Viola’s Room – 24 June 2025

Viola’s Room seems at first glance to be more of an art installation than a piece of theatre. There are no live performers, and the audience walks through the experience guided by the light, wearing headphones that are playing the score and a narration by Helena Bonham Carter, telling the story of a princess lured from the safety of her bedroom into a dangerous, moonlit world. Yet as I walked through it, I had the sense of what it must be like to be an actor fully immersed in a role—looking for cues, finding my light (Simon Wilkinson), being asked to put my bare feet into goodness knows what, interacting with set pieces, feeling the adrenaline of a story unfolding live around me, trusting the designers to keep me from falling, having to be careful not to touch certain things, feeling my way through a story with a sense of what might happen but trying not to anticipate it so that it could feel new, being emotionally impacted by parts of the work but having to move on from them in a timeline that’s out of my control, having to figure out where to go in moments of uncertainty and keep faking confidence to get myself through—this is not a passive experience, but one in which the audience is the actor. The world of Viola’s Room gives the semblance of choices, but really walks the audience through an incredible, unforgettable experience of what it’s like to wander through a fake world created by artists in which you feel that anything could happen, but you are actually safe.

Though not overly terrifying (there are no jump scares or moving parts), I nevertheless found moments of Viola’s Room intimidating, particularly moments that took place in close to total darkness that required me to touch pieces of the set to get myself through in some of the forest sequences. I honestly was more scared for myself than Viola, though I realize the intention was that after a while, the audience starts to feel as though they have merged with the protagonist. Some of the inconsistent moments in the narration ironically helped me feel safe—for example, the narrator would say that music had stopped but the score would continue underneath, rather than leaving the audience in actual silence. Score wise I was also a little confused by the rock score elements at the beginning having little to do with the soaring cinematic score of the rest of the walk through. I appreciated that the headphones volume (sound design: Gareth Fry) never overtook me to a point where I lost my sense of balance. I was most impressed by the scenic (Casey Jay Andrews) elements, particularly the models of the castle and the tree anointed with ballet slippers. The Gestalt was certainly thrilling, and a true adventure.

Viola’s Room is an hour long experience that teeters on the edge of haunting and beautiful, as it tells the story of a princess seduced by the freedom of the moonlight, only to discover that once she has tasted freedom, she can never go back to being satisfied with safety. There are moments that are passive, moments that required a little adrenaline, moments in which the audience feels like an actor, and moments in which the audience feels the full emotional weight of the story. It’s truly exceptional. Though it does not leave many questions left unanswered, it certainly leaves the audience with an unforgettably unique experience and the hope that Punchdrunk will follow this up with more stories told in this fashion.

I attended this performance on a press pass from The Shed Press Team.