An immersive Hallowe’en chiller ushers us into a cursed room unearthed after the Battersea Arts Centre fire, but struggles to live up to its potential. Rating
OK
The Battersea Arts Centre (BAC) is an atmospheric, anachronistic space, something which has already earned it a place in the annals of immersive theatre as the setting for Punchdrunk’s Masque of the Red Death. Room 13 takes the concept of a site-specific production one step further, with the BAC playing itself.
The story is founded in the venue’s real history, specifically the disastrous fire of Friday the 13th of March 2015, from which it has made such a heartening recovery. However, we are now told, during the restoration work, one room was found which contained something terrible: it was immediately sealed, and has remained so until the present. Now the audience answers the call of paranormal investigators, the Circle of the Veil, and join an attempt to exorcise the ominous presence lurking within.
The preamble builds a suitably eerie mood, with pictures of the fire’s aftermath, and waivers to be signed in case of supernatural mishap befalling those assisting the Circle, before the now thoroughly unnerved crowd are ushered into the depths of the building and the titular room. As we are handed off from one operative of the Circle to the next, each amps the atmosphere up a little, before everyone is sat around a series of seance tables, having been instructed to make no sound because sound will enable the entity to gain access.
This turns out to be the first problem. To get things underway, each table must complete what is essentially a Taskmaster team task, except spookier. Which, unless one is incredibly good at charades with strangers, is going to require speaking, and is further complicated by the light being too low to easily make out one of the crucial components. Had we been told not to make a sound above a whisper, the appropriate complicity with the scenario would have been easier to maintain. As it was, a degree of affable trial and error bonded each table, yet undercut the work done to get us to this point of readiness for scares.
Once (most of) the tables have completed their tasks, the show proper begins. It would feel more than usually unsporting to give away too much about the specifics of an immersive experience involving jump scares, and of course what individuals find scary is as subjective as what they find funny. Reactions will likely vary from one performance to the next, but on this occasion I heard more giggles than shrieks. Some of the props feel suitably ominous, but even with the low lighting and bursts of full darkness, one would have been more at home in comedy-horror than straight horror.
More disappointingly, after building up that marvellous premise which so firmly anchors Room 13 in the real fabric and history of the space the crowd are in, the lore which is ultimately revealed feels too general and global. This squanders the sense that something is specifically creeping through the veil between worlds here, now, in the room where we’re trapped with it.
Another night, with another crowd, especially if the production makes a couple of minor tweaks to the opening puzzle, and this could easily live up to its promise. As is, it manages a handful of Hallowe’en chills in the dark, but ultimately feels like a missed opportunity.
Written by: Bells Prendergast
Directed by: Tom Maller
Produced by: BAC & Immersive Octopus
Room 13 plays at the Battersea Arts Centre until Sunday 1 November.
