Punchdrunk: The Burnt City – One Cartridge Place, London

A review of Punchdrunk’s The Burnt City, my first foray into their particular brand of immersive theatrical experience. What better place to start than one of my favourite stories, that of the Trojan War?

Punchdrunk

Punchdrunk now have over twenty years under their belt. Twenty years of immersive storytelling, in a format which puts free-roaming audience members in the driving seat. You may have heard of some of their previous shows, like Sleep No More, or The Drowned Man. These have proven to be smash hits across the globe, from London to New York to Shanghai and beyond. Punchdrunk are also genre-defying. They apply their skills to projects including in 2020 a multi-part TV series The Third Day. And even their theatrical works are hard to pin down precisely.

I am very specific in my comfort zone when it comes to interactive/immersive theatre. I would like to be in an environment that is interactive but where I’m still a spectator. I’m less comfortable when I might need to personally get involved in the interacting. Perhaps this is why I hadn’t been to a Punchdrunk show before. That and the price tag (more on this later). What finally tempted me to see a Punchdrunk show was the subject matter. The Burnt City is their newest offering, and tells the story of the Trojan War. You know the one. Paris started it by running off with Helen, wife of Melenaus. Everyone joined in on the Greek side, including Achilles, Ajax and Agamemnon. Odysseus had a hard time getting home. On the Trojan side there’s heroic Hector, and Cassandra, fated to predict the truth to no avail. And this is before you throw the gods in for good measure.

It’s such a multi-faceted story, a legend which has seeped so far into Western popular culture that it seems a perfect choice to have at the heart of a work like this. I grew up wanting to be an archaeologist and steeping myself in classical myth and legend. So one hot Saturday afternoon recently, I stepped inside Punchdrunk’s recreation of Troy, The Burnt City.

Creating The Burnt City

Punchdrunk’s immersive experience for The Burnt City is as effective as their reputation would suggest. It takes place at One Cartridge Place at Woolwich Arsenal, which is the company’s new home. This gives them an enormous expanse of historic building to play with, and they make the most of it. First though, they set the scene. After entering and having your ticket checked, you must leave all bags at a coat check, and have your phone locked into a felt carrier bag. This is actually very effective: the space is incredibly photogenic, but not one person bypassed this measure as it would have been too obvious.

Formalities out of the way, you go through an introductory museum (The Burnt City: Visions of Troy, Treasures and Antiquities from the Chapman Collection). I still can’t figure out if this was ‘real’ or ‘fake’. Either way I felt a little hurried through it to get to the good stuff. Next you then undergo a quick orientation before putting on a strange white mask and being let loose into the space.

And what a space it is. The Punchdrunk team have created Troy, with a sort of dilapidated mid-century aesthetic. Before the performers enter you can wander around at leisure, exploring apartments, bars, shops and public spaces. Any unlocked door is yours for the opening. Once the performers begin there will be multiple ‘events’ happening at once in different parts of the ‘city’. It’s up to you whether you wander around to take in multiple narratives, follow one performer, or enjoy the quiet spaces while your fellow audience members are elsewhere.

Visiting The Burnt City

As a first-time visitor who hadn’t quite known what to expect from Punchdrunk, I was so impressed by The Burnt City. It’s multi-sensory, even including smells. Every little detail has been thought of. It makes you wish you were more than a silent bystander. Speaking of which: the fact of wandering around silently, ignored by most of the performers, can be disorienting after a while. Are they ghosts? Are you a ghost? Where and how does their world exist? The way that the legend has been brought not quite into the present makes it feel like you’ve slipped into a multiverse. A bit like something from the world of Philip Pullman.

It also reminded me of when I went to see The Dante Project at the Royal Opera House last year. Specifically the way that I couldn’t figure out who was who while I watched it, so had to retain enough details to compare against a cast list later and match faces to characters. Some of them are easier to figure out than others, like Hades and Persephone, for instance. Others I looked back on later with a sudden moment of realisation – “Oh, Cassandra, I see!” Ironic, that.

Ideally, it would be nice to visit more than once. Without giving away spoilers, I would urge you to try out all the doors, test the limits of the space. There’s a very large part that I only found later on in my visit, and would have been interested to see earlier. This is where the price comes in, though. There are some schemes eg. for residents of Woolwich. And a lottery. But the standard tickets are upwards of £80, so out of reach for a lot of people. And high enough to prevent me from going back and experiencing it a different way.

If you can get a discount or afford a ticket though, then go. It’s stunning and so impressive.

Salterton Arts Review’s rating: 4/5

The Burnt City booking until April 2023