Review Rundown: The One Featuring Nightmares, Zombies, and Emily Dickinson
In-person and audio experiences from LA, NYC, Toronto, and London. FIVE REVIEWS.
While Noah is on a well-deserved birthday staycation, the NoPro staff remains hard at work.
In this week’s Review Rundown, Katrina braves a Zombie Apocalypse in Toronto, while over in London Roderick succumbs to DARKFIELD’s COMA. Back in New York, Allie finds herself UNBOUND to explore Emily Dickenson’s life and work, as Edward twists and turns through Nightmare: Gothic. Finally, Juliet escapes The Depths in LA, the latest room from The Escape Game.
Even though we’ll be back next week with more Spooky Season coverage, the day proper is finally here! Hopefully you have a Happy Halloween full of tricks and treats this weekend!
Interested in reading more reviews, especially our thoughts about the latest Spooky Season shows? Check out last week’s jam-packed Review Rundown featuring 10 different experiences.
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COMA - DARKFIELD
£10–13; London, UK; Run Concluded
It’s so enjoyable to be able to look upon the work of a group of artists and rejoice in the realization that they have so completely perfected an idea. In addition to effortlessly delivering the pinnacle of digitized theater in the dark, DARKFIELD has also advanced a touring model through which people can experience DARKFIELD’s achievements.
DARKFIELD’s latest visit to Canary Wharf brought three of their most popular experiences, FLIGHT, EULOGY, and COMA, and dropped them into the laps of busy office workers. Slipping away for your lunch break and stepping into a 40-foot shipping container that is capable of switching up your perspective sounds like the basis for an art-centric utopia, and one which other makers should be looking to emulate. This ease of accessibility is based in pure pragmatism.
To let you briefly peer behind the curtain, I’m writing this in the Wales Millennium Centre, where the container housing FLIGHT has just pulled up. It will soon be hoisted off the flatbed truck, connected to power, and in no time at all it will be ready to receive guests. This authentic artistic decision paired with grounded production has come to define DARKFIELD’s practice, and COMA is no different.
There are three key elements in COMA. There’s the doctor figure who guides you through the journey, the sensorial scenography that places you in the journey, and the audience who you might mistakenly think are on the journey with you. Through a clever transition, the actual audience is usurped with a pre-recorded audio audience, who end up playing the important role of protagonist in the narrative. By misleading you into nailing the colors of your agency to the mast of the collective, the later actions of this group, despite being completely predetermined, feel as if they arise organically. The subterfuge of participation creates an interesting counterpoint to an experience that is solitary, both in its content and its delivery.
Though this run of COMA has come to an end, you may just find a curious container appearing in your vicinity at some point in the future.
— Roderick Morgan, London Correspondent
The Depths — The Escape Game
$42.99 per person; Los Angeles, CA; Ongoing
Now open in the Westfield Century City mall, The Escape Game has four rooms — some of which may be familiar to you if you’ve played their other locations in Irvine or elsewhere.
We tried The Depths, which is set aboard a deep sea vessel. The set decor was lovely, the puzzles were suitably challenging (ranging from clever and fun to mildly frustrating), and there were a few cool tech moments toward the end. It wasn’t the most unique game we’ve played, but it’ll definitely scratch that familiar itch.
Bonus: In addition to The Escape Game’s multiple rooms, the mall also has plenty of shops and food court options (including Eataly), plus Dreamscape Immersive’s VR experiences. You could really make a whole day of it.
– Juliet Bennett Rylah, Special Projects Writer
Editor’s Note: Not based in or visiting LA soon? The Escape Game has locations nationwide, some of which are running a version of The Depths.
Nightmare: Gothic — Psycho Clan
$30; New York, NY; Through Oct. 31
Nightmare: Gothic takes place in a shockingly small footprint of the Teatro SEA, an entertainment facility in Manhattan. For those who want a Halloween spook this year, the show constructed a small maze from long blackout curtains. Fear not, however, as you will be guided through the maze of rooms, both by audio played in headphones and by characters who appear and usher you to the next space. The entire experience is directed by a timed audio track, ensuring a constant flow of actors perfectly placed for each scene, which is really quite clever. Unfortunately, this is where my enthusiasm for the piece ends.
Each room has little in connection to the others. A supposed throughline of trying to find a missing girl is flimsy at best. The best “scares” of the experience come early on, with each succeeding room getting more and more… well, naff. Costuming varies wildly, both in quality and in theme, so much so that it comes across as a collection of what-could-we-find-in-the-costume-closet parade of characters. An 1800’s British explorer, a plague doctor, a candy salesman, a goblin, and a praying mantis all are bizarrely featured here. Besides a brief quote from Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven, I’m not sure how the Gothic aspect of this haunt was intended. And one scene was completely out of sync, due to being pushed through too early by an overzealous performer.
As an audio-driven haunt, the quality of the recording was also disappointing. There were several peaking issues, questionable line delivery, and entire moments of drop-out. Either effective visuals or audio could save the production, but these lackluster components dampened the whole experience. Combining this with the poor narrative, which petered out towards the end, I walked away from the 35-minute experience more bewildered than bewitched.
— Edward Mylechreest, New York City Correspondent
UNBOUND: a haus of haunts — Thistle Dance
Free; New York, NY; through Oct. 28th
UNBOUND is a sandbox-style immersive dance production taking over the Jefferson Market Library this October. Based on the life and works of Emily Dickinson, this free experience allows audiences to choose their own adventure as they explore the three floors of the historical library.
The production is well intentioned, but falls short in a number of areas, with the most unfortunate aspect being that the structure of the performance largely isn’t immersive. While audiences have the ability to move freely throughout the space, there isn’t any meaningful engagement or intimacy between performer and spectator, leaving me to wonder why we were there. I would say this is more of a site-specific dance piece. The aesthetic is highly reminiscent of Sleep No More, which makes this production feel like an off-brand version of the famed show.
However, I found it most difficult to assess how UNBOUND’s plot is based on Emily Dickinson’s life and work. There isn’t a clear way for spectators to understand or become aware of the concept, and thus it’s easy to get lost from the start. For example, Then She Fell offers multiple points of entry into the thematic content through Wonderland-inspired sets, characters based on Lewis Carroll’s stories, and recognizable motifs such as Painting the Roses Red. UNBOUND presents as a dark and mysterious performance without providing any real designation of story or theme.
Perhaps this production could have incorporated key signifiers of Dickinson herself, such as showing her reclusiveness or dressing applicable characters in white. Or maybe it could include motifs from her work, such as her obsession with botany and the infamous “Master” character. I think there is an attempt to include some of the themes surrounding death and dying that Dickinson is famous for, but what was presented was more about witches, cults, and vampires than the symbolic and poetic “Death” that Dickinson often wrote about.
UNBOUND is a valiant first approach to this material, and it has some strong bones, but it needs some significant work to be a fulfilling piece. Considering this performance is free, I would encourage anyone and everyone to attend the remaining dates — it’s definitely an opportunity to see new work at the starting point and it is a great surface level Spooky Season event.
— Allie Marotta, New York City Correspondent
Zombie Apocalypse — Casa Loma in partnership with Secret City Adventures
$40 — $50; Toronto, Canada; Through Oct. 31st
Casa Loma’s annual Legends of Horror Halloween show has a new sister program this year. In partnership with Secret City Adventures, the company behind the venue’s popular interactive escape rooms, Casa Loma debuted Zombie Apocalypse, a new “immersive experience” haunted house.
Upon entering the venue, we were ushered into a waiting area. Here, old computer monitors played a corporate PR video introducing us to mega-pharmaceutical company, Biolux, and its miracle wonder drug. In typical zombie movie fashion, this medicine also has the unfortunate side effect of turning its patients into flesh-eating zombies.
Clocking in at 20 to 30 minutes, Zombie Apocalypse is half the length of the Legends of Horror experience. As a self-proclaimed scaredy cat, I spent the majority of my time at the Biolux laboratories holding onto my friend for dear life. However, as we progressed through the rooms, the clearly defined path made it easier to guess where a zombie might be hidden. Further, the staff seemed to rush us through, meaning we quickly caught up with the group ahead of us — thus neutralizing many of the show’s jump scares. This fast pace also limited the amount of time we had to explore and appreciate the set, which was a shame as the show’s location and set design were executed nicely and suited the story well.
Only three of the show’s actors had speaking roles, and in the spirit of marshaling us along, they interacted with us minimally. There was one small, three-part puzzle, that — if solved properly — modified the storyline slightly. However, as we were given no prior notice of it, propelled through the course by performers, and instructed not to use our flashlights, we missed the first two portions of the activity.
Interactive storytelling is the secret sauce that brings Secret City Adventures’ experiences to life and differentiates them from standard escape room fare. However, the breakneck pacing of this experience, minimal meaningful engagements with actors, and lack of a complete story arc made Zombie Apocalypse feel very different than the typical Secret City Adventures show.
– Katrina Lat, Toronto Correspondent
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