Last night we went to watch the new Punchdrunk production, The Burnt City. They do immersive theatre, so one wanders around rooms, corridors and huge spaces where a story is playing out. The audience wears masks, so there is a feel of ghosts following the only real people in the space, the actors themselves. For this one, they got a space in Woolwich, an absolutely massive hangar of a building, all divided up. Very far away, and we had to take a couple of trains to get there, including a final stretch that went past the Thames Barrier.
The play itself was more spectacle than story, with lots of dramatic set pieces (I missed the murder of Agamemmnon not once but twice) and no real sense of who the characters were or what was going on. It had the usual aesthetic of early 20th century style, confidently sexy women, old timey posters and burlesque which I must say I find rather wearing. It feels more naff nowadays than a story told in chitons. There were lots of poses struck and lots of dance, with individual performers clearly chosen for particular specialisms such as jerking, twirling, writhing, swirling etc.
I enjoyed it more than the last of their plays I attended (and the last one they put on), though. It was very well regarded, and I think my not enjoying it then was due to me. It was during my mother’s illness, so there was almost nothing I enjoyed in those days. And I got impatient with the attention to spectacle and the inattention to story, which I am more interested in. This time I didn’t expect to follow a story and instead just wandered around, seeing what was going on.