There’s a beguiling quality to the latest immersive theater piece from the Punchdrunk company that brought us Sleep No More. Viola’s Room, which just opened at The Shed, invites groups of up to six people to wander barefoot through a labyrinthine space that’s devoid of the usual things we associate with theater: including live human performance. Instead, visitors follow light cues to various rooms and “outdoor” areas in and around a palace, while listening on headphones to an audio track narrated in a breathy whisper by Helena Bonham Carter.
It’s a singular approach to immersive theater that provides more of a narrative underpinning than many productions in the genre. We start in a girl’s bedroom, circa 1994, with posters of Tori Amos on the wall, a ballerina music-box on a shelf, and Seal’s “Kiss From a Rose” playing on the radio. (Set design by Casey Jay Andrews.) Bonham Carter relates the story of a young princess named Viola, who’s been betrothed to a young man she’s pushed to the ground on their first meeting as young children. Then we learn that her royal parents have both died, and she wanders the palace and its grounds while waiting for the return of her future husband over a wedding weekend that will not go entirely to plan.
Theatergoers are instructed to “follow the light” and thus take cues from Simon Wilkinson’s lighting design to tread along narrow pathways that are sometimes tricked out with silhouetted puppet shots, dioramas, or scenes that only gradually reveal themselves as they become illuminated. At times, the room will go dark—not the dark of a theater with exit signs still illuminated in the corner, but an absence of light that is unnervingly total. Gareth Fry’s stereophonic sound design enhances the experience, sometimes creating a darkness-amplifying silence that can be unnerving. You may be asked to crawl into a fabric tent in Viola’s bedroom to the corridor just outside, or to squeeze through a narrow (but padded) passageway representing an overgrown hedgerow maze. (This is not a show for claustrophobes.) The sensory experience extends to the floor itself, which can be smooth or carpeted or cushioned or even sandy. (You check your socks and shoes in boxes at the start, with sanitary sprays and wipes provided as well, and then collect them again at the end.)
While there is an inherent creepiness to Daisy Johnson’s story and the production is structured like one of those old funhouse mazes at an old carnival, this not a horror story in the traditional sense. There are no jump scares, no severed limbs, no bloody tableaux to induce nightmares. In fact, there are no human figures at all. Except for the handful, Viola primarily, whom Bonham Carter describes in her enchantingly hushed tones.
Close observers (and veterans of Punchdrunk’s work) will doubtless pick up on all the recurring thematic elements and Easter eggs that pop up in various guises: tree branches, Beefeater soldiers, ballet slippers, and that recurring music box. But there’s no time to linger, to scour every nook and cranny of a room for clues. Director Felix Barrett and co-director Hector Harkness have orchestrated the light cues, and thus the visitor experience, with military precision to sweep you through the show in just under an hour. (You are sometimes told to hurry along darkened corridors, though running is never an option.) Unlike in Sleep No More, everybody entering Viola’s Room will have pretty much the same experience, and be able to follow one story from beginning to end without trailing off to chase peripheral characters in obscure corners of the performance space. There is none of the usual FOMO feeling that comes after many immersive shows.
Viola’s Room most closely resembles stepping into a fairy tale or campfire story, where you might close your eyes to better absorb the nuances of Bonham Carter’s lilting voice while opening them again to become alert to where you might be led next. It will doubtless be somewhere surprising. ★★★★☆
VIOLA’S ROOM
The Shed, Off Broadway
Running time: 55 minutes
Tickets on sale through Oct. 19 for $49 (up to $462 for a private individual experience)
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