The Lookingglass Theater has accurately promoted Plantation! as being FUN-comfortable. The audience laughed a lot, even while occasionally squirming in their seats at the subject matter, though the squirming at the end of the play (spoiler alert) was more in response to the need for something, anything, to happen on stage.

In honor of Plantation! director David Schwimmer, the young girl sitting next to me was wearing a Friends t-shirt. Schwimmer was in attendance, hiding in plain sight with a baseball cap pulled down to partially conceal that part of his face that wasn’t covered by two weeks of neatly trimmed beard.

Based on past experience, I probably wouldn’t have spotted Schwimmer, even without the cap and beard, if not alerted by the girl sitting next to me’s father (I once failed to recognize a sports and television celebrity sitting naked next to me on a health club locker room bench, or so I was later told).

Other than me, I think everyone noticed Schwimmer right away as he made his way to the back of the house to watch the play, but I sensed from his appearance that he wanted you to pretend not to recognize him (ergo pseudo incognito), at least until after the show, when I saw him shaking hands with patrons. (David, if you’re reading this, please tell the author that I have a better idea for the ending of the play.)

I love the flexibility of the Lookingglass Theater space. It’s a chameleon, constantly changing the dimensions and positioning of the stage and modifying the seating arrangement, never appearing the same way twice. On other occasions I’ve ridden on the Pequod, sat on both sides of Alice’s lookingglass, and been in the middle of the Chicago fire. If the space were sitting naked next to me on a locker room bench, I probably wouldn’t recognize it.