THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
Fans of Punchdrunk, and they are legion, will require no encouragement to race to Woolwich Arsenal for the latest immersive spectacle. Since 2000 they've pioneered a game-changing form of promenade theatre in which roaming audiences experience epic storytelling inside intricately designed sensory experiences. They blend classic texts and physical performance in reclaimed spaces, usually large ex-industrial sites. Sleep No More (based on Macbeth) has played for 10 years in New York and they've had shows in Boston and Shanghai. This is no struggling avant-garde but rather an international juggernaut.
After receiving your Greek mask you're released into a mock exhibition detailing the history of the Trojan Wars, as The Burnt City is based on Aeschylus' Agamemnon and Euripides' Hecuba.
Their earlier, and more remarkable, hit The Drowned Man (2013) turned a four floor Royal Mail depot in Paddington into the world of decaying late '50s Hollywood. The half-light, the constant hum of menacing bass sounds, the astonishingly obsessive attention to period design and props, produced the perfect marriage of text and concept.
Here the trademarks recur, and the setting remains totally film noirish but the basis of it are two classical Greek texts. In The Drowned Man you were immersed as a masked voyeur observing warring couples or sexual trysts, often in a cramped room, and it reeked of crimes of passion. Here, such drama is replaced by antiseptic art installations on which fragments of ritual dance play out. Writhing bodies are draped across cruciform beams under shafts of light, or gymnastic trapeze-like creations unfold, and the piece doesn't have the momentum of drama.
This huge space, an ex-armaments factory, has broadly two distinct settings, Mycenae and Troy, each with multifarious rooms. There's a tap room, a pottery shop, a fragrant laundry room and an abandoned kitchen with half eaten meals – a dizzying maze of curiosities. Iphigenia's girly bedroom is strewn with soft toys and from it she rushes to meet a lover only to end up being ritually sacrificed by her father.
Troy is wonderfully down-at-heel with such settings as a decadent Hotel Elysium complete with a strung out addict, a fairground entrance and a bijou Chinese cocktail den.
Punchdrunk eschew anything linear, and the scenes are not on a loop so if you're lucky and patient you will happen upon the key moments. The problem with leaving an audience's experience all to chance like this is that they really deserve more and assuming they'll return for another angle (as some do) is a bit rich. Here the central dramatic points are dissipated, and you can spend long stretches in empty rooms with nothing but the interruptions of your fellow punters in their beaky masks.
Some punters, desperate for a connection, follow a favourite character only to have them quickly disappear behind a locked door. The whole experience plays heavily with ideas of voyeurism. In fact, they blatantly promote the masks as a way for audiences to be liberated from their inhibitions, but this whole sex club aesthetic ends up being all tease and no delivery and you can't get more post-modern than that.
By the end, if you're lucky, you will have found your way to the bar (there is no 'way finding') where a pair of hipster dragsters, Coco and Marcy, and band finally supply some much-needed musical entertainment.
Two practical shortcomings: the Greek masks are impossible for anyone who has to wear glasses and the insistence on Covid masks in addition is baffling. Considering that entrance is timed and it's cavernous, this is ridiculous in terms of social distancing. The only crush is at the end in the bar where everyone is relieved to strip off the masks. Generally, there's a distinctly odd dissonance between the louche Weimar vibe they're fabricating here and the bossiness of the crew. It's like an orgy in a convent school.
Finally, this show is definitely not for those of a nervous disposition, or prone to anxiety attacks or claustrophobia. You will need a great sense of direction to feel secure. I tested how easy it is to get out and it proved both prolonged and dangerously chaotic.
