By Jenny Sandman Charles Mee's Fire Island is one of those rare plays that transcend the confines of the genre. In many ways it's not really a play at all but more of an art installation complete with a live band, live actors, continuous video feed, and free beer. By making live performance only one small part of the whole artistic experience, the play shows us what the theatre is truly capable of. And guess what? It's a lot of fun.

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The 3LD Art & Performance Technology Center has been rendered into Fire Island, without all the sand. Beach chairs and pillows are scattered around the floor, with occasional coolers of free beer and soda. Free hot dogs are available from a sidewalk vendor before the show begins. All four walls show a different continuous video feed, and the live band is set up in the corner.

It's within a very comfortable, very casual space that the play unfolds at a leisurely pace. Live performance being a small part of the whole, most of the "action" takes place on the video screens. The live actors pick their way through the crowd as they perform and the musicians have small roles as well.

Each scene, both live and video, is only a few minutes long at most. In its entirety, Fire Island involves 108 artists— including a Tuvan throat singer, drag queens and a freak clown.

At its core, however, the work is about relationships and the frailty and fickleness of human emotion. Every person is in some stage of a relationship. Some of these relationships are just beginning, some are ending, some are in that awkward place just before ending, and some will never happen at all. The delicate ecosystem of the humans informs that of this barrier island. Fire Island itself is a character since much of the video feeds are shots of boardwalks, tall grasses, the beach, the waves, the sky, all the parts of what makes this such a popular summer destination.

Fire Island succeeds where Mee's last production, Paradise Park at Signature Theater, failed. While this, like other Mee plays also involved multimedia aspects, it seemed little more than a jumble of ideas and characters. While Fire Island also contains its own jumble of characters, the production is lithe and erudite, and somehow more than the sum of its parts.

The nontraditional seating and atmosphere, and no doubt the free beer, keeps the audience relaxed and engaged as they probably would not be in a more formal, traditional setting. To this fan of Mee's work, Fire Island is a rare marriage of material and production which director Kevin Cunningham weaves into an exuberant whole.

Fire Island Written by Charles Mee Directed by Kevin Cunningham Live Cast: Allison Keating, Catherine Yeager, David Tirosh, Gautham Prasad, Jenny Lee Mitchell, Jon Okabayashi, Joshua Koehn, Kate Moran, Kiku Collins, Livia de Paolis, Stephen Payne, Tina Alexis Allen, and Victor Weinstock Live Musicians: Albert Kuvezin, Aldo Perez, and Matthew Talmage Scenic Design: Paul DePietro Costume Design: Nellie Fleischner Lighting Design: David Tirosh Sound Design: John Plenge Video Design: Jeff Morey Running Time: Ninety minutes, with no intermission 3-Legged Dog, 3LD Art & Technology Center, 80 Greenwich Street (at Rector Street); 212-352-3101 From 3/17/08; closing 5/03/08 Thursday through Saturday at 8 pm Tickets $30 Through May 3rd Reviewed by Jenny Sandman based on April 12th performance