NY Theater Review By Eric J. Grimm
America-In-Play’s ambition in creating the new hybrid comedy A Time Traveler’s Trip to Niagara is to be admired, much like the lovely onstage dime store museum that audiences can visit prior to the show. The play is a reimagining of William Dunlap’s nearly two-hundred-year-old A Trip to Niagara, in which an Englishwoman takes her brother on a comical journey to Niagara Falls to show him the beauty of America. The updated version features a parallel plot in which the characters’ descendants take a bus tour to Niagara Falls that mirrors the original journey in many ways. The narrative, like the gender identity of many of the characters, is loose; Dunlap appears as a character attempting to move the action forward while marveling at modern technology, perhaps a nod to Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth. As a commentary on exploring new territory and acknowledging the beauty and horror of nature, it has promise. As it stands, however, the play is over-conceptualized with all of the elements tenuously held together.
The creative team, guided by director Lynn M. Thomson, has the right intentions but the production might have been scaled back a bit. With five playwrights, the play is often unfocused, trying to pack too much into its running time. Its source material, a disposable comedy from the 1800s, is also not a great starting point. Thomson and the America-In-Play company are clearly an adventurous group and it would be nice to see them do something with more clarity in vision and less technical flourish.
A Time Traveler’s Trip to Niagara is playing at Hudson Guild Theatre (441 W. 26th St.) from May 3-18. Tickets are available at http://www.triptoniagara.brownpapertickets.com.