The actors, the narrative, the music and even the audience are just the tools by which we can experience every nook and cranny of this futuristic industrial park-cum-theatrical main stage.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Just south of the London Bridge tube station, past a train overpass light art piece,
that turns primary rainbow colors
and down a unnamed corridor is a makeshift concrete backyard.
Complete with festive holiday lights, ping pong tables, garden sculptures, mismatching cafe tables, and port-a-johns.
The entrance, like anything related to SHUNT (their temporary 'home' is located in a old wine cellar below the London Bridge tube station), was not immediately obvious. Nor was the 'theatre' which is what I was mistakenly looking for.
The 'theatre' was a shell of a building - a cavernous, seemingly abandoned commercial space. The outside matched the inside in haphazard decor - cafe tables with random chairs, festive lights, and a paint-splattered concrete floor.
What was impossible to ignore, however, was the imposing three-story industrial box at the center of the empty building. A lump of grimy, rusted, damp steel stairs, pipes, fence and windowless stretches of metal sheets. It seemed squeezed into this space, as though it was the lone tree that urban life grew up around.
The industrial monster ushered a catchy, thumping rhythm from its guttural depths - a constant Booom chica chica booom chica chica - that I found myself tapping along to, rather than the 20s-themed jazz that competed for musical attention from behind the bar.
The longer the gathering crowd waited in the dimly lit space, however, the more the monster building sparked curiosity and, almost, a playfulness in the audience.
Couples strolled hand-in-hand around it as though on a romantic evening walk along the Thames. A group of youngins dared one another to go trapsing down into the darkness toward the back blackness. once there they squeeled in surprise and fear.
As the time neared 7:30 a man in full riot brigade gear came out from behind the monster holding a dozen colorful balloons in his left, gloved hand. He sipped soda (spiked, perhaps) through a straw that squeezed in between his plastic mask and the top of his jacket.
One-by-one people came to ask for his balloons and soon he was left with only one red one. The air was playful and the group of youngins teased the guard until an ear-cracking gong went off from inside the monster and steam began to billow out of the open pipes.
The guard quickly went around to the mingling crowd to collect his balloons, in a bit of a panicked rush it seemed. The audience was left to stare, drinks in hand, open-mouthed, at the monster to see what it would do next.
A dolled-up woman in a fur coat sat on one of the steel staircases. Here short dark hair was slicked back and she lounged on the gritty stairs facing an orange lamp as though it were the brilliant summer sun.
Just below here a Hanibal Lector-looking man wearing tights and leather knee pads folded out from under the second-story stairs and climbed down and around the structure. I thought I saw a few feathers stuck to his bald head, but I couldn't be sure.
Two more guards emerged from the darkness and ushered us up from our seats and pointed at the stairs to the right of the monster. The crowd of 40 or so huddled together by the staircase and without any further directions, stood for a moment, like abandoned children after school.
Soon a few audience members started to climb the stairs and we all followed. Up to the second floor we were guided into a dark room that had television screens on the walls with numbers in the thousands counting down.
There were pieces of paper littered all over the carpeted floor. The walls and ceiling were just puffed up fabric that, as the crowd gather in, I swear, were getting bigger and the room smaller.
The television count down suddenly sped up and the mechanic hum of the machine grew so loud that the audience members began to scream along with it. It was hard to tell what sounds were the machine and what were the audience. The numbers went down to zero and all lights went out.
It was utter darkness but the sound of the monster grew even louder and the beat quickened. My heart jumped into my throat and I deeply regretted not having dragged one of my new flatmates to this thing just so I could grab on to her in comfort.
My head darted left to right searching for something for my eyes to grab hold of, but they never did adjust to the blackness although it seemed as though we were standing in there arm-to-arm for more than five minutes. When the pressure of the noise and the quickening pace of the machine came to a head, all went quiet. The lights went up and revealed an entirely new room: wooden pews and wooden walls without door nobs.
We all looked around as though seeing one another for the first time, the fear on some faces, smiles on others. We were confused and excited and a few of us were sweating through our clothes. The woman with the fur coat had appeared suddenly behind me. She stood completely still until and man with slicked-back hair and a robe came up and started kissing her.
The audience cleared out of the center of the room and filled into the two rows of wooden seats on either side of this make out scene.
And so Money began.
We stayed inside this chameleon set for the duration of the show, moving up the set to look down, and moving down to look up. The floors were ceilings and the ceilings were floors that unveiled scenes within scenes.
It was a spectacle to behold. The actors were funny and confusing, distraught and frustrated, they said little or nothing at all.
The action went from bad to good to better to worse. All along the machine seemed to convulse with the emotion. Sound - loud, arresting noises indicated the faithful, something-is-not-right mood, and when we suddenly once again found ourselves alone, together in the dark it wasn't a surprise.
When the lights went up and it was just the audience members in the wood-paneled room without any doorknobs and no actors to speak of there was an overall sense of, what next.
But I wouldn't want to spoil it.
Despite the broken narrative, the abrupt and confusing plot, this spectacle should be experienced. Plus you get a glass of champaign midway through! Plus all around.
It is up until mid December. Book now and bring a friend it's a bit of a haunted house in the beginning and strangers don't generally take kindly to other strangers grabbing their hand in the darkness.
The crowd mingles amidst fog post show
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2 comments:
They say there is nothing like experiencing theater in London...
hysterical descriptions of your flat search! Criminal sketch sounded like a regular londoner, you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley, a little like a cross between, Faggin and Sikes from Oliver.
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