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Secrets and theatre seem to go hand in hand at the moment. The Lyric Hammersmith’s much-talked about season of secret theatre, where the name and nature of the play is kept quiet until you’re sitting in the stalls, continues apace in the new year. Now there’s more from Secret Theatre London – opening a show in their home town after working in New York and LA.
The production is billed as an ‘immersive experience’. In reality, there’s little about the piece to justify that description. The audience is talked at, as if we were another character, but we’re obviously not expected to contribute and we’re sat in seats watching the show as we might in any other theatre.
The premise – or gimmick – is that the dress code, venue and name of the show is kept secret until you buy a ticket. I’ve been asked not to reveal the play, but it’s an adaptation of one of Quentin Tarantino’s more violent films.
If this is sounding like a reverse version of the Secret Cinema craze – where you’re plunged into a real live world of a film, before actually watching said film, then don’t be mistaken. This is a straight performance of a famous film that has been altered slightly to reflect a British setting.
The jokes are Tarantino’s, and where the production manages to evoke a sense of humanity’s capacity for brutality – that’s Tarantino’s too. Really, Richard Crawford and Brooke Johnston’s production provokes the question – when you can simply watch the original film in all its mastery, what is the point?
It’s not that there could never be a theatre version of a Tarantino film, it’s just that this is such a faithful reproduction of the original that all tension and drama flies out the window. Some theatrical reinvention would have been appreciated, but there’s certainly none of that here.
By Daisy Bowie-Sell