Five Lines bills itself as micro cinema; live projected and manipulated models of miniature objects, with a mixture of live and pre recorded sound as well as video, and some moments of live action. The seed of the idea was interesting; a couple meet and fall in love, then there is a natural disaster and they are forced to live in a shady underground hierarchical world where their work is exploited, and their interests (he a musician, she an activist) diverge. The cast were responsible for manipulating the scenes and lights, as well as the cinematography. There was a lot going on, a lot of ideas, but rarely did they feel like they held together for more than a moment or two.
Choices around how elements were used, and the scale of action, or even what was live/manipulated/pre recorded felt arbitrary and confusing. Indeed even choices around when to see the manipulation of miniatures and when it was “magic” were inconsistent and arbitrary. This isn’t to detract from the skill of the performers, or the seed of the idea…it simply did not translate into anything compelling or meaningful.