Attack Theatre’s ‘‘Games of Steel’’ has all the makings of gripping multimedia dance theater. The conceit is a kind of post-apocalyptic, punked out ‘‘American Gladiator’’-type game show with three contestants and a conniving, manipulative host. The games involve a 16-foot seesaw that tips and spins, ladders, a steel pole, metal rings, and a slide. It’s vividly lit and fueled by a dynamite rock opera score by David Eggar. He sings and plays cello and keyboard, joined by singer Dina Fanai, bassist Tom Pirozzi, and percussionist Matt Zebroski.
But while it’s clever, visually striking, and entertaining, the drama is murky and a little messy. The rules of these games are never clear, sapping what should be the piece’s innate ‘‘win or lose’’ tension. And the three contestants — Jeff Davis, Michele de la Reza, and Angela Essler — don’t establish clearly defined personalities. Peter Kope’s corrupt host is a sharper figure, but still a little wishy-washy. When he seduces and betrays each in turn, we don’t really care. When the contestants, who seem more playful teammates than cutthroat opponents, shift alliances and turn on each other, it’s disappointingly anti-climactic.
In truth, there’s a lot more finesse than fight in these games, with a little too much carefully controlled, dancey movement, and not enough raw physicality to bring the concept to a dangerous edge. And ultimately, one of the show’s greatest strengths — Eggar’s score — feeds into the dramatic weakness. As Eggar and his talented band rip through a colorful range of classical riffs, metal-tinged grooves, modal noodling, and country/folk and cabaret-style ballads, each shift of style sends the mood of the piece in a new, not always convincing direction.
The Pittsburgh-based company’s codirectors, Kope and de la Reza, originally created the piece in a rubber band factory, and I suspect this show could really feed off the energy of a warehouse-type environment. In the genteel surroundings of the Cutler Majestic, however, it just seems a little too tame.
However, there are some fabulous moments. The dancers are excellent in set pieces that have a fluid, almost balletic grace, interacting with the softly shifting weight of contact improvisation and throwing in occasional gymnastic tumbles and flips. The sections involving the seesaw have a visceral thrill, as the dancers play with balance and soar round and round in great arcs. A terrific sequence involving a raked incline has a propulsive momentum, as the dancers dive and roll. They tumble and slide over and under one another on their way down with the ebb and crest of waves crashing to shore.
The most effective vignette dramatically also features the most intriguing movement. The three contestants climb onto Peter Lambert’s fantastical steel sculptures. They look like giant chairs, with laddered legs and backs of open metal-work scrolls and tangles. But as percussionist Matt Zebroski begins to drum on the resonant rungs, it seems to send jolts of current into sculptures, sending the dancers into frenetic, robot-like isolations until they collapse, drained of both strength and dignity. Suddenly, the chairs look more like cages.
