The Masque of the Red Death

The Masque of the Red Death

21 July, 2008
by: Paddy

It is by no means easy writing a comprehensive piece on Punchdrunk Theatre's latest and greatest production, The Masque of the Red Death. Is it theatre in the conventional sense, or simply a grandiose form of performance art? Is it an exercise in contemplative solipsism or a gregarious communal experience? Should one, to use the heartiest cliché in the business, beg, borrow, steal, or indeed kill to see one of the most talked about cultural events of the year? To the simplest question, we can answer you now: Buy a hunting knife, a sawn-off shotgun and if necessary take a hostage or two. Do everything in your powers to lay your hands on a ticket.

Punchdrunk have been working on their unique performance concept since 2000, and, after an award-winning foray into the Faust myth in a Wapping warehouse last year, they were offered full use of the Battersea Arts Centre for this show. The idea driving the production company is to create a fully immersive theatrical environment in which a story, or even series of stories are performed. There are no guides, no rules and for relatively long periods, no glimpses of the actors. The audience, advised to stay alone, are masked up to enhance the voyeuristic atmosphere and instructed to enter the building through a series a heavy velvet curtains. From this moment onwards, the world as we know it fades to insignificance and a new reality is thrust upon us with spectacular effect.

The structure of the building is exploited to its limits, and one quickly comes to realise that almost all conventions of theatre have been burned. Although based on nine stories by the horror-meister Edgar Allan Poe, the narrative as a shared, universal concept is shredded, leaving every member of the wandering audience to piece together that which they see, feel and sense, and subsequently create a personal narrative. Compared with The Masque of The Red Death, the linear progression of narrative in much theatre, and indeed film, seems outdated and as constrictive as a good set of irons.

As one meanders through the beautifully styled neo-Gothic rooms, admiring the tired grandeur of the settings and hoping for a glance of an actor in the throes of passion, one is alone, the only noise a continual note of spine-jangling creepiness. Getting lost in the maze of bedchambers, drawing rooms and apothecaries is part of the experience, yet an all consuming terror rises up from within. Having lain dormant for years, childlike fears resurface; five traces of blood on a door speak infinitely louder than any amount of Hollywood bloodletting. Prepare yourself for a slew of sensations like none other; dancing orgies dripping with sex, paganistic and sacrificial rituals, feverish hallucinations of Dostoevskian proportions. The seven deadly sins are resurrected in full and, even if momentarily, one feels their impact as they further complicate any sense of morality.

For the record, I shall add that the aesthetics of the performance are mind-blowing, the choreography sublime and the grand finale such a fantastic explosion of euphoria it makes a shot of diamorphine feel like a month spent completing tax returns. There is, indeed, so much more to be said about this piece of theatre, but for once words are not the constraint. It would be nigh on blasphemous to solemnly recount the series of events I witnessed at this sensational extravaganza; it is a show one experiences on an entirely individual level. What all do feel, however, is the cold claws of the devil fingering the heart and soul, infecting each and every person like a plague.

It is so rare to stumble across objects of art that are prepared to change the way we think and feel in such an extreme manner, yet this performance does exactly that.

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Paddy