Dungeons & Dragons: The Twenty-Sided Tavern is now playing at Stage 42 in New York City.
It’s fun just to watch, right? The new semi-interactive show Dungeons & Dragons: The Twenty-Sided Tavern, now running off-Broadway at New York’s Stage 42, puts that notion to the test. This gleefully silly evening plays out a new, mostly improvised session of the enduring role-playing game each night, complete with interactive elements that keep the audience involved – up to a point. By the second act, D&D devotees may grow tired of watching from the outside. But for less intense fans, Twenty-Sided Tavern is an enjoyably frenetic, warm-hearted good time.
This critic is a casual D&D fan, if not much of a player — admittedly, I was politely disinvited from a regular group after derailing the action with my wishy-washy character’s constant passivity. That tendency towards inaction is more welcome at Twenty-Sided Tavern, where the crowd votes on key decisions via their phones and then watches them play out on stage. You can get more involved, and even get up there with the cast – but on a strictly volunteer-only basis. (You can even skip the voting, like the older gentleman next to me who sat still and stone-faced for two full hours, scarcely humoring the notion of scanning a QR code.) The browser-based voting software, designed by Gamiotics, is smoothly integrated and thankfully bug-free.
Our endearing guide for the evening is DAGL (or David Andrew Laws), also the show’s co-creator and the game’s Dungeon Master. DAGL provides a cursory D&D explainer to kick things off, but mostly keeps the evening speeding along, favoring momentum over detailed breakdowns of the tabletop RPG’s many byzantine rules. If newbies feel lost at mentions of “difficulty class” or “dexterity modifier,” the action sprints on too quickly for them to dwell on it.
DAGL introduces us to our three adventurers: a Warrior (Tyler Nowell Felix), a Mage (Madelyn Murphy), and a Trickster (Diego F. Salinas). On Saturday night of opening weekend, the trio took on audience-selected personas of Chester the Good Time Bro-barian, Dustin the Undead Cowboy and Tamberlaine the Tantalizing Bard, respectively. Each is allocated a third of the audience to vote on their key decisions. Their controlling viewers are also sent various games, including Mario Party-esque fast-tap challenges, to lend our character support at pivotal moments.
The energy tends to dip during the actual gameplay, not because it’s confusing – though, for me, it sometimes was – but because watching people roll dice can only be so thrilling. Without enough reasons to invest in the characters or the outcome of their quest, these portions of The Twenty-Sided Tavern suffer further. Attempts at comedy were no help here, either: At my performance, Felix, Murphy, and Salinas’’s dialogue leaned on a lame, repetitive running gag about restoring “The Bro Code” to the kingdom by defeating a vaguely defined big bad. Not exactly the stuff of sturdy emotional throughlines.
That’s a shame, because all three performers are charming and likable. They fare better in improvised crowd work, feeding off a raucous and supportive audience. Tavern’s ad-libbed moments are by far its strongest – whether a running gag about the audience’s terrible character name suggestions or, most memorably, DAGL’s startled reaction to the sounds of a baby’s cries emanating from the house. “There is a baby in the audience,” deadpanned a bemused DAGL, a refrain then repeated throughout the night in response to any off-color joke. The subject of those wisecracks was taken out of the theater within the first 20 minutes, thus missing most of the callbacks, but that scarcely mattered.
These moments of liveness and unpredictably keep Twenty-Sided Tavern invigorated. So does DAGL, a charming host and commanding storyteller. Though prone to cheesy humor (he pronounces “Undead Weird Cowboy” “the coolest set of words I’ve ever gotten to say”), DAGL holds the proceedings together, with no small assist from the always grounding presence of a Tavern Keeper (an enjoyably wry Sarah Davis Reynolds, also a co-creator and story designer).
The show makes effective use of Stage 42, the largest off-Broadway venue and not an easy space to fill. The grand set, designed by K.C. McGeorge, is a rustic emporium of random wares – like a D&D diorama blown up to 10 times the size. The set is littered with intriguing items, but unfortunately only a couple found their way into the actors’ hands on Saturday. At least we got “The Decider,” a pleasingly massive polyhedral die which performers hurl across the stage for the most consequential rolls.
Mike Wood’s glittery lightning extends to the rear of the house, inviting the whole crowd into the experience. And the invaluable projection design, by Derek Christiansen and Ruby O’Brien, conjures a series of colorful settings through wonderful detailed drawings. A scaled-down production could easily traverse the country, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it does.
The Twenty-Sided Tavern coasts on creative design, strong performances, and stimulating crowd work for most of its running time. The audience’s enthusiasm is intoxicating, and there is a refreshingly warm, supportive vibe in the room. My fellow theatergoers erupted into pandemonium at Felix rolling a “Natural 20” – in response, he took a victory lap through the entire house. And we remembered, collectively, the one-time do-over available to our adventures, after a particularly horrible dice roll threatened to derail the final battle. “RE-ROLL!!” hundreds of people yelled at the stage, to the performers’ clear delight.
What the show forgets, though, is the other key element of both a great D&D game (and great theater): a meaningful story. To close out the show, DAGL shifts abruptly into an emotional, deeply earnest monologue, proclaiming that the troupe’s victory cleanses the world of all hatred and evil. It doesn’t land because, before this moment, the show has never treated its narrative with any sincerity. Its dominant mode of winking humor and self-mockery keeps Twenty-Sided Tavern a lively, fun time. But I walked away feeling ultimately unsatisfied.
