This is the first in a series of posts describing my experience at The Drowned Man: A Hollywood Fable, an immersive theater production from Punchdrunk. Over a long weekend in September, I flew to London and saw the show six times. Ever since, I have been able to think about little else. For those unfamiliar with The Drowned Man (or its sister production, Sleep No More), here is the basic concept:
Each show takes place within an expansive set, filling an entire building and spread across several floors. Characters move freely about this space, coming and going and interacting in various configurations. Audience members are given masks and instructed to remain silent, then turned loose into the set, free to move about wherever and whenever they see fit, follow or ignore characters, and generally find their own version of the story. During each 3-hour performance, events repeat nearly three times, allowing for multiple perspectives within a single show. Performances are largely dance-based, and highly cinematic lighting and sound effects are incorporated into nearly every inch of the space. This all sounds terribly academic, but as you will see, the effect is anything but.
For anyone concerned about such things, Spoilers HO!
Show #1
Friday, September 13: 5 pm
I wasn't planning to see the show that
night. It was a mere three hours after my plane from Denver to
London had landed, and one hour until showtime. I had originally
left the evening deliberately empty for fear of jet lag. Besides,
three shows in a row of Sleep No More had proven to be plenty for me
in the past, and I had four scheduled for the following nights.
Surely that would be plenty. But as my trip loomed closer, and I
read more and more reviews, I started to wonder. Then I wondered
some more. Eventually, I wondered a bit too much, and bought a fifth ticket, for the early Friday show. My friend and traveling companion,
Shawn, was less than thrilled with me. He already thought that four
trips to Temple Studios was too much, but it would be a cold day in
hell before he'd let me see it first. So he booked a fifth ticket as well.
I had a rough idea of what to expect,
but there was so much information out there that I couldn't even begin to form it into something coherent. The closest thing I had to a plan was
that I wanted to see the PA, who I knew wore a leopard print dress and who
was, apparently, a favorite of many fans. Beyond that. . . well, I'd
just see where the night took me. First of all, though, I needed it
to take me inside. An hour is a long time to wait.
Finally, the red shutters were pulled
open and I stepped into a rather uninspiring entryway. Undeterred, I
snagged my ticket from the box office, laughed at the poor fools in
the coat check line, ran forward to. . . another line. Fortunately,
this wait was not nearly as long, and soon I was feeling my way
through a dark maze, feeling a Pavlovian twinge of excitement,
programmed into my by the corresponding maze at the Mckittrick. A
few more turns and I found myself in a holding area, mask in hand,
waiting to be let into the elevator (excuse me, “lift”). As we
entered, I made a point to get on last, hoping this would mean I
would be first out. I wanted to take full advantage of “magic
hour,” that first period of the show before everyone is let in,
and you don't have to worry about the crowds distracting you.
The elevator stopped in the basement
and I charged out. I had no idea where I was going, but damn it, I
was going to be the first one there. My destination turned out to be
several interesting, but unoccupied rooms. I made a mental note to
return to them later (spoiler: I never did find my way back), and
charged off again. Where were the actors? I wanted to spend magic
hour with a character! Eventually, I found my way into a large room
with a black-and-white checkerboard floor. Still no sign of life. I
wandered around to a separate portion of the room, where two dummies,
a man and a woman were sprawled out on the floor. Turning away from
the dummies, I finally found my first character – an old woman in a
rubber mask, watching me creepily from the shadows between two
pillars.
I approached her, but she took no
notice of me. I started to think she wasn't a person at all, but
just another mannequin. But every time I managed to almost convince
myself of that, my brain started to twist back in the other
direction. It was just too dark to tell – until I finally looked
down at her legs and saw that she was mounted on wheels. Mannequin
it is, then. I headed out to the other hallway, where I finally
caught my first glimpse of unmasked life.
It was Frankie (Owen Ridley-Demonick),
standing under a light as if waiting for someone. As soon as I
approached, he started to move, and led me right back to the
checkerboard room. This time, though, it wasn't empty. Mr. Stanford
(Sam Booth) stood on a small stage, motionless. We were soon joined
by three people in rubber masks, and Frankie's initiation began. I
will try to refrain from describing the usual details of major scenes
like this, since many others have already done so, but suffice it to
say, it was a hell of an introduction. I was instantly fascinated by
Stanford, and decided to stick with him – but then, after he cast
her as the Grandmother, Dolores (I'm ashamed say I'm not sure who
played her) threw a fit and started ripping her suit off. Creepy
bald guy or angry stripping woman? Gah. Weak. So weak.
I followed Dolores upstairs to her
bedroom, where the PA (Fania Grigoriou) showed up to help her change.
Right off the bat, she was intimidating as all hell. Poised, aloof,
she didn't look down on people so much as look through them. I
almost switched over to her at that moment, but my experience thus
far had already been pretty scattered, and I wanted to actually stick
with a character for a while.
Eventually Dolores led me back
downstairs to the checkerboard room, and as we approached, I could
hear the sounds of “The Pink Room,” and, as a fan of Twin Peaks,
I knew what that implied: drug-fueled sex orgy. When we got inside,
several characters were already engaged in some sort of sexy line
dance, and I wound up standing right next to Andrea (Kirsty Arnold),
who immediately took my breath away. She locked eyes with me,
swaying back and forth, for what was surely just a couple of seconds
but felt like minutes. I will never forget that look.
The orgy that followed was not
super-impressive, feeling kind of tame in comparison to the Sleep No
More witches' rave, but I did really like the bit of sleight of hand,
where Marshall and Dolores disappeared underneath the other actors,
only to emerge from another room moments later. Afterward, everyone
left except for Dolores and Alice (Emily Mytton), and we were
reunited with the old lady mannequin.
A thousand words in and I'm only just
getting to the first reset, so let's fast forward again. I stuck
with Dolores through the reset and into the first portion of the next
loop, until she got dressed for the initiation. Of the scenes that
I'm skipping over, I would like to make special mention of Dolores
and Marshall's dance on the ice floes to “Past, Present, and
Future,” which is so fun and joyous that you can easily forget that
it's an adulterous liaison. When I did finally leave Dolores, I was
faced with a choice – do I move to the PA, who I originally wanted to follow,
but who would also repeat a lot of what I had just seen, or do I
wander off in search of something new? I settled on the PA,
reasoning that I still had several shows to see the rest of the
building. This turned out to be a very good choice, as that show was
the only one where Fania played the PA, and it would have been a
terrible shame to miss it.
If I were to sum up the PA's story in
one word, it would be “drugs.” Taking drugs, giving drugs,
making drugs, drug druggy drug drug drugs. It certainly made a lot
of other characters' actions make a lot more sense, particularly at
the line-dance/orgy, where I arrived early enough this time to see
that pretty much everyone there actually was in a drug-induced
stupor, all at the hands of the PA. After the orgy, as I
followed her down a long, dark hallway, she stopped and turned back
to me. She stared directly at me for a long, long time. At least, I
thought so – it was dark enough to keep me from being 100% certain where her eyes were directed.
I tried to stare back non-confrontationally, thinking that maybe this
was going to be a 1:1 – but she never reached out her hand. The
stalemate was resolved by my jumping six feet in the air when I
realized that she was actually staring at Stanford, who had been
slowly sliding along the wall behind me for at least a couple of minutes. Creepy
bald guy, indeed.
After that, we headed to her office,
where she sat down at the desk and re-applied her lipstick. As she
finished, she caught my eye in her compact mirror. After the hallway
incident, I wasn't sure how to take this, and when she stood and
approached me, I took a step backward. She pressed on, I stepped
back again, and suddenly I found myself trapped in a corner of the
room, where she grabbed my shoulders and planted her mouth on my
neck. Have I mentioned how intimidating this woman is? She's less than half my size, but I was kind of terrified of her.
The terror didn't last for long, though, because I felt like in that
moment, she marked me as her own. After that, we became partners (in
crime, I suppose).
Next up was the reset, where she
retrieved the old lady costume from Dolores. I followed her down
into the basement, and into a small room. Suddenly, she reached
behind me, blocking the other white masks from entering, and locked
the door. Thus began my first 1:1.
Since this is going to be posted out in
the open, rather than the spoiler group, I'll refrain from going into
detail about any of the 1:1's I experienced – but when it was
finished, my old mannequin buddy was reborn. Then it was back to the
PA's office for the start of what was to be the highlight of the show
for me. Climbing onto the desk, she retrieved a watch from behind a
picture on the wall. She walked back to the edge of the desk,
swaying precariously, and reached out her hand for support. I took it
and helped her down, and she thanked me by pulling me down into the
chair. She placed the watch in my hand and proceeded to perform some
sort of ritual over it, chanting and sprinkling some strange seeds.
Then she took my other hand and brought me upstairs to a small office
just off of Studio 4, where we found a shiny box on a snowy desk.
She took the watch from me and placed in in the box, directed me
to sprinkle snow onto it, which I did, then closed the box and handed
it to me. We returned to Studio 4, where Marshall and Dolores were
dancing on the ice again. Holding that box, I was no longer scared
of her, I was obedient. I was on Team PA, and I wasn't going to let
her down. Soon, the time came for her to take the box and give it to
Dolores. We watched Dolores give the watch to Marshall, and finally
the PA walked away from me, running her hands across my shoulders in
a way that felt like goodbye. I didn't get the message right away,
though, and watched her for a few minutes more until she disappeared
behind a locked door with another white mask, and I was adrift once
more.
I decided I needed a complete change of
scenery – there was a whole world outside the gates that I had yet
to see! I headed up to the first floor (to use the european
numbering), intending to see what lay beyond the Doctor's office,
which was as far as I had been. As soon as I got there, however, who
should I see but Andrea, walking right back toward me. You remember,
Andrea who took my breath away? Decision time – do I go check out
the rest of the world, or do I follow the – ah, who am I kidding.
Of course I followed the pretty girl.
She took me down to the dressing room,
where she changed into a sort of western outfit. This (changing outfits) turned out to
be sort of a theme for the rest of the night. A dapper man in a suit
showed up (Conrad, although I don't know who played
him), and we took off down an unfamiliar hallway, which led right to
Studio 3. The bar. That place where people talk and don't wear
masks. A little background: I don't feel comfortable going to the
bar during Punchdrunk shows. When I'm inside that world, I don't
want to hear people who aren't actors talking, and I don't want to
take my mask off (unless it's in a 1:1). My first time at Sleep No
More, I stumbled upon the bar by accident, and the woman there
congratulated me on finding my way back. All I could do was
awkwardly croak out, “I didn't mean to find it” and turn right
back around. But this time, I couldn't turn around. Andrea was in the
bar. My character was in that. . . place. There was peanut butter
in my chocolate. I had some difficulty processing this, which must
have shown on my face, because Conrad stopped to ask me if I was all
right. I think I nodded unconvincingly.
They performed a rather delightful
magic trick, which ended with Andrea in her underwear again, and soon
we returned to the masked world of Temple Studios. I really can't
tell you how much of a relief it was for me to put my mask back on.
Like a great weight was lifted from my shoulders.
We returned to the dressing room and
she changed again, then it was back up to the first floor, where I
discovered that Studio 5 had magically appeared off of the long hall
to the doctor's office. I swear it wasn't there before. Andrea took
part in the Infidelity Ballet, which is another of my favorite bits
(really, everything in Studio 5 is golden), and it was back to the
dressing room, where she changed costumes. Again. At this point, I
had seen her in her underwear enough times that I was starting to
feel self-conscious about it. Each time it happened, I wound up
standing a little farther back, and spending a little more time
glancing around the room.
The next few bits were not particularly
notable. She took me downstairs to my THIRD orgy of the night. She
comforted Wendy. Eventually, she grabbed a couple of roses and got
that look in her eye (no, not THAT look. The 1:1 look). She gave me
one of the roses and took my hand. It wasn't for a 1:1, though.
Instead, she brought me to Studio 2 to watch Wendy murder Marshall,
holding my shoulders and squeezing me with each thrust of the knife.
The director called cut. Andrea told me to throw my rose and brought me
to the stage to watch the finale dance, planting me between two trees
and telling me not to move. Watching the cast assemble on stage was
the first time I realized the true scope of the show, and just how
little of it I had seen. In addition to the three characters I had
followed, and the ten or so I had briefly encountered without
learning much about, there were better than a dozen that I had never
seen before! They were a complete mystery to me.
The finale was, in a word, fantastic.
Some of the early reviews claimed that it was a letdown, but either
they changed it after the previews or those reviewers are stark
raving mad, because I can't imagine a better way to wrap things up.
It's not just a big, splashy number that brings everyone together, but also a sort of emotional
rollercoaster all on its own (even more so once I learned more about
the characters). Afterward, Andrea returned and took me to Studio 3,
where she danced with me for a few moments, pulled off my mask, and
told me I was amazing.
I was on an incredible adrenaline high.
I was overwhelmed, in love with everything around me. I never
wanted to leave that building. Shawn and I pulled up a table and
compared notes – he was raving about a mysterious man known only as
“moustache guy,” who we later identified as David Essing's
Claude, and who had instructed Shawn to “keep an eye on that
clown,” leading to an incredibly terrifying experience that he
would only hint about.
This was the point where panic began to
set in. I had made a terrible, terrible mistake. Five shows would
not be enough. Not even close. I needed ten shows. Fifteen.
Maybe twenty. But it was impossible; I would only be in England for
a few days. I would have to settle for five.
Or would I? When a staff member came
by, not long after that, to kick us out so they could reset, I asked
him if there were still tickets available for the late show. . . .
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