Vox Pandora

Picking up where the Greek myth left off, Bilal Dardai imagines that after releasing all the world’s evils, leaving only Hope behind, Pandora’s Box has been passed down through generations of women charged with keeping the Hope chest safe. It’s been inherited by Eleanor (Dana Dardai), who discovers that Hope (Bennett) has made quite a comfy home for herself in the box, manifesting the world’s hopes—revolutionary leaders, surgical procedures, racehorses—as abstract-expressionist paintings. The box is soon tracked down by an ambitious politician led there by one of its ex-tenants, a zoot-suited “deception” (Duhigg). The politician convinces Hope that she can do more good by stepping outside the box.

Bilal Dardai’s premiere is imaginative and enjoyable, but it suffers slightly from an inconsistency of tone. The first act’s quippy, goofball approach to the metaphysical recalls another of this season’s new plays, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa’s Say You Love Satan; call it “metawhimsical.” Act II hops 12 years into the future, going all serious on us and focusing on Hope’s role in the politician’s campaigns. Perhaps that’s intentional—the outside world is darker and all that—but it’s a jarring shift. It doesn’t help that Eleanor, who seemed to be our focal character, all but disappears. Hutchinson’s inventive, thoughtful staging helps us mostly overlook the structural issues (and Nick Keenan distracts us with one of the best sound designs in recent memory). The cast is fine all around, but Duhigg steals every scene he’s in—naturally, evil gets all the best lines.—Kris Vire