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I don't think anyone working on this had ever read the book (or even watched the Disney film version come to that). You can do a lot with a small budget but you need a great imagination and a good producer. This had neither. Clearly they called in a lot of volunteers and some of the collaborators have a good track record but it felt like an A Level show.
I think the reason Time Out hyped it up is because they've promoted Paper Cinema before. Pisspoor.

It's interesting to read these comments. I helped out with building a little of the set, and from the flyer and the brief i believed the end result would be something fairly amazing. I invited friends to see it, and they paid £15 to stumble through empty rooms with nothing much going on. i couldn't have been more embarrassed. All the thought seemed to have gone into getting in a set on a tiny budget and limited time. They seemed to forget some genuine element of performance would be needed to add some meaning and entertainment. Some of the bands were decent enough, but they were interspersed with some dodgy abstract rabbit sequence. And people just seemed to lose patience. I thought the set design did have some lovely ideas, but obviously it didn't hold up to close scrutiny of a promenade audience - there was not enough time to create anything like the detail in Punchdrunk, cheap materials were obviously used, it was falling apart in places, and the restrictions of the venue meant there could be nothing going on in the stairways, and therefore no continuity between the rooms. The audience seemed to be generally confused, and disgruntled. The more optimistic ones were occasionally delighted, but I think everyone expected a lot more than was delivered. Potentially it could have been brilliant, but this was their first production as a company, and it was truth be told shambolic. Hopefully they’ll learn from these mistakes and put in a bit more planning because there were some nice ideas underneath it all

My boyfried and I left this production feeling empty, disappointed and angry. Had we missed something? FIFTEEN POUNDS, for that! I'm so glad to see that I haven't gone mad and that others feel the same. Bring back 'Mask of the Red Death'!

Here here Bob.
And shame on you Time Out for featuring such rubbish.

After reading a few articles comparing the location specific production, Down the Rabbit Hole, to shows hosted by Punchdrunk and Shunt, I decided to buy two tickets for the 14:00 showing on Saturday 27th September. Very few times have I walked out of a show before the end - this was one of them - twenty minutes in to be exact.
My first reaction after being herded into the pretentious, first, darkened room where two young ladies were writhing on the floor under a bed sheet was to give the production the benefit of the doubt. It was just the beginning, how bad could it be? How wrong I was. Any modicum of doubt I may have had fortunately faded when I found myself sitting on a duvet in front of a man in the dreadful caterpillar costume with an inexcusable Italian accent and a miserable stand up routine. Was this supposed to be a surreal stream of consciousness? Was the audience supposed to laugh at the lame jokes? Or were we to feel empathy for this pitiful creature? I felt pity and found myself weeping, firstly at the thought that I had just parted with thirty pounds of my hard earned cash and secondly for the man in the caterpillar suit who was dying a death – as was his career. I wanted to gently wrap him up in that ridiculous costume he was made to wear and smother him – mercifully putting the poor, poor man out of his misery. What were they thinking? Lewis Carol would be turning in his grave if he was to hear of this abomination of one of his greatest characters.
I don’t even want to discuss the remainder of the production as thinking of the cardboard props, lame masked character prancing about like fools and sheets hanging from the ceiling will just make me break out in hives again. To say that the set design and costumes looked like they were put together by primary school children would be insulting to the children. I’m sorry to be the one to have to break this to you but walking around a darkened room does not constitute a location specific, submersive theatrical experience. The only location it probably would have worked in would have been a provincial church hall or a primary school. But then again I have seen nativity plays with more depth, imagination and talent than was evident in DTRH.
I’m not often moved to write something as scathing and filled with vitriol as this but I am angry. Not so much because I got hoodwinked into parting with 30 pounds to watch an amateurish and crudely executed production that piggybacked on the submersive theatre trend but because Lets Pain the Town Red have taken funding and ticket sales away from other, vastly superior theatre productions, at a time when the industry is most in need. I don’t know who to blame more for this abomination though, the (un)creative team that put it together or the idiots that funded it. Either way, whoever is responsible for this abysmal production should be made into an example; they should be put in shackles and paraded through the streets of our great capital while being booed, hissed at and catapult with rotting foodstuffs and was common in Shakespearian times.
While I wrote this I really did search in earnest for some redeeming feature, just one, but alas I found none. I sincerely Ms Granger will never, ever get the chance to blight the limelight with her amateurish, provincial, pretentious, flatulent, dreary, ill conceived productions again. It is a shame; a great, great shame that she made such a pig’s ear of what could have been a really wonderful, experience. I urge her to please fold her director’s chair and leave theatre to those more talented than herself.

Really Drew? Really? And?

They had actual turf in the rabbit hole tunnel! wonderful!

Pete - the price of the ticket really shouldn't be used to justify the failings of this show in comparison with the quality of Punch Drunk's performances.
And guessing that each show had about 100 audience members x £15 with three performances a day over 3 days.... That makes about £13500 net. Sorry, but if a company's milking that much from the reputation of their peers they can at least afford to spend some money on a set. Or did all the budget go on tossing tenners at the innumerable unnecessary "actors"

The Caterpillar was hilarious! I had a great time during this show, people keep comparing it to punch drunk which is a little unfair because its costs less than half the price of a punch drunk show, is obviously on a much smaller budget. Me and my girlfriend loved this show and took some great photos.

Without doubt the most inept, schoolboy attempt at performance/installation/experiential art imaginable. The show was meant to immerse you for 2 hours. We left after 20 minutes. The sets were badly constructed (think fish wire and polystyrene alcoving...), the "acting" so poorly executed as to make the experience uncomfortable and the use of the space so underambitious and haphazard as to make you wonder whether you'd walked into the art therapy department of a mental facility. And not in a good way.
These kids obviously went to a Punchdrunk show and thought "that looks fun, let's do one of those". If immitation is the sincerest form of flattery, consider yourself flattered to death Punchdrunk. Flattered to death by a prematurely delivered, half thought out mess of performance.
You could almost smell the Prit Stick drying on the cardboard. And there's a fine line between being inspired by David Lynch's Rabbits / Inland Empire and outright plaigerism.
Do not go and see a show by this company.

Having rehearsed in the Bargehouse the week before in its raw abandoned state it was great to see that the space had been used so imaginatively by Paint the Town Red. Certain areas were more immersive than others, the Caterpillar providing the only really interactive part of the journey. It felt as though the basic structure for an impressive piece of performance had been laid down but not quite realised in the transition between the rooms, the daylight flooding in seemed to break the magical atmosphere created so effectively in each of the spaces. Overall, the good points were powerful enough to make want to go back to the next Paint the Town Red event - though a nighttime setting would add massively to their intended effect. They can afford to go further with what they created, be braver in their audience manipulation, and no doubt we will be seeing more of this imaginative and inspired company.

I heard that these guys only had two or three days to transform this space. I think they really pulled it off. Also it was nice to see a band outside the usual 'gig' paradigm.

Very few times have I walked out of a show before the end. This was one of them. The concept was amaturish and the execution provincial. I find it hard to beleive that this sorry excuse for a theatre company is mentioned in the same breath as Punchdrunk and Shunt. I want my money back.

Brilliant, I also rate the caterpiller performance, he must have been exausted after a whole day of that, the cut out cinema thing was also really really cool. I want the patchwork in my room!

Paper cinema were wonderful, very creepy masked rabbits too, some really nice ideas here.