Chivaree Circus’ dark circus fails to live up to its immersive potential

The Vault Festival is back in London, which means another batch of fresh performance offerings is now available to try. Set in the neighborhood of Waterloo, the venue for the festival is a sprawling series of gutted-and-retrofitted stone chambers underground: the actual vaults beneath Waterloo Station. The setting’s very nature seems to dare every production in creating seductive new worlds to explore. The majority of the Vault festival performances, however, are merely transplants from elsewhere; companies adapt their previous staging rather than adopting and twisting themselves to fill, manipulate, and own their accommodations.

Becoming Shades is an alumnus of the festival. Having sold out last year and won an award for outstanding new work, the production bills itself as a surefire choice for your evening’s entertainment, if you’re willing to stay up a bit late enough. A 9:30 pm start time ensures most people are arriving well after multiple rounds of after-dinner libations. My companion and I attended the show sober but chose to have a good wander around the bar area, enjoying the gritty, scavenged feel of the venue populated primarily at that late hour by the chic-est hipsters this side of Shoreditch.

We arrived at the entrance about ten minutes before the official start time to ensure a good place to stand, but we needn’t have worried. Becoming Shades is, unfortunately, not a show that offers rewards for opportunists. Upon entry, we were instructed by our guide to explore and “get lost” in the underworld, but it soon became clear that there was only one room and we were already in it. There are no secrets to investigate nor any hidden scenes: what you see is what you get.

Regardless, we were treated to a visually arresting series of circus vignettes set against a background of hauntingly beautiful music performed by a duo on a small stage near the entrance. I cannot overstate how impressive the music was or how integral the soundtrack was to the experience, seeing it mixed live resulting in a heavy post-production sound. Fire-juggling and rope acrobatics were executed in our midst while the booming soundtrack heightened the mood to an emotional frenzy. I would strongly recommend attendees familiarize themselves with the myth of Persephone before attending, as my companion had a difficult time following the story without having reviewed it previously. Those ignorant of the plot will still find an hour and a half of beautiful contemporary imagery and physical feats. It also took me three scenes to realize that the entire cast is female, so if supporting feminist art is a bonus to your love of circus stunts, Becoming Shades is worth the price of admission.

But as an immersive piece, Becoming Shades falls short of the mark. The space itself is not implicated at all in the performance. All the action takes place on equipment rigs. (I also identified an out-of-place set piece which looks suspiciously like an abandoned remainder of Alice’s Adventures Underground by Les Enfants Terribles.) The show is more site-generic than site-specific.

Get Shelley Snyder’s stories in your inbox

Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.

SubscribeSubscribe

And the label “immersive” is used here as a buzzword to describe a show set in a stone room where the audience is herded by attendants from one formation to another to watch the next sequence. In fact, the audience is treated as a flowing River Styx through which the performers enter and exit. Occasionally a patron is asked to hold something because they happen to be standing there, but at no point did this audience participation feel necessary to progress the action. We shuffled into different formations to view each scene and were encouraged to sit or kneel. Many people became uncomfortable and remained standing, which prevents guests in the back from seeing vignettes taking place at stage-level. My companion and I realized that standing on boxes or climbing stairs to a higher perch would secure a better view of the space; we removed ourselves from the ground-level shuffle, confident by this point in the performance that we were not missing any engagement opportunities. (Contrary to the show’s intentions, I would recommend finding an elevated location on the far end of the space and remaining there for the duration, especially if you are a shorter person.)

Guests are handed black surgeon masks upon entry which cover the lower half of the face. But several people refused to wear them, and by the end of the performance most people have removed theirs; there seems to be no reason why we’re meant to have them and there seem to be no consequences for refraining. The masks appear to exist only to echo Punchdrunk’s methods but lack their fundamental purpose: to differentiate the audience from the performers, to trigger the viewer to separate themselves from the outside world and to cast each attendee as a “ghost” or “voyeur.” Without any enforcement of mask-wearing, guests seem to feel silly wearing them and instead choose not to.

Unfortunately, there was one aspect of the performance that was very interactive but to the point of violating boundaries and creating discomfort. A trio of characters become comic entertainment during some downtime and move amongst the audience. As they clown with each other, they also remove articles of guests’ clothing such as hats and scarves — often without asking — and creating short routines with the props. My companion and I were deeply unsettled when a character not only reached into my companion’s pocket and removed his phone, but held said phone over a balcony. This was followed by unzipping my friend’s backpack and pulling out a bag of toiletries. While no physical harm was done, and these performers were very good at making comedy out of found articles, the fact is that no permission was requested nor granted before such actions took place. Immersive theatre enthusiasts are familiar with the art of the “invitation,” but it seems that the creators of Becoming Shades are not. My advice is to not bring anything to the performance that you’d be embarrassed at having pulled out of your pocket; future development of the show should include a refinement of this sequence.

If you’re looking for a sprawling set full of secrets, rewards for taking initiative, or the knowledge that not everyone is having the same experience, this production won’t be your brand of immersive art. You will certainly get your money’s worth in terms of performance skill and technical execution; but if you’re seeking a singular, personal adventure you might want to seek out a different show.

Becoming Shades is, however, undeniably visually and audibly engaging: set in the jury-rigged warren that personifies the Vault Festival, this dark circus doesn’t banish its audience to the stands but rather turns them into the center ring.

Becoming Shades continues through March 18 at VAULT Festival. Tickets are £22.50.

No Proscenium is a labor of love made possible by our generous backers like you: join them on Patreon today or the tip the author of this article directly on Gumroad:

In addition to the No Proscenium web site, our podcast, and our newsletters, you can find NoPro on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, in our online community Everything Immersive, and in our Slack forum.