Duck and Cover Classroom I can’t vouch for Escape Artistry’s trumpeted dedication to “equality, environment, and education,” but I can attest to the aesthetic and cryptological rigor of this tantalizing, exasperating, and ingenious escape-room game. After a cheeky introductory video instructing us newly deputized agents in the nuances of time travel (here walking down a hallway), we’re locked in a drearily appointed 1950s schoolroom and given 60 minutes to decipher combinations to multiple locks in hopes of finding some missing uranium. I couldn’t track the backstory—something about two missing agents and the world’s first nuclear chain reaction—but lead designer Melissa Schlesinger’s stocked the room with mind-addling puzzles that delighted and ultimately baffled me (luckily I was trapped with smart people). Stick with it: the payoff is worth it. —Justin Hayford
Murder the Hypotenuse: An Improvised Soap Opera What you get with this Under the Gun show is a mildly amusing spoof of corny tropes from the soap opera universe. In two acts’ worth of incoherent plots on themes suggested by the audience, many of the conventions of daytime TV drama get referenced here, from the sudden reappearance of a long-lost family member to the casual deletion of one side of a love triangle—the so-called “murder of the hypotenuse.” Some of the gags were good enough, but tellingly, the show’s funniest bits came when the “soaps” cut away to hilarious “commercials.” —Max Maller
