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.
