The Saint Louis University Theater closes out the season in a final, ambitious project giving the cast and crew another opportunity to shine.

Dark Ride follows on the heels of the powerful drama A Lie of the Mind yet this contemporary satire shows promise despite a short preparation time.

Dramaturg’s Notes:

Welcome. Sit back and enjoy. You are about to witness one of the most versatile and dynamic plays ever written. Dark Ride can be thought of as a metaphorical ride in which your theater seat transforms into a roller-coaster car: locked down, you are propelled into darkness.

Click, Click, as you listen to the cat begin to move you notice a story is unfolding all around you. To your left someone is trying to decipher an ancient text, in front of you someone is reading an “odd book”, and then unexpectedly and without notice you have ascended the first hill and the ride has begun.

Dark Ride is a satire of contemporary American popular culture presented with a postmodern/ film-noir twist.

Written by Len Jenkin and performed for the first time at the SoHo Rep theater in 1981, it is a play in which “the familiar, the bizarre and the unsettling are all investigated at the same time.”

Jenkin has welded a conglomeration of philosophy, history and psychology along with a modern-day look at television, relationships and consumerism in a play that is labeled “not the sort of work that sustains leisurely contemplation.”

Like a carnival ride through a tunnel, in which images and sounds are presented at every turn and from every angle, it is a play that proselytizes you to in the same clandestine philosophy it later retracts and refutes.

Jenkin has offered us a play in which the reciprocal of reason is presented as disturbingly appealing and extremely coincidental.

The show opened last night in the Studio Theater of Xavier Hall. Five more shows are scheduled for the remainder of the week.

During a late night study session in preparation for finals, seize this theatrical opportunity to be amazed by the thespians of the SLU theater.

Tickets are available for the following shows: May 4 8:00 p.m. , May 5 8:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. and May 6 8:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m.

Tickets are five dollars for students and are available at the door.