Edinburgh Fringe 2022
Low Down
Audio theater in a transport container. Performed over 35 minutes in complete darkness, this intense and exhilarating ride uses 360 degree binaural sound and speech recognition technology to transport audience members through a mysterious hotel.
Review
The door to the container shuts and you are comfortably seated in a private cubicle with a head-set : now the journey of “Eulogy” begins.
Part haunted house, part audio theater; the audience ‘s visceral responses are manipulated by audio prompts to maximum effect. With exquisitely employed technology, you enter a mysterious hotel where voices whispering in your ear are uncomfortably real. The dark is inhabited by footsteps passing close by, elevator doors opening and closing and sudden loud crashes. The not -so -subliminal stimulation triggers an adrenalized response in you. A voice in your ear tells you that you are four stories underground and the air is getting thicker and it may be hard to breath; and sure enough, you are now conscious of breathing and wonder if it is a bit stuffy . Darkfield cleverly personalizes the experience by giving you a “named” seat, and asking your responses to a questionnaire, answers later integrated into the story. As you can tell from the title, death is not far away.
The individual cubicles were made of wire and were stuffed with pillows and a schedule for laundry delivery- clearly you are in the bowels of the hotel, and from here are taken on a fantastic ride by the voices, literally, in your head. Cleverly imagined,“Eulogy” takes the haunted house idea towards participatory theater. With such powerful tools at hand I wish that the storyline were more developed. The manipulation in the dark by an unseen guide is a lovely place to begin. The immediacy of the experience seems a fantastically effective device to tell a story of significance.
All this being said, when the lights came up and the headphone voices prompted us to leave the container, the audience walked away chattering with nerves, and one person commented that it was all “great fun.” Darkfield is known for creating scary audio theater experiences. I heard from the two men standing behind me in line that their last Darkfield experience entailed laying down for the performance, the audience being prompted to experience a state of coma.
Not for the faint of heart, but certainly an immersive experience, “Eulogy” is a Daring show from the masters of darkness.
