The Huntington at The Huntington Theatre — Attraction in Boston

"The Drone Saga" (at the Huntington Theatre): Disappointing; not what we expected. It's easy to appreciate the bold intent — combining dancers and drones. But in no way did it live up to its potential or its hype.

It's billed as "an immersive experience." Nothing "immersive" about it, though: the drones and dancers remained onstage, at a distance from the audience.

The choreo for the drones was especially uninspired and repetitive. For the most part, they flew single file, one behind the other, in circles or serpentines. In fact, the drones never really interacted with the dancers either. They stayed at an "altitude" above the dancers' heads, and the dancers seemed oblivious to them. The drones and dancers never shared the truly same "airspace."

The lights on the drones had a very limited range of pale colors. (Nothing like the technicolor promo shots used to market the show.) There seemed to be little attention paid to the theatrical possibilities — even given the limited palette And several times, the drones were still flying and droning distractingly when there was no music to cover the loud buzzing of their propellers (which would seem like a no-brainer). Like a game of musical chairs in which the drones kept getting caught after the music had stopped.

The four dancers — not six, as teased in some of the marketing for the show — were quite uneven. (None of the dancers was named or credited.) One dancer was particularly weak, and danced without the same balletic grace or technique of the others — as if they were in an entirely different production.

The choreography for the dancers, too, was conventional and repetitive. It felt like watching the same two routines performed continually over the course of the hour-long performance.

Like the dancers, none of the creative team was named or credited. That was a pity, at least where the music was concerned:

The musical score was a high point of the evening: It had the compelling energy of a passionate contemporary film score. And whereas the choreography was lacking dynamic variations of level and energy, the music moved nimbly from emotion to emotion, exploring varied melodic themes, tempos and textures. Unfortunately, the contrast between the moving music and the stoic choreography made the deficits of the latter even more uncomfortably hard to ignore.

(The attached photo appears in the marketing for "The Drone Saga" — but in this weekend's performance at the Huntington Theatre, sadly, we saw nothing even remotely...

The ticket wasn’t clear on what location to go to. We made it through two points of contact (scanning tickets and speaking with the usher) without anyone altering us of the fact we were at the wrong location. As a result of this process failure, we missed the play and had to pay a rebooking fee. Staff shared that this happens regularly. Indeed, there was another party who experienced the same issue the same night as us. Suggested solutions: make clear on your website and on the digital tickets that the play is at your satellite theater in bold, highlighted font. Do not scan tickets when they are for the wrong show. Do not charge a rebooking fee.

More details: We attempted to see JaJa’s hair braiding play last week. We bought tickets through Huntington’s website and were issued tickets online. We arrived to the Huntington Theatre about 15-20 minutes before playtime. They scanned our tickets without a problem. However we saw advertisements for a different play, Light at the Piazza, throughout the theater. We asked the usher why the advertisements were for Light at the Piazza rather than JaJa’s Hair Braiding. She shushed us and waved us to our seats. When we arrived to our seats, there was someone already sitting there - and we realized we were at the wrong theatre! We were supposed to be at their satellite theater at 527 Tremont. We noticed that in fine print on the digital tickets, it said that the play was at their satellite theatre location. However the people who bought the tickets were visiting from out of town and never knew Huntington had a satellite theater...

We have been season subscribers for the past few years. No more. Called to renew season subscription, wait time 33 minutes, finally spoke to a person that doesn't know anything about helping someone purchase a season subscription. I had to suggest she actually look up our tickets from last few years. I had to request that she look for other seats when she reported the seats as not available. She offered 1 seat in 1 row, 1 seat in another. I had to request that she look at seats available for other series at the same day/time. Didn't occur to her. Eventually said we could sit on the last row of the orchestra or row K of the first Thursday of each run. We used to have front row seats. She doesn't know what she was doing nor did she seem to care if we renewed our tickets or not. Granted, I usually book in early summer and this is very late, but I had such a bad experience with this person that we won't be returning. Too bad since we love supporting the theater and the...