Part of the thrill of theater is that you’re taking part in a one-time experience, never to be recorded or repeated, in which anyone who wasn’t part of that live audience with you will simply have to take your word for how it was. Still, you may seek out clues about whether your experience of the show was widely shared or unique to you — taking note of how the audience is audibly responding, or listening in on mid-point reactions in the restroom during an intermission, or looking over at a companion and comparing notes on the ride home.
That, in the most basic outline, is what you needed to know about “The Pineapple,” an immersive theater production that just wrapped up a 76-performance run — for, you guessed it, a total of 76 audience members — in North Hollywood. It was put on by a company called Candle House, which, though little-known as of yet in the theatrical mainstream, has enough of a cult national reputation that nearly all of the 76 shows sold out pretty much just on word of mouth, at $247 a pop. (These sellouts occurred even before the show got its first piece of substantial L.A. press, via a slightly unnerved Los Angeles Times review that was published late into the Sept. 15-Oct. 5 production.)
There are no immediate plans to bring “The Pineapple” back — which allows us to get into spoilers — but suffice it to say that this was a big enough hit, on its own strange scale, that Candle House’s next L.A. production will arrive with a much, much bigger profile, even if what they do naturally benefits from a sense of being on the down-low.
I should also mention that I can easily imagine people for whom participating in “The Pineapple” would be, like, one of the worst nights of their lives… although I don’t imagine them being the types of people who would take a chance on spending $247 for something that sounds spooky and potentially challenging, so the self-selection probably works out fine.
I did a debriefing days after the show with Candle House founder Evan Neiden (who was also, I didn’t realize til our phone call, one of the actors I’d been interacting with). One of the first things I asked him was whether any of the audience members in this or their other productions has ever used the “safe word” that will end the show. Not surprisingly, he said it was very rare and that most ticket-buyers have a good idea that a show like this will make some demands of them.
