio with a combination of a vintage store’s storage room paraphernalia and the clutter of an actual theater. Statues, lamps, toolboxes, and huge flats cluster against the wall. At first these items seem somewhat random, but some end up weaving their way into the show.

The lighting in particular adds a fabulously subtle layer to the disintegrating boundary of viewer and viewed. Eschewing the typical division of audience and performer, Lighting designer M Berry instead keeps the audience visible at many points throughout the show, creating the impression that even the crowd is onstage with the Man. Throughout the show, the lights tightly correspond with Ortlieb’s movements. For instance, when Ortlieb shifts into a more straightforward narrative monologue, the lights shift into atmospheric mood lighting, with elegant blue light projected to appear through the slats of window blinds.

The only real complaint comes from a twist late in the show. When the closest thing to an “explanation” for the man’s loneliness emerges, it ends the thrilling curiosity that has built up throughout the show. The reveal, ironically, puts a cap on the enigma at the core of the Man that has, to this point, been the heartbeat of the show. Granted, the show is still poignant — just perhaps less interesting than the potential of leaving the human psyche unexplainable.

Overall, this issue doesn’t detract from the fascinating peculiarity of the performance. “Stand Up if You’re Here Tonight” works to tear the audience away from passivity. Ortlieb delivers a virtuosic performance with the audience as his orchestra, made all the more fitting as he literally conducts the audience at certain moments in the show — and when he summons the audience to play back Kolvenbach’s script, they get what they give.