We went to see Punchdrunk's latest show last weekend. Punchdrunk is this 'immersive' theatre group. Their last show was a take on Macbeth in New York, and was quite popular with celebrities, so you know they've made it now. Once people find out Miranda Kerr and Orlando Bloom like your shows you'll never struggle with selling tickets again. This latest show was in the old Royal Mail sorting warehouse next to Paddington Station. The idea behind their shows is that the audience is free to roam around the space, coming across performers almost by chance. It's an interesting idea for a show, that your journey around the theatre guides your experience, rather than the experience being very much dictated by the company on the stage. And they had put so much work into the set. It was 4 floors in this warehouse and the rooms were amazing, the level of detail that had gone into everything. It is almost worth it just to see that! I was kind of hoping for a bit of a video game experience, it did feel like it could be a little like something like Fallout, where you wander around trying to find people to give you a bit more of a clue on the story.
It felt like they didn't quite hit it, it could have been amazing, but I think the space was just too enormous for how many performers there were. So 4 floors and each floor was huge, in fact it was so big, it turns out there was another whole floor we didn't even find. Not only was the space enormous, but there were only 34 performers, and really the density was much lower than that, as there generally needed to be at least 2 together to perform any scenes. So pretty low performer density there, and there were also something like 600 people at the show.
In the end I think we only saw 5 scenes over the 3 hours we were in there. The final scene is one where finally the guides start ushering you around, and they move you all into one big room where everyone comes on stage for the finale. And I swear there were at least 5 people that I didn't even see during the 3 hours I was wandering around. I'm guessing they were all on the floor that I missed.
They are a contemporary dance group as well, and whilst I don't mind contemporary dance, especially performed by people as good as this, I just wish I had managed to see more of it. Without the dialogue it becomes a bit harder to piece together the character interactions, and with only 5 scenes to go off it was pretty much impossible. Sure people say that with punch drunk you get out what you put in, but the putting in seems to involve stampeding after any performer you glimpse, with elbows flying. And I'm not quite prepared to work that hard for my theatre.
And for those who may have seen it already, what the hell was going on in the attic?
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