Quite Random

Punch Drunk Faust

Friday evening, I went with a few friends to see a site-specific production of Faust in London’s East End by the Punch Drunk Theatre Company. It was unlike anything else I have ever seen. This was a theatre production, but a thousand miles away from a conventional theatre production – an immersive, heady experience where the line between the story and reality became blurred to the point where it was disconcerting and dizzying.

The venue was a large warehouse building on Wapping Lane, spread over four floors, where absolutely everything, from the cavernous rooms, to the dimly lit corridors, to the lift, was part of the stage. Part of the play even happened in a dim stairwell, with the audience leaning over the banisters from above to see what was happening. Before entering the production, everyone was asked to wear white masks – presumably this was to add to the atmosphere, or to allow the actors to distinguish who was who, but walking into a large goods lift with twenty people all wearing the same mask was like stumbling into a Lynch movie or Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut - and the play hadn’t even started yet.

Telling the story of Faust’s deal with the devil in the form of Mephistopheles, the production was styled around 1940’s America – imagine the clothing and mood of Hopper’s Nighthawks. Audience members were dropped on different floors by a chirpy lift attendant, so everyone started in a different place, saw different events, and had to choose their own path through the events happening around them, following actors from room to room, wandering the sets, soaking up the atmosphere, or as I did for a while, just sitting in a picture house that was playing an old Charlton Heston movie, with a pretty usherette flirting and throwing popcorn at the people in the front row.

In a normal play, you sit with the audience, seeing all of the events unfolding in front of you at the same time – the only difference in your experience might be what angle you saw the play from, or whether you were put off by the woman in rustling sweet wrappers or wearing a big hat. In this production, every single person had a completely unique experience, and smelling the bubble gum on the usherette’s breath, taking a drink with the devil, or walking through a pine forest was an assault on the senses and the imagination.

Some of the sets - mazes of high shelves, candle-lit statuettes of the Virgin Mary that huddled in the darkness of a long corridor, or the laboratory of an elderly Faust, were enough to send me looking for the nearest exit, to escape to fresh air and reality from the sinister feel of the place. The finale of the production, where Faust disappears into darkness, and Mephistopheles swings from the ceiling and into the rafters like some kind of primeval creature, was captivating.

Even the bar maintained the illusion after the show. The bar maids spoke with warm, soft Southern drawls, and a band played jazz and blues while a hostess wandered the room with a lit cigarette and a twinkle in her eye. The sensation of being there was addictive, mesmerising and more than a little otherwordly.