The weather is graciously crisp and dry in the Borough neighborhood on Friday night. Having attended CoLab’s production of Hunted in October 2016, I’m well aware that their performances stand every chance of being staged partially outdoors and London is no place to be lingering outside when it’s wet and windy. The crowd that has gathered is suspiciously large for what I’m expecting — in fact the sign out front indicates that both Loot and The Immersive Ensemble’s The Great Gatsby are occupying the same building and are performing concurrently. I end up in the wrong line at first and am directed one door down to where my much smaller group of would-be thieves is coming together. I’ve chosen the first loop of the night (my usual preference) but it’s also the first night of the run as I later learn — they’ve only performed it once previously for a corporate testing session.

I won’t reveal plot points or give away surprises, though unfortunately, safety regulations required our guide to do so. Suffice to say that asking people if they’re claustrophobic or allergic to smoke effects should happen at the ticketing stage, not at the performance — advising that certain situations were going to happen during the night did take away from the immersive experience and had me anticipating scenes that would otherwise have been a delightful surprise. Our group also failed to receive handheld radios at the required point (a reasonable failing for a first run), but we as an audience didn’t notice any issue with our experience.

Such marks the end of my logistical nit-picking.

What follows is a beguiling and twisting path around, into, and through CoLab’s private building with varying tactile and kinaesthetic engagements. Though the opening scene is a bit exposition-heavy and overwhelms us with the number of instructions, we’re assured that we’ll have a guide-cum-handler throughout the heist. We’re then launched into a high-stakes intimidation scenario during which our plan cinematically falls apart and salvages itself while we escape onto the street only to be secreted back into the building via a much less hospitable route to continue our campaign. All under the questioning eyes of the public, making the experience that much more realistic.

Get Shelley Snyder’s stories in your inbox

Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.

SubscribeSubscribe

Then comes a series of heartbeat-raising situations that genuinely engage the hyperactive senses — a brilliant scenario evading a night watchman with a flashlight, sneaking through a cluttered room with a manic occupant, and breaking into the vault in a race against time. Music and voices from The Great Gatsby float through the walls and lend an incidental urgency to our objectives — there’s no way CoLab planned for the effect but it’s a happy accident as we do everything in our power to avoid detection by the party-goers.

Interactions with the cast are short — they’re primarily there to provide direction and little other engagement, apart from a long direct conversation with The Investor. Stressing the audience by forcing us to perpetuate a cover story and solve riddles while dealing with his sensually-charged comments at close quarters transforms him from a plot device to a genuine character and I’m disappointed when we leave his area because I know it’s unlikely we’ll meet another performer of his caliber that night.

Very little has been done to dress the building, it seems. There are times I worry about health & safety — a tripping hazard there, water and glass over there — and I suspect that during the run CoLab will be made to address some of the incidentals that may occur. The audience does not all get the same experience; some members receive props and tools via means that not everyone sees the genesis of. I would have loved to see adverse consequences built into the story: a punishment for springing a trap too early or too late, being captured upon detection. There’s plenty of room (and physical space) for expansion.

Part escape room, part urban exploration, part performance, Loot is a Gordian Knot of filthy charm. CoLab’s intentional utilization of the watchful eye of the non-engaged public lends a layer of covert secrecy during the experience — a running theme, it seems, from their Hunted days. Given the unpolished setting of the production and the opportunity for audience usage of certain controversial props to go wrong, what the audience gets up to within the realm of the show CoLab doesn’t seem to take West-End levels of responsibility for, and I worry they may be forced to answer for it if something genuinely goes wrong. The nature of immersion, however, isn’t to babysit your audience into a cushioned bubble of safety; chasing realism means giving your audience just enough rope to hang themselves — delivering experience means watching what they do with it.

Loot runs through October 22. Tickets are £18.50; participants must be aged 15 years or older.

No Proscenium is a labor of love made possible by our generous Patreon backers: join them today!

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