The first escape room I went to was unparalleled: magical, fascinating, and fun in a way I’d never had before. After doing more than thirty of them not every room can stand up to that first experience, but even more so: that experience can’t measure up to itself. I know now that if I went back to that same room it’d not be as wonderful as what I’d experienced before.

As we experience more of a category its novelty wears off and more and more of them muddle together in an undistinguished soup. I wrote last year how reading plays as quickly as I did (and try to no longer do,) meant that none of them was living with me as long as they ought, but the more I read the more they also start to resemble each other, and it’s often not to their credit.

Donald Payton’s Rest Assured is a perfectly fine comedy, arguably a hidden gem despite running a little long, belaboring its point a bit, and disappointing roles for women overall. Despite having what should be an exciting premise: two ghost dads fight to either push or pull their children from each other, that never really gets off the ground in the face of what is, in the end, a Christmas Carol plot, of one person learning a lesson about what really matters.

Unfortunately I can’t find much else to say about this: it will still work as an engaging school or community piece, something to give the performers and designers a large cast and something to work with, but offers little for a modern audience to challenge or surprise themselves with.