Sally Tomato are a local rock band. An ambitious local rock band who decided to go big and make a rock opera, and then actually did it. Toy Room offers a tasteful use of props, multiple projection screens, and live camera work. The only fault in the show, unfortunately, is a lack of experience. The original rock opera, in four acts, follows the star, Sally Tomato, from her childhood to her middle age, as she moves through various psychological and physical traumas. These acts, while making good use of video, lighting, and props, would have been better served by richer characterization and more focused acts.

In the first act we are introduced to Sally as a little girl, and given the circumstances that will set her on her path. Unfortunately, we only see three characters, and all of them are Sally. This lack of characters hurts not only the plot, but also the choreography, for throughout most of the show, Sally (or multiple Sallys) is the only one on stage, and thus has very little to interact with. In their defense, choreographing psychological issues is one of the harder things to pull off, and I don't think that Sally Tomato, as a theater company, is quite there yet. The video work for the first act, however, was actually quite impressive, and when combined with the narrator, gave the video-heavy scenes a Virgin Suicides quality that served the story very strongly.

The non-Sally characters, including her husband, don't even have names, and when they do enter, they are only around for a few scenes and tend to represent stereotypes rather than individual characters with depth. Most of the scenes and characters seem to be tools to get from point A to point B, rather than important elements in and of themselves. These unfinished elements, combined with quite a few instances of feedback and video malfunction, led me to the conclusion that Toy Room isn't ready for prime time. My friend, who saw the show with me, liked it quite a bit, and put forth the argument that I was unfair to hold a rock band to professional theater standards, but I argue that it would unfair not to. Sally Tomato obviously cares about this project quite a bit, and put a lot into it—probably everything they had. Unfortunately, that doesn't include experience.

Toy Room ran April 4-6 at the Wonder Ballroom