The Burnt City

Back in the remote year 2000, a then-unknown Exeter University student from London Felix Barrett staged his graduation show – a deconstructed version of Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck – inside a former army building somewhere in The Old Smoke where the audience was left to roam freely in the space, each spectator chasing their own story. Twenty-two years later, what was then a “site-specific” play is now called “immersive theatre” and its anonymous creator has gone down in history as the founder of «probably the greatest British theatre company of the 21^st Century» – Punchdrunk. Following a nomadic parable that brought the company as far as New York and Shanghai, starting from 2022 (and after an eight-year long hiatus) Barrett and Co. have been cosily setting up their new and permanent headquarters at Woolwich Works – a creative hub in the historic site of the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich, south-east London – carefully designing, building and fine-tuning their grand-style theatrical comeback.

«Inspired by Aeschylus’ Agamemnon and Euripides’ Hecuba, The Burnt City transports the greatest of Greek tragedies to a sprawling neon metropolis. A completely unique dream-like experience, brought to life through physical performance, dance, sound and light». Sprawled over more than 100,000 square feet of floor space, the ancient worlds of Troy and Mycenae come to life for the sheer enjoyment of masked theatre-goers who, 600 at a time, are given free rein to walk around a labyrinthine scenographic folly over a three-hour evening in which no detail is too small and nothing is quite what it seems.

But let’s take it from the top. As throngs of spectators make their way into the foyer of the former armament and ammunition factory nestled by the winding River Thames, a series of stern-looking faces hanging from a wall accompanies their first steps into Punchdrunk’s still uncharted territories. Divided into two groups, namely Greece and Troy, the protagonists of the story are thus summarily presented to the public, who has here its only chance at anchoring what’s to come to some sort of narrative context before being left unmoored into the knotty intrigues of Ancient Greek tragedy.

On the one hand, then, there’s the royal household of Agamemnon, King of the Greeks, and his wife Clytemnestra, genealogically followed by their «youngest daughter sacrificed to Artemis», Iphigenia, the Queen’s lover Aegisthus, the Oracle, the Watchman and a few soldiers (Neoptolemus and Patroclus) making up for the whole Mycenaean’ military force – with Apollo and twin sister watching over them from above. On the other side of the barricades, under the aegis of the underworld’s number one couple Hades and Cassandra, there lays Troy, with its temporary matriarchy led by Queen Hecuba and her three children, Cassandra, Polydorus and Polyxena. Polymestor, a Thracian king as well as the ancient city’s kingpin, completes the Ilians’ power structure. The first twist to Aeschylus’ and Euripides’ works comes with the introduction of «the citizens of Troy», an interesting selection of secondary characters consisting of Polyxena’s lover Macaria, florist Askalaphos, Elysium Hotel worker Luba, White Cypress barman Zagreus, Ciacco’s waitress Eury, Kronos the caretaker and Laocoön the Seer.

After a quick stop at the sybaritic Peep – a bar slash cabaret slash queer heaven where everyone is kindly invited to wear a white, full-face theatrical mask so as to give anonymity and courage to the wandering audience – the show finally begins and the game is, literally, afoot.

With more than 100 spaces to explore, ranging from dusty and arcane temples to gloriously marbled palaces in Greece, or from crepuscular, intricate alleyways to smoky 1930s neon-light shops in besieged Troy, the set design so maniacally staged by Felix Barrett, Livi Vaughan and Beatrice Minns is indisputably the main attraction in that cruelly repetitive world that is the chthonic kingdom of Hades. Indeed, on both sides of that gate made of barbed wire and weaponized permission called a checkpoint, the murmuring of characters that find refuge in each other while following their predetermined stories of loss and division seems diaphanous when watched against such a pervasive backdrop. There is blood, yes, and suffering and heartbreak and death. And yet, every wound and every tear seem irrelevant, unconvincing.

It is only when spectators finally sidestep their own initial hesitation and begin voyeuristically hunting for their angry fix of stories – stalking performers into their most intimate chambers and stabbing the predatorily beaked masks into so many festering tragedies – that The Burnt City’s biggest limitation starts to show. By taking the millions of lush words that the ancient dramaturgs carefully pruned, handpicked and distilled all those centuries ago and replacing them with an excruciatingly microscopic and exhilaratingly huge stagecraft drenched in witty Greek mythology references with a retro-futuristic twist, director and scenographer Felix Barrett misses out on the human drama, delivering an extremely elaborate yet ultimately inconsequential act of theatrical and experiential consumerism.

As a matter of fact – and aided and abetted by Maxine Doyle’s utterly underwhelming choreography (the only performative language used besides Stephen Dobbie’s telluric sound design and F9, Ben Donoghue and Felix Barrett’s astounding lighting design), where not even a “clash” between the Gods is more interesting than whatever lies behind that random door over there – The Burnt City makes for a stunning feat of eye-popping entertainment of epic proportions where the form takes over the content and images – not reflections – reign supreme. Once the 180 minutes of frantic, FOMO-driven spectatorial gluttony are over and we regroup in the carnal space of the Peep bar, it comes as no surprise, then, that the most excited comments are related to the décor and not the performances. After all, as Hades himself admitted at the beginning of the show, «We’re not here to tell a story, but to live in a dream».

The show is still playing at
One Cartridge Place
Woolwich, London SE18 6ZR
from January to September 2023
Tuesdays to Fridays from 19:00
Saturday and Sunday from 14:30

The Burnt City
by Punchdrunk

direction Felix Barrett and Maxine Doyle
choreography Maxine Doyle
set design Felix Barrett, Livi Vaughan and Beatrice Minns
sound design Stephen Dobbie
lighting design F9, Ben Donoghue and Felix Barrett
costume design David Israel Reynoso
audience experience curator Colin Nightingale
cast Ali Goldsmith, Alison Monique Adnet, Ally Clarke, Andrea Carrucciu, Anna Finkel, Brenda Lee Grech, Cameron Bernard Jones, Carl Harrison, Chihiro Kawasaki, Dafni Krazoudi, Eléonore Cabrera, Ellie Verkerk, Emily Mytton, Emily Terndrup, Eric Jackson Bradley, Fania Grigoriou, Ferghas Clavey, Fern Grimbley, Fionn Cox-Davies, Folu Odimayo, Fred Gehrig, Georges Hann, Harry Price, Isaac Ouro-Gnao, Jahmarley Bachelor, James Finnemore, Jayla O’Connell, Jonathan Savage, Jordan Ajadi, Jude Monk McGowan, Kathryn McGarr, Katie Lusby, Kimberly Nichole, Lee WenHsin, Lily Jo Ockwell, Louis J Rhone, Luigi Nardone, Luke Murphy, Mallory Gracenin, Milton Lopes, Mitch Harvey, Miranda Mac Letten, Maya Milet, Nathan Kiley, Nicholas Bruder, Omagbitse Omagbemi, Omar Gordon, Paul Zivkovich, Pin Chieh Chen, Robert McNeill, Ryan O’Neill, Sam Booth, Samuel Parker, Sarah Dowling, Seirian Griffiths, Sharia Johnson, Sharol Mackenzie, Stefanie Noll, Stephanie Nightingale, Steven, James Apicello, Theo Arran, Timothy John Bartlett, Valentine Giannopoulou, Vinicius Salles, Will David Thompson, Yen-Ching Lin, Yilin Kong
associate director Kath Duggan
rehearsal directors Eric Jackson Bradley, Carl Harrison, Omagbitse Omagbemi, Vinicius Salles, Emily Terndrup
creative associate Sam Booth
associate direction and script Kathryn McGarr & Carl Harrison (Peep Cabaret)
associate designer Maïto Jobbé duval
assistant designer Jessica Banting
lighting associate Sarah Readman
associate costume designer Katherine Watt
greek dramaturg Emma Cole
music supervisor Toby Young
magic consultant Chris Cox