Video is used a lot in theater nowadays, but it’s rarely as crucial to a show as it is to “LEO.”
In this new solo piece, we see two simultaneous versions of author/performer Tobias Wegner: in the flesh and as a real-time, lifesize projection. Tellingly, the real Wegner is off to the side of the stage, while his video avatar is front and center. Here, it’s the illusion that matters — though the point is that we’re always aware of how it’s fabricated.
Directed by Daniel Brière, “LEO” rests on a single idea that’s both ingenious and simple: The video image of Wegner is rotated. For instance, when he’s lying on his back, his feet up against a wall, on the screen it looks as if he’s standing up.
Wegner milks this concept for all it’s worth over the show’s 70 minutes, as his title character — no clue why it’s capitalized; maybe he’s a friend of TED — finds himself in a world where the laws of gravity have been suspended.
At first, “LEO” is just a man with a small suitcase, killing time as he waits for something. After realizing that he seems to have turned into Spider-Man, he climbs walls, levitates in what appears to be slo-mo and makes his hat fall upward.
In a particularly inspired sequence, “LEO” moves to Frank Sinatra’s “I’ve Got the World on a String” — the show is choreographed by Juan Kruz Diaz de Garaio Esnaola, who’s spent time with Sasha Waltz’s troupe.
For the audience, the fun is in going back and forth between the video image, where “LEO” often looks as if he’s floating in mid-air, to the flesh-and-blood version, who’s just agitating his limbs while resting on his side or back. The kid-friendly show is alternately funny and poetic.
But about two-thirds of the way through, it runs out of steam.
The French group Compagnie 111 used similar optical illusions in “Plan B,” which played the New Victory Theatre in 2004. But the video trickery was only a part of that piece — here, it’s everything.
Wegner and Brière spin multiple variations on their premise by introducing props and even cute animation. But there’s only so much they can do with this setup, and things become repetitive. The show nicely handles deceptive appearances, but it could have used more of another dimension: depth.