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For most of its 50-year history the Dungeons & Dragons game has conjured images of nerdy boys tucked away in a basement, rolling dice, eating pizza and sending off imaginary adventurers in pursuit of orcs and trolls. And for some of those years, that description, while slightly pejorative, was not wholly inaccurate.
But five decades after it was created by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, D&D, as it is known, is a $US15 billion ($23 billion) business for its owner, Hasbro. It has spun off a trove of toys and other products, and several feature films, the most recent of which, Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves, pulled $US200 million at the box office in 2023.
It was referenced in E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, That ’70s Show and Community. And the Netflix hit Stranger Things draws story elements from the D&D canon, notably the monstrous Demogorgon, Mind Flayer and Vecna. It may still be a hit in the basements of the world, but upstairs D&D has gone mainstream.
Now, the game makes a transition to the stage in the form of The Twenty-Sided Tavern, a live improvisational production that uses the D&D rules – that is, its character archetypes, outcomes decided by dice roll and a moderator known as a “Dungeon Master” – as a loose framework for what transpires during the show.
Its heart, director Michael Fell says, is “putting a game on stage and involving the audience to become an active participant in the creation of a story, through the lens of the game of D&D. We call the audience the sixth performer because they actively affect the status of the game and the story that we’re telling that night.”
When the show toured the US in 2023 and 2024, reviewers were almost unilaterally positive. “The show is, to use a phrase I learned in critic school, a hoot and a half,” wrote The Workprint’s Victor Catano. “Mistakes are made, resilience and humour are at their best, and, in the most tumultuous of social times, everyone comes together, cheers together [and] laughs together,” wrote OnStage Pittsburgh’s Jessica Neu.
As a director, Fell’s history as a player of the game gives him a unique understanding of how...