WoW reviews: Moving moments at festival

A look at a pair of shows from La Jolla Playhouse’s Without Walls Festival that transport participants in ways both literal and figurative.

(See our full festival preview here, and some earlier tips/reviews here.)

“OjO: The Next Generation of Travel,” Bricolage Production Co.

Potiker Theatre (starting point)

Every 20 minutes, 12 to 2:40 p.m. and 6 to 8:40 p.m. today (Sunday)

Funny, mysterious, surprising, thought-provoking: A lot of words come to mind concerning “OjO,” the tremendously inventive participatory piece from Bricolage Production Co.

And yet it’s hard to describe what it’s like to experience, because much of the show’s fun comes via the unexpected.

Suffice to say that this trip of 60 minutes or so involves quite a bit of sensory deprivation. Although that doesn’t seem quite right, either, because part of the point of “OjO” is the way it actually enhances some senses.

(The Playhouse program notes do stipulate: “Walking required; journey includes narrow, dark, enclosed spaces.”)

Whatever else it might be, “OjO” definitely is a journey. In fact, it starts with each participant being issued a boarding pass, and then being guided through a very convincing simulation of travel (minus the interminable waits and TSA checkpoints).

If you try it, you’ll wind up in a swirl of places and scenarios you would’ve never guessed were on the itinerary. The startling shifts are all part of the fun; I found myself laughing lot and trying to shift my mindset and responses to fit every new situation.

There’s a definite point behind the piece (“ojo” means “eye” in Spanish) that’s about not relying on first impressions or simple assumptions.

But it’s also just a major kick to be whisked away to a new world or three for one very eye-opening — or at least mind-opening — hour.

“Heaven on Earth,” Sledgehammer_

Powell Structural Systems Laboratory, Building 623, UC San Diego (starting point; shuttle available from Festival Village)

8 p.m. tonight

Leave it to Sledgehammer_ — San Diego’s venerable, ever-adventurous and now reconstituted theater troupe — to stage a crazily imaginative whatzit production in a place where things are destroyed and remade as an academic pursuit.

The setting of UCSD’s towering, starkly industrial structural labs feels ideal not just for Sledgehammer_ (the underscore is part of the company’s name) but for Charles Mee’s “Heaven on Earth,” an abstract, highly nonlinear meditation on human society.

Mee’s piece “incorporates texts taken from the catalogue of Revolution Seeds, Isaac Bashevis Singer, O. The Oprah Magazine, and Arthur W. Leonard,” according to the playwright’s website. Sledgehammer_ seems to go quite a bit further, incorporating (among many other things) moments from the absurdist Samuel Beckett play “Happy Days.”

That provides a welcome chance for cast member Dana Hooley to briefly reprise the chief role of Winnie, which she played (winningly) in a 2014 production of the Beckett work that represented the company’s return after years in limbo.

The new show is a sprawling one, with a big cast (along with Hooley, there’s Walter Murray, Luana Farina, Amanda Schaar, Gianni Barrales, Maya Braunwarth, Trent Brown, Kevin Gleason, Emily Lappi, Molly Maslak and Terril Miller, plus Mark Danisovszky on accordion).

I’ll admit I had little idea what was going on for much of the show, which sometimes stops to turn in on itself — at one point the cast breaks character to argue with director and company co-founder Scott Feldsher.

The piece, exuberant as it is, tends to be all over the place, not just thematically but literally — roving to multiple locations before ending on a broad plaza under the stars.

But it does offer all kinds of memorable impressions and visual delights, including the sight of the cast orbiting the audience on bicycles while clad in something like white spacesuits.

Don’t except any kind of neat story arc from this piece, which feels as though it could use some judicious editing.

But do expect plenty of poetic impressions, a few laughs, lots of surprises, game performances and a strong sense of being untethered from theater convention.