For all the sensory stimuli enveloping audiences at Punchdrunk’s latest immersion, Viola’s Room, the most mysterious to me was smell. What exactly was that scent hanging about as we carefully trod from bedroom to shadowy maze and dining hall and chapel? It wasn’t acrid or foul; there was a whiff of stale incense or burnt soil; it clung to the white Victorian shifts hung from rafters that we wove around. At times, you detected a grassy sub-aroma—perhaps the foot sanitizer we applied before embarking on this hourlong jaunt. Whatever way Punchdrunk’s ace technicians fashioned the olfactory effect, it blends perfectly with the countless aural, visual and tactile pleasures to be had. All of which almost makes up for a certain intellectual lack in the narrative component.
Conceived and directed by Punchdrunk chief wizard Felix Barrett—also the main force behind the long-running Sleep No More—Viola’s Room is an audio-guided indoor son et lumière. Historically, that 20th-century genre takes place al fresco at iconic buildings, but this fairytale about a girl’s mystical coming of age encourages viewers to delve inwards, not out. After six audience members (at a time) have bagged their phones, shucked their shoes and sanitized their soles, they enter a teenage girl’s realistically appointed bedroom, circa 1996. A poster for The Craft hangs on a wall; on a bedside table sits Christopher Pike’s novel Vampire and an ink drawing of an owl; a print of Evelyn De Morgan’s 1898 pre-Raphaelite painting Helen of Troy is taped to the wall. Heavy goth-girl vibes. We’re wearing headphones, through which we hear a clip of Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun,” then narration purred plummily by unofficial English monarch Helena Bonham Carter. When HRH HBC tells you to get on all fours and follow the light, you drop. Expect your pulse to jump when she gasps, “Run. Quickly!”
SEE ALSO: A Hot Mess and a Sex Pest Go on a Date in ‘Lowcountry’
We crawl through a gauzy tent in one corner of the bedroom and find ourselves exploring a series of dim corridors and rooms that grow increasingly strange and seemingly haunted. We’ll return to iterations of the bedroom as the show progresses, as it symbolizes Viola’s journey to a new self and, possibly, abduction by the Devil. The text that Carter whispers in our ear was written by Daisy Johnson, an adaptation of Barry Pain’s 1901 story “The Moon-Slave.” The tale concerns one Princess Viola, married off to a boy named Hugo, who becomes obsessed with her silk dancing shoes, has an epiphany in a maze with an enchanted tree and then succumbs to some occult manifestation.
The fragmentary bits on the headphones and the live images don’t really cohere into a story, which is fine: we’re in fever-dream mode. But you do wish the Johnson text were a bit more lyrical or filled in Viola’s character, creating a richer hero to root for. Still, there’s no shortage of options for your attention. We walk along narrowing muslin hallways, lit by powder-puff balls illuminated from within. (“[H]er dreams,” Carter tells us, “were dashing things, tangled as a ball of wool, sometimes pressing out into the light so it was difficult to tell what exactly was real.”) More than 1,500 individual light fixtures and over 2,000 light cues keep you from languishing too long in complete darkness, although there are total blackouts for brief meditation. Beneath our bare feet, we feel cloth, wood, artificial grass, dirt and sand (you find your toes dusted with black powder upon exiting). There’s a particularly ominous bit in a chapel with a religious reveal I’ll keep to myself. Ballerina toe shoes recur throughout the environment, and a whole tree festooned with them is one of the show’s several coups de théâtre. Casey Jay Andrews’s awe-inspiring scenic design, Simon Wilkinson’s ingenious lighting and Gareth Fry’s spooky binaural sound sprout whole worlds in the 12,500 square feet of The Shed’s Level 4 gallery.
As noted, the story is the least interesting element, a YA horror-romantasy scored with pop clips (Tori Amos, Smashing Pumpkins) and classical bits (Mozart, Penderecki). Personally, I’d prefer good poetry fed into my ear holes. But that might alienate Punchdrunk’s target audience, which I suspect is young. Or stoned. Or young and stoned. Happily, no stimulants are needed to enhance this chiaroscuro phantasmagoria, which induces a state of childhood wonder, fleeing the darkness and chasing the light.
Viola’s Room | 1hr. No intermission. | The Shed | 545 West 30th Street | hello@theshed.org or 646-455-3494 | Tickets Here