A little over a year since I stepped into Punchdrunk’s astonishing interactive theatre experience The Burnt City, the company has reopened its doors in Woolwich, London, for a vastly different production.
For those who don’t know Punchdrunk, the company behind uniquely explorable, interactive and almost video game-like productions such as The Drowned Man, Shakespeare retellings such as Sleep No More and Doctor Who spin-off The Crash of the Elysium, the outfit is famed for their Choose Your Own Adventure approach to storytelling. But the troupe’s latest creation, Viola’s Room, is something a little different.
I experienced The Burnt City, a nearly three-hour sprawling odyssey of mythical Greek storytelling and sacrifice played out over a series of cavernous spaces, just days after a particularly difficult moment in my life. The opportunity to then lose myself completely in that show’s labyrinthine spaces and storytelling for hours was something that will stay with me for a very long time. Its structure was deliberately complex, a web of narrative performed by an enormous cast of actors and dancers moving around elaborate sets on a schedule that ran like clockwork, their stories intertwining at key moments and in specific spaces with explosively violent or strikingly intimate results. I had always meant to go back and see it again, multiple times, especially after delving deep into Punchdrunk’s fan reddits and wikis and learning more about its story and many secrets. Some diehard fans saw more than 100 performances. But I never managed to find time before it closed – and its enormously ambitious nature meant affordable tickets were few and far between.
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