A world within a warehouse

Punchdrunk’s ‘The Drowned Man’

 

Even in terms of immersive theatre, this piece asked a lot of its audience; you were given a white mask to wear and told to create your own adventure by choosing where to explore independent of the people you came with. I had deliberately arrived alone in order to avoid the inevitable loss of friends in the sea of masked spectators. This decision may have contributed to a particularly unnerving experience from queuing to collect the tickets as if about to board a rollercoaster, to finding my way through the cramped dark corridors and being dropped off via elevator into separate areas of the dark world in which The Drowned Man was set.

From the caravan park to the dressing rooms, the snowy hillside to the cabaret bar – this was a masterpiece of world-creation through life-sized 3D sets you could have a nose around inside. Every caravan wall plastered with photos and newspaper clippings, every desk drawer filled with documents. A new reality in which your awareness of happenings beyond your immediate surroundings was heightened as you caught glimpses of characters flitting past you with a group of spectators in tow and announcements that a shooting of a scene had just been completed boomed around the maze of studios, you were always reminded that you were only witnessing a small part of the action.

The fearless performers also had much to contend with as the zealous audience crowded around them. They cleverly manipulated the audience with their movements and slipped through gaps in the circle created when they needed to exit. They rolled down snowy banks, wrestled on sofas and leaped between the roofs of caravans as they acted out fights and orgies, parties and breakdowns, all whilst the audience fought to be close enough to touch them.

For me, the setting was by far the most impressive part of the performance, the moments of stunning movement drowned out slightly by the constant confusion over which character to follow next, where you were and what on earth was going on in terms of the storyline. I witnessed a group scene twice and suddenly wondered if I had lost track of time, missed the ending of the performance and was now here for the second show that evening. I was later told that the narrative repeats itself three times within the show to give audience the opportunity to see different parts of the storyline, before the stunning finale with the full cast marks the end. The addition of the cabaret bar in which you might have found yourself after following a certain character at a certain time, in which you could remove your mask, buy a drink and enjoy some light entertainment, was an extremely clever way of including an interval for the audience without breaking the flow of the show or allowing the audience to fully step out of the characters’ world.