Surrender

SEARCH AND DESTROY Actors and audience members simulate combat.

Just how much fun should war games be? Upon entering the Ohio Theatre for the original and provocative Surrender, audience members doff their clothes and don drab uniforms and combat boots; under the tutelage of coauthor and Iraq War veteran Jason Christopher Hartley, they learn how to hold weapons and perform basic military operations, then put these skills to the test in a simulated warren of small, dark rooms. This process takes roughly two hours; after intermission, the show morphs into a more traditional presentation about the difficulties of postwar life—if your idea of traditional includes dancing soldiers, plushy paraplegics and freshly fried meat on a metal clothesline—with audience members again taking central roles, reading their lines from a karaoke-style prompter.

Conceived and directed by Hartley and International WOW Company demiurge Josh Fox, Surrender is a hugely ambitious undertaking. (There are almost as many people in the committed, capable cast as in the audience.) Although many of the show’s underlying ideas are very interesting, it must be said that in practice they don’t always function as Fox and Hartley seem to intend. In order to get through the first half of the evening, you almost have to enjoy it as an improv exercise; and this enjoyment doesn’t instill the sense of trauma on which the second half is predicated. But International WOW Company is making theater unlike anything else on the New York stage. Give in to it: Support the troupe.