Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Punchdrunk’s 2022 show The Burnt City, the first in their new south London home, was a mammoth affair: hundreds of theatregoers rambled for hours through two vast adjoined buildings packed with incident. The new piece from the maestros of immersive theatre, although staged in the same space, is at the other end of the scale. Viola’s Room is intimate, delicate and uncanny. This Gothic bedtime story — written by Daisy Johnson from a 1901 original by Barry Pain, and directed by Felix Barrett with Hector Harkness — sends small groups or solo voyagers on a sensory barefoot journey, tiptoeing through a warren of eerily atmospheric corridors. Unlike previous Punchdrunk shows, we don’t wander at will but are guided, drawn on by a glowing light and by Helena Bonham Carter’s hypnotic narration. It’s not actors here, but our senses and imagination that people the story.Wearing headphones (though no trademark Punchdrunk masks), we start at a sleepover in a teenage girl’s bedroom — fairy lights around the mirror, posters on the wall, a copy of a Goosebumps novel beside the bed. A sweet scent hangs in the air as Bonham Carter’s voice whispers in our ears, telling the story of an orphaned princess who becomes increasingly panicked as her wedding day draws near. At the heart of an overgrown maze, she finds a secret space where she can dance freely. But what starts as escape becomes obsession. As the narrative unfolds, we travel with it, creeping through a maze of dimly lit passages, coming suddenly upon spookily empty locations. Light (designed by Simon Wilkinson) plays a huge role — dancing softly in front of you, flooding through the stained glass of a chapel window, slowly expanding to reveal an eerily abandoned meal. Gareth Fry’s sophisticated sound design also conjures pictures in your mind.The design, by Casey Jay Andrews together with Barrett, is exquisitely detailed and evocatively tactile. We push through a swaying corps de ballet of snowy white nightdresses hanging from above, feel our way along mossy passageways that become increasingly tight and confined, pad across deep-pile carpets, damp sand or gnarly roots. Feet become critical: Viola’s satin-shod dancing feet; our bare feet, vulnerable and childlike, soaking in information. The experience feels like falling through a disturbing dream. It’s both disorientating and deliberately elliptical, and touches on classic fairytale themes such as lost childhood, sexual awakening and forbidden desires. The moon and the hawthorn tree (a pagan symbol of fertility, death and magic) keep recurring. The original story is quite slight. But around it the creative team create something haunting and mysterious, pitched on the boundary between sleeping and waking — that moment when ordinary objects assume sinister proportions in the dark — and between childhood and adulthood. It invites us to explore the role of storytelling and fantasy to process loss and change, to embrace the dark and find the light. ★★★★☆One Cartridge Place, Woolwich, London, to August 18, punchdrunk.com
