Gareth's Culture and Travel Blog

Just six days before seeing this I was at a ‘mash-up’ of Greek tragedies with the Trojan War as their backdrop (https://garethjames.wordpress.com/2022/05/07/age-of-rage). It was spectacular, with a cohesive narrative, even though it was in Dutch! If you’d read nothing about this latest Punchdrunk immersive show before you entered, you probably wouldn’t know it too was based on the Trojan Wars. It is also spectacular, but has no cohesive narrative, which proves to be its big, almost fatal, flaw.

I consider myself a Punchdrunk veteran, having seen seven of their previous shows in the last seventeen years, so I’ve got used to what to expect. With the exception of two small scale productions, their ‘trademarks’ are an extraordinary attention to detail in the ‘installations’, short scenes with dance & movement, and an atmospheric soundscape. You’re free to navigate them as you wish, almost all being non-linear. This new show used this template, using a ‘museum’ as a jumping off point. By the time I got through this I was feeling herded and irritated; not the right disposition to enter the mind-blowing art installation that contains the performance spaces.

On this occasion, I struggled to pick up the sort of detail that fascinates me, like intriguing book titles and written pages, as the lighting seemed lower and the masks, on top of face coverings, more prohibitive. The short scenes that pop up all over the place were always compelling, sometimes enthralling, with those in the huge two-level space spectacular. The trouble is it makes no sense, so it’s like a moving painting without a story to tell. Again, I find myself full of admiration for the creativity, workmanship, logistics and performance, but after three hours I left famished by the lack of narrative drive.

Preventing photos and videos was a great move forward; if only they could deal with the audience members who feel compelled to run between locations, presumably in case they miss a key moment, who damage the carefully curated atmosphere. Punchdrunk do need to change or develop the concept or content though if they are to continue to successfully evolve, otherwise they will lose the core audience they’ve done so much to nurture and end up just playing to spectacle junkies, the runners. There was a whiff of big business about it all, not just in the ticket prices, but in the whole thing, but I’m glad I went nonetheless.