Viola’s Room by Punchdrunk (1 Cartridge Place, Woolwich)
Verdict: Teen dream
My advice would normally be to avoid entering a teenager’s bedroom at all costs. Nonetheless, for strictly professional reasons, I took the plunge for the latest ‘immersive experience’ from Punchdrunk theatre company.
Viola’s Room is a 1990s-themed teenage gothic fantasy by novelist Daisy Johnson, based on a short story by the Victorian author Barry Pain, here narrated on headphones by Helena Bonham Carter.
The adventure begins in the poster-bespattered boudoir of Viola, a teenage girl who has recently lost her mother and who is also caught up in a dream of marrying a prince.
Having entered the room as part of a group of up to six, we crawl through an improvised tent into a network of claustrophobic hessian and calico corridors.
We then follow lights through a succession of miniature and life-size sets including castles, woodlands and a small chapel.
Viola’s Room is a 1990s-themed teenage gothic fantasy by novelist Daisy Johnson
It is based on a short story by the Victorian author Barry Pain, here narrated on headphones by Helena Bonham Carter
The adventure begins in the poster-bespattered boudoir of Viola, a teenage girl who has recently lost her mother and who is also caught up in a dream of marrying a prince
Is it theatre? Not really. There isn’t a trace of live performance. It’s more like a 3-d audio book or super-articulated art installation.
Tramping around barefoot (following sanitisation with a spray), the texture of changing floor surfaces (shagpile, wood boards and, eventually, sand), adds a sensory dimension, alongside whiffs of essential oils (or was that just the smell of cleaning fluids?).
I didn’t find it remotely scary, but those who fear dark, confined spaces should certainly forget it.
Johnson’s writing is a cross between a Grimm’s fairy tale and a toe-curling teenage diary we’d rather forget. B
ut the words are almost entirely eclipsed by the visual journey, and the practicalities of fumbling around in near pitch darkness while trying not to bump into your fellow pilgrims.
A must for set designers, but only a maybe for everyone else.
Booking until August 18.
Accolade (Theatre Royal, Windsor, and touring)
Verdict: Queasy lover
Accolade is a queasy psychological pot-boiler from 1950 by the actor-writer Emlyn Williams.
It’s about a famous writer (originally played by the not that famous Williams himself), who has bagged a Nobel Prize for his books about London low life and has been invited to the palace for a knighthood.
The queasy bit is that he has a weakness for sex parties and becomes implicated, thanks to incriminating photos, in an under-age sex rap. And this in the shadow of Windsor Castle…who can they be thinking of?
Unfortunately, however, it takes Williams well over an hour to detonate this bombshell. Until then, it’s a charming, Noel Coward-style snapshot of high bohemian society with more overt sex references and fewer catty gags.
Modern audiences will be alarmed that it takes insufficient stock of the under-age victim. It also comes perilously close to an apologia, in which we’re asked to forgive the allegedly ‘accidental sex offender for his predatory peccadilloes.
Accolade is a queasy psychological pot-boiler from 1950 by the actor-writer Emlyn Williams
It’s about a famous writer, who has bagged a Nobel Prize for his books about London low life and has been invited to the palace for a knighthood
Williams has a weakness for sex parties and becomes implicated, thanks to incriminating photos, in an under-age sex rap
Either way Sean Matthias’s production lovingly recreates the period mores, manners and fusty interior design.
He could do with more charismatic defiance from Emmerdale’s Ayden Callaghan as his leading man, but Honeysuckle Weeks is frightfully charming as his all-forgiving wife, while Sara Crowe quivers with shock as a family friend, and Narinder Samra is deceptively louche as his histrionic accuser.
A fascinatingly uncomfortable experience.
At Windsor until June 15, before heading to Cambridge, Guildford, Bath and Richmond.
