Author: Kat Pope

Punchdrunk. What a fantastic name for a company. I mean, you really can’t beat it. As theatre groups go, they picked the doozy out of the barrel. And it sums up what they do too: disorientate with a carefully aimed theatrical punch to the nose, making everything just that little bit gin-blurred at the edges.

This was my first time Punchdrunk (although split the word up and I’ve been there far too many times to remember), so I felt like a greenhorn as I walked through the doors of a big old building situated right next to Paddington Station.

An old sorting office is this immersive theatre company’s newest venue, all 130-odd rooms of it on four huge floors, and the piece they’ve come up with this time is based on Georg Buchner’s proto-Expressionist novel, The Drowned Man.

I’m a cripple in old money: disabled in new. I prefer just ‘crip’ as it’s short, sweet and actually manages to make such a horrible predicament sound vaguely hip. I’d read that this production was in semi- almost total darkness and to top that, you had to wear a bloody mask.

Quite how I was going to manage on my crutch I wasn’t sure,

but the PR person who arranged the ticket (just the one – this is an expensive production you know) was concerned about this too and arranged for me to have a shadow. So I was to be hobbling round a dark, unfamiliar, derelict building with a shadow lurking in the dark behind me. It was getting better and better….

My ‘shadow’ turned out to be called Ashley and a better shadow I couldn’t have wished for.

As we waited in line to be clicked through the entry point, Ashley told me what would happen and what her role was. She would stand behind me at a distance, not speaking or interacting with me, as I made my own decisions and own path round the space, where I could chose to follow this actor or that actor from room to room, or to have a wander and see what I came upon. She’d come and rescue me if I needed rescuing, and she’d get me a chair if I gave her a signal.

The first problem was encountered early. I gamely put on the white carnival mask that we were all issued with in the lift up (one of those big concertina-doored affairs with an inner grill that goes clunk and swoosh) and couldn’t see a thing. My glasses had misted up and I missed the creepy lecture we were being given by an actor, telling us what we could and couldn’t do (Ashley brought me up to speed: we could wander anywhere we wanted, but couldn’t talk and had to keep the mask on at all times).

What with being at a disadvantage already,

she let me keep my mask off so I wouldn’t trip, fall and sue, but this left me feeling vulnerable and exposed.

I soon saw the two reasons they have the mask rule: the first is to distinguish between actor and audience, and the second is so you don’t get distracted by other audience member’s faces and reactions to what you’re seeing.

So I was the only non-actor without a mask although it would have been hard to fit me into the whole ‘Punchdrunk actor vibe’ – young, whip-thin, athletic, earnest – as I’m old, fat, crippled and frivolous.

Perhaps the masked audience who encountered me thought me a blip in the matrix.

The lift door thunked open and I stepped out into darkness. As I grew accustomed to the low light levels, I made out a fountain in the middle of a large space and around the sides were shops, shops that belonged in 1960’s America, and even then shops that had seen better days. I found myself peering into a cinema ticket office showing Eyes Without a Face, into a sewing repairs shop, a milkshake parlour, all eerily deserted and all remarkably detailed down to the notes on the doors, the menus, even the dust lying on things.

And that’s what strikes you first: the detail. Every room, every space, is crammed with things, old things. I kept thinking that Portobello Market must be looking very sparse this month as it was obviously all here, sitting in an old Royal Mail building in Paddington. The attention to detail is stunning and a little overwhelming. It makes you catch your breath just as much as the atmosphere you’ve stepped into.

Punchdrunk have now banned all bags being taken on site and you can see why. The temptation to take ‘one little thing’ as a souvenir is strong, and the anonymity that the masks bring must make some previously law-abiding theatregoers turn kleptomaniac.

Suddenly the cost of this thing looms and then you realise why the tickets are so pricey

(£40 upwards, although there are £20 tickets available on the day and for school groups). Is this a subsidised piece? In a way, yes, as it’s being put on in collaboration with the National Theatre, a publicly subsidised outfit. So how much has it cost? Felix Barratt, the director of Punchdrunk, has been quoted as saying the budget is the size of a small film. How small he didn’t say…..

The set swallows you up completely and you can do nothing but stand gawping at the sheer scale of the thing. Then it dawns that you’re only on one part of one of the four floors. My legs began to ache just thinking about it.

Actually, I had no trouble getting around without Ashley’s help for the first half hour or so, as they have carefully removed any obstacles in the way of feet and the paths are clear, and by the time you start to tread on wood chips as you enter a spookily-lit wood made of real tree trunks (I had to touch) you’ve gained confidence that there are not going to be any nasty foot-level surprises. There were also nicely placed stools and chairs for the actors to use which came in very handy for having a short break on.

Passing through the wood and into a run down trailer park I came across my first actor, a blonde girl in a 60’s dress staggering along, weeping uncontrollably. This is disconcerting even when you know it’s an actor, and I stood stock still as she brushed past me and ran to a caravan, slumped on the step and started to read a letter. Then she was off again, with me and a couple more people following, off to a Cadillac parked nearby where she clumsily climbed in, still weeping snotty tears and clutching the crumpled letter. She came to a halt slumped on the steering wheel.

What to do now? Should I just leave her there in distress? Should I move on?

This was the awful tugging feeling I experienced throughout the three hours I was there witnessing very distressed people doing very distressing things. Most of the masked audience scurried off once they realised a scene was over, sometimes chasing after their chosen performer, but leaving someone collapsed on the floor, slumped at a wheel, spinning in a chair, all alone. I didn’t want to leave them like that. But I didn’t want to miss anything. It was a horrible, existential, human dilemma and I felt like a nasty, uncaring piece of work every time I walked away.

I didn’t have much choice about how I experienced The Drowned Man. There are two stories running parallel, one involving characters called William and Mary, and the other Wendy and Marshall. The actors go through their performance in the same manner each time. It’s set, although there’s obviously room for improvisation and a little spontaneity. Theoretically therefore, you could see one of the performances all the way through if you chose to follow the right actor, but they don’t half move off at a lick!

Scene done, off they go like a rabbit being chased by masked greyhounds, and this unmasked, lame pug just couldn’t hope to keep up with them.

This was where Shadow Ashley came into her own, turned into Angel Ashley, and became invaluable to me. She’d seen it all before, knew where she was going, never got lost. After about half an hour, she started to gently guide me round by whispering “There’s a good scene about to happen over there” or “There’s not much going on on this floor now. We could go to the ‘sand’ floor as it won’t be too hot at the beginning.” I had a local guide and she knew her stuff. Brilliant.

I often joke about my famous lack of any sense of direction but it can be a right sodding pain especially when I find myself in a purposefully disorientating place like this warehouse of a building. I would, I am convinced, have been wandering about in there still if I hadn’t had Angel Ashley. There are stewards dotted about in black masks who you can run to if you need any help, but I didn’t see that many – although that may have been because I had my own dedicated one and wasn’t particularly looking out for them.

I managed to stay on one floor for over an hour. I’d just start to take in my surroundings when a scene would kick off, or a character would run past me and my wanderings would be stalled. Then I’d go back, determined to find out everything about that one floor, and then a couple would waltz past and off I’d go again.

This, it has to be said, is a bloody nightmare for anyone on the autistic spectrum, or anyone with even the mildest touch of O.C.D.

The feeling I was getting was of constantly missing something: that something absolutely vital was happening in the room next door. Perhaps if I hadn’t had Angel Ashley following me I would have been less self-conscious of my movements, but I didn’t know which way to turn. Should I poke around in this perfectly fitted-out caravan, with it’s slept-in beds, handwritten notes and fairy lights, or would I then not have time to see everything else? The feeling drove me mad and stopped me enjoying the experience as fully as I could have done, but I’m just one of those people who like linearity – a story being laid out before me which runs from A to B. This may be an age thing, as youngsters seem a lot more comfortable with a mess of information thanks to being brought up with the net. Us oldies who were brought up with books like a path through our info and with Punchdrunk you’re never going to get that.

In the end I realised this approach wasn’t going to work so I asked Angel Ashley to take me onto another floor, which was how we ended up on the top ‘sand’ floor. It was here that I came closest to the elusive one-to-one encounter with one of the actors which Punchdrunk aficionados so long for. A shirtless guy was dancing in a spotlight (most of the performances are dances, with occasional words and acting) near a sand dune – on the top floor of an old sorting office. Yep, I know…..

After standing and watching him for a few minutes with only a few people around, he crawled towards me, head down to the floor.

I’m pretty sure he was about to pick me, but then he looked up and saw the crutch and thought better of it. This was a good move on his part as his next dance move was to grab a member of the audience and to make them crawl into a tiny tent with him to help him wash his arms in a bowl. I think that would have been a little beyond me.

The sand floor was odd. Angel Ashley told me as we sat at the bar for a break that she’d noticed in the four weeks the installation had been open that the sand layer had gone down by about half. As she said this, I was busy brushing sand off my bare legs so it was no surprise to me. I’m pretty sure that half of Punchdrunk’s sand floor was now all over Paddington, just as half of the sand from the Costa del Sol ends up lodged in the cracks of British laminate flooring.

Remember Ai Wei Wei’s porcelain pips at the Tate? They pretty quickly had to close it off to visitors because of the worry that the dust given off by the pips was hazardous to health. Well, I’m surprised Punchdrunk have got away with the sand floor. Yes, it’s a natural material but it doesn’t half kick up an storm in a confined space. Everything shimmers which makes for a beautiful atmosphere, but I came out with a very rough throat and a headache, although the latter was more likely to have been induced by what I can only describe as ‘black noise’ that plays insistently on this floor.

Once again, as an oldie I found the noise difficult to take, so sustained is it. It’s a glowering, one-note backdrop that oppresses and depresses. On other floors it’s not so insistent, being broken up with obscure period music when a performance is taking place, or if you stick your head in a caravan you not only get a sense of going back in time but also a blast of comfortable music, but it was ever-present on the sand floor and it did me in.

I’d had enough for a while and Angel Ashley skilfully guided me to the bar. This is the only place you can take your mask off, and the cabaret-style space was already rammed. I wasn’t sure if the barman was in character or not as I couldn’t hear a word of what he said to me over the rather loud singing. Angel Ashley and I found a quieter spot and started chatting.

Turned out she was a graduate of RADA having just finished a floor managers’ course and this was a temporary front-of-house job to add to her C.V. During her training she’d worked in the Old Vic Tunnels before they’d mysteriously closed, and on The Audience (“It took me the whole six week of my placement to get over the fact that Helen Mirren knew my name”).

We nattered on and on and on, about son Sid who wants to ‘do something in the theatre’, about how much this run was costing, about being a bit overawed by seeing Michael Billington (you have to be quite into theatre to feel that particular emotion). I could have chatted forever. I was sitting on a lovely comfy seat with a cold Diet Coke in my hand, talking to someone passionate about my favourite subject, but I had a job to do, so we got up and soldiered on.

Now, I’m really not quite sure which floor we went to after the break, but it was a good floor, full of people romping on four poster beds, or getting up on a little checkerboard stage to mime to a Shirley Temple number while a movie mogul in dark glasses, glass of whiskey in hand, looked on from a big fuck-off leather chair. I still had absolutely no idea what was going on, but it was fun to watch.

I came across a room that smelt funny.

On entering I found it was full of hand-made hutches all stuffed with straw but without any animals

(the cynic in me thought “I bet they ran it past the RSPCA and the man in the peaked cap just shook his head slowly as if to say ‘Are you NUTS?!'”).

Then I caught a glimpse of a janitor figure with a torch going into a tiny office clutching an item of lacy lingerie. I peered in at him through the window as he carefully buried the knickers or whatever in a box full of earth. The frame of the window made it into quite the cinematic experience as he turned and moved towards me. It was like I was in a horror movie come to life and I didn’t like it.

Click, click, click – off I crutched at a right old pace, only to come across a tent full of people having a birthday party.

I stood in the tent, peering over one of the dancer’s shoulders. This was one of the rare pieces I’d come across that included sound, and three people were stripping a friend down to her knicks and then dressing her up in some other get-up. Party poppers went off, cake was consumed, karaoke was sung, and I was there, in the midst of this chaotic scene, an observer, an outsider, an intruder. The music stopped. The dressed-up woman’s face soured and she stood stock-still, upset, hurt, humiliated in someone else’s clothing. The participants peeled off one by one, followed by various parts of the audience, until one partygoer was left sitting slumped at the table, glumly muttering to himself. I wanted to put my arm round him and say “It’s OK, it’s going to be OK” but instead I hurried off like the rest of the crowd, off to find another morsel of action, off to find another instant thrill. I felt like a piece of shit.

The anonymity given by the masks lets you not care, you see. It strips you of all those social responsibilities that you normally feel you have to act upon, albeit perhaps the ones that you only do out of a sense of ‘there’s someone watching me so I can’t just ignore what’s happening.’ Punchdrunkers can be bloody rude because of this. I didn’t really experience it, probably because I didn’t have a mask on so my reaction would have been seen by any boor who tried anything, plus I had the crutch and no one likes to upset a crip as we have a weapon to hand at all times.

Being masked up produces some odd behaviour though,

especially from men (and I’m guessing straight ones) who stand, hands on hips, as near the performers as they can possibly get, as if they’re doing it for a dare. I saw one performer open a letter and the men were around him like locusts, jostling to try to be the first to read the thing.

 “It’s getting near the end now,” whispered Angel Ashley. “We really need to go up a floor to see the murder. Well, one of the murders.” Oh dear. This was getting spooky. And if I wasn’t so leg-weary I’m sure I’d have felt a tingle go down my spine. As it was, all I could feel was pain. I’d stupidly left my pills in my bag in the cloakroom and I was aching all over. I thought I wasn’t going to make the last leg and Angel Ashley could see I was struggling, so she found a convenient place to prop me up on a bar where she knew some hot action was going happen in a few minutes. A few minutes when you can’t stand but are forced to stand feels like an eternity, but it was actually worth it for what I saw.

The stage was set for a showdown between blah blah and blah blah. Yes, I hadn’t a clue which couple I was watching but it was damned good anyway, and spilled over to where I was propped up. I did think a couple of times that I was going to get a massive kick to the head as the dancers vaulted over the bench I was clinging to, but they were more skilfull than to let that happen of course.

Some bloke was stripped naked and rubbed up and down and then left to hang out to dry.

I wasn’t, of course, sure what he’d done to deserve this, but it was fun to watch anyway.

To be fair, Angel Ashley did try to tell me what was going on and which couple and what part of the story I was watching, but it took all my energy to get around the place and I couldn’t concentrate on what she was saying.

Suddenly a small Japanese man in a black mask came up to me with a huge grin on his chops and pointed to his mask and then mine (which was on the top of my head by now). I looked from him to Angel Ashley and back again. He pointed once more. Again, I sought help from AA (not for the first time…boom tshhh). Nothing. So we stood there for a good half a minute going through this odd little performance of our own until AA whispered

“He’s the floor manager – you’ve got to do what he’s asking.”

“But I steam up!” I whispered in desperation. I received an even bigger grin and two hands clasped over his heart in apology and that was that.

The finale. We got there early to guarantee a good space – or so we thought. I was soon swamped by people and as much as Angel Ashley shooed them away silently, they poured in front of me. The murder actually took place high up in some trees so I could see it above the crowd’s heads anyway, and that’s my enduring memory of Punchdrunk:

glimpsing things from afar – spotlit figures intertwining, dancing, kissing, killing.

This glimpsing was magical, more magical than being close up to the performers: it was as if I was turning my head and coming upon something happening in reality, not in a large warehouse in North London. Quite why I should get this impression with all the artifice around I’m not sure, but these moments were my Punchdrunk moments and the images I’ll take away with me.

After both murders, the whole company got together on a large, wide walkway and had a bit of a hoedown, a bit like the jig you get at the Globe at the end of a play. It seemed an odd conclusion to an evening of such drama, but quite how else they could have ended it escapes me.

Then the lights went up and it was time for Angel Ashley and I to part. I was most sorry to see my guide go, but she had another show to do, another cripple to look after.

So did I like the show? Yes, with reservations. Quite a lot of reservations actually. Punchdrunk have, without a doubt, put on a spectacular show that knocks the breath out of you, but do they use too many easy tricks, and does it ultimately mean much, or tell us much about ourselves? The answer to the tricks question is a resounding yes. I found myself tiring of fairy lights for one thing, and I hate to say this but I also tired of the dancers. To my mind, if you’re not a dance nut it’s easy to get all danced out pretty quickly, even if there is a narrative as with The Drowned Man. And the noise, although spectacularly atmospheric was a little too bleak and oppressive for much of the time. It worked in that it made you bloody thankful when some ‘proper music’ came on, but it’s too much if it drives you from a whole floor as it did me.

As I wandered about I kept thinking of nightclubs which keep their atmosphere only until the lights go up and then you see a dirty old room full of a grey nothingness. I know it’s not a fair comparison, as you could say all theatre is like that – the lights go down and you’re in a different space – but the thought kept niggling away. Perhaps it was the sheer scale of the thing that kept me thinking about it. Often, the bigger the trick, the more you want to see what’s behind it.

Does it ultimately mean much? No, very little, but that’s OK – it doesn’t really have to.

But does it move us? Does it tell us anything about ourselves? No, and that’s a big problem. A curious feeling of sterility pervades despite all the clutter. It’s too much show and not enough heart: too much trying to be hip and not enough trying to be thoughtful. I know I’m being harsh here, but big isn’t always better. The show seduces, but in the end it’s a (not so cheap) floozy. It’ll pick your pockets and tug your heartstrings, but when you walk away from each other does the time you had together mean something? Just a little, but just not enough.

Having said all that I’d still heartily recommend The Drowned Man as it’s too important a theatrical event to miss and, for all its faults, it’s still a unique experience. Just make sure you don’t go on the hottest day of the year like I did, and don’t follow the crowd. Make your own decisions, forget everyone else (even if you’ve come with someone), and enjoy the spectacle for what it is: a damned good evening out.

P.S. If you have any kind of difficulty on your pins, stick yourself in a wheelchair and get pushed round. It’s a lot easier than a painful three hours standing up!

Stars: 4

WHAT: The Drowned Man from Punchdrunk

WHERE: Right next to Paddington Station (you get detailed directions with your ticket)

WHEN: Until 30 December, various times

TICKETS: £19.50 – £47.50

RUNNING TIME: About three hours

MORE INFO: CLICK HERE:  

WOULD I GO AGAIN: Hell yes