Immersive review: Best of 2022 — The Burnt City — Punchdrunk

Change brings opportunity, and 2022 brought us one of the most highly anticipated immersive events of the decade: Punchdrunk’s London-based future-noir retelling of the fall of Troy, The Burnt City.

An excerpt from NoPro’s Best Immersive Experiences of 2022

After two years of innovation on the remote immersive front, we’re finally seeing a return to in-person experiences. A few gems remain in play — I’m thinking of The Telelibrary, Candle House Collective’s Lennox Mutual, and a handful of smaller one-off productions — but many of the standout pieces we saw grow out of the wreckage of 2020 have faded away or transitioned into hybrid or wholly-offline experiences.

Honestly? I’m grieving. I miss being able to plug into a vibrant worldwide community of immersive seekers. But change brings opportunity, and 2022 brought us one of the most highly anticipated immersive events of the decade: Punchdrunk’s London-based future-noir retelling of the fall of Troy, The Burnt City.

This would be my pick for show of the year based on scenic design alone. The spaces are simultaneously fully realized and impressionistically suggestive. You can peel back the surface of each room; the details hold up. Unfocus your eyes and another layer of meaning takes over; light and sound paint emotional pictures on empty spaces, leading you further down another hallway, behind another parachute, up a set of wrought-iron stairs. The space is a story unto itself! This is a show that could be complete without a single actor, and yet…

I’m not calling The Burnt City show of the year just because it’s beautifully built. The cast and crew bring Troy and Mycenae to life every time the record starts to spin, and while the characters remain the same, different combinations of swing players (actors who take on one of a few different parts depending on the night) change the show’s chemical makeup daily. Fred Gehrig’s Kampe is viscerally sad, daring the audience to pity their faded power. Miranda Mac Letten’s Watchman has a sly smile that belies her dogged adherence to duty. Come back another night and Kampe is the acerbic Fania Grigoriou; the Watchman a tired young Ferghas Clavey. This mixing and matching is a signature move for Punchdrunk — one that keeps fans coming back over and over, ready to live in a world where the end is always predictable and the journey remains a beautiful mystery.

I love The Burnt City because it does two things that I find extremely satisfying in immersive: it builds a fully-realized world (complete with new cultural norms and expectations) and allows me — me, specifically — to exist. The audience is not held apart from the universe of a Punchdrunk show. Our eyes shape the story because players have the autonomy to react to our presence within the confines of their loop and, when we are very lucky, we become seen as well. I don’t mean to sound mystical, but The Burnt City is a spiritual experience. It asks us to be present; to witness. It honors the audience as much as it honors the story and the actors and the space. That’s something I’m glad to see taking center stage in 2022.

Hear Leah at 1:28:28 on the pod.