In the Immersive play Natasha, Pierre and the Great Commet of 1812, the audience gets dinner with a twist: actors weave through the crowd and get up close and personal.
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To be sure, there's some gimmickry going on, and immersive has become a buzzword attached to practically any show in which an actor talks to the audience or patrons sit at tables rather than in seats. Natasha, Pierre and Here Lies Love are two of the best off-Broadway musicals in years--but less because of their staging stunts than for their first-rate, rock-fueled scores, perfectly matched to story and setting. And the one thing you may well miss after a trip down the rabbit hole of Then She Fell or through the gothic fun house of Sleep No More is what, exactly, Alice in Wonderland and Macbeth are about.
But this is extreme theater: fresh, fun, totally absorbing, a full-contact sport with no rules and no boundaries. Borscht is optional.