Séance and Arcade from Darkfield

I've followed the trajectory of Darkfield's productions ever since I fell across a shipping container, incongruously nestled in a corner of the Henham Estate in Suffolk, an extra treat laid on at Latitude in the days when festivals could afford to lay on extra treats. Since then, I've been in a plane crash, a coma and a hotel, in varying states of disorientation. Norwich Theatre have brought two of Darkfield's show's to Norwich, neatly bookending the development of their signature techniques with the first show they did, and their newest.

Séance, in common with all their productions, took place in complete darkness. The audience wear headphones and so experience the narrative almost entirely through sound. If that sounds too close to an audio book, then allow me to quickly disabuse you of that notion. Using a technique the Company call binaural sound, the headphone wearer is immersed in a spookily lifelike soundscape that is unnervingly realistic. As a prosaic example, while in the show 'Flight' I became increasingly irritated by people, all around me, talking during the show, until the penny dropped that those voices were the show. In Séance, the voice in question is the Medium, guiding those of us brave enough to attend, on a supernatural journey. The sound is augmented by subtle touches that bring movement into play, but largely relies on quite astonishing sound reproduction to bypass the rational mind. With no evidence presented to the contrary, it’s remarkable how hard you have to work in order to counteract what your limited senses are telling you – that there's something in the room and it's not very friendly. Conversely, at one point in the session I attended, the smallest sliver of light got in, presumably due to a faulty lock on the door, and though I could see no more than shadows, the spell immediately dissipated. Our brains, it would appear, are not nearly as worldly wise as we think they are.

Having seen Séance before, I greatly enjoyed it, but it was the new show – Arcade – that I had really come to see. Arcade is the latest Darkfield production and sees them pushing the boundaries of the technology stress tested in Séance. Along the way, they have introduced movement, disorientation and smell into the mix, all the while keeping the audience in complete blackness. The premise of this show is that the participant controls their avatar by making binary choices throughout the experience. The aim is to aurally reproduce the text based, multiple gaming strands open to users of early computer games. It's an experience that was very effectively parodied by John Robinson in his youtube based Dark Room, something he subsequently turned into a sleeper hit show on the Edinburgh Fringe. Much of the charm, and verisimilitude, of Dark Room, is the way it mimicked the crude graphics and sudden death dynamic of those games, some I felt sat uneasily with Darkfield's sophisticated production values and oblique narratives. Arcade games of the period were highly visual, to the point of abstraction, and necessitated blocking out the cacophony surrounding the player, so that too seemed an unhelpful source of inspiration.

All of which doesn't make for a bad show, of course, so setting aside the window dressing of its title, how does it compare with other Darkfield productions? What sets it apart is perhaps the best place to start. In previous shows I've sat at a table, strapped into an aeroplane seat and taken to my bed. For the most part, my physicality has matched the drama I was immersed in. Eulogy shifted away from that to some extent, but in Arcade there is a disconnect between my avatars adventures, running around all over the place, and me, standing in front of a console pressing a button. I wasn't in the action, I was listening to the action. When sparing use was made of special effects it was fun, but further eroded the rationale of the premise. If I am at a console, why did my face just get splashed? I also feel too much is made of the multiple storyline options, given I only experienced one. I was reminded of Kim Newman's late nineties novel Life's Lottery, or more recently, Black Mirror's Bandersnatch. In both cases, the reader/viewer was invited to make choices, and thereby take different paths through the book/film. The real fun, however, came later, going back and forth choosing alternate routes to see how well you initially did. When I spoke to a couple of the Darkfield folk, they had both done exactly that. Caught up in the intricacies of the show's mechanics, which are no doubt fascinating, I wonder if they lost sight of what it was like for a typical punter who only had one go.

I should say that, for all of my misgivings, it was still a fun ride. Had Darkfield only produced further iterations of the initial concept - you are trapped in a mine, or in a crashed car, or in a submarine - they would be criticized for a lacking ambition. So while I don't think they got this one quite right - their USP of sound manipulation being reduced to a walk on part - I do admire them for continually trying out something different. My greatest admiration, however, is reserved for Norwich Theatre in hosting the shows in the first place. Keeping live theatre going at the moment involves a series of little miracles. The focus on musicals and comedy is perfectly understandable . The fact the something as outré as Darkfield is embraced as well, demonstrates a commendable wish to step beyond that which will pay the bills and offer Norwich an exciting and diverse palette to sample from.