Edinburgh Fringe 2024
Werewolf
Binge Culture
Genre: Horror, Immersive, Theatre
Venue: Summerhall
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
Disease has broken out. A quarantined group works together by day to survive the nights, when weird things start to happen. Stella Reid, Joel Baxendale and Hannah Kelly play the wardens trying unsuccessfully to keep everyone safe.
Review
The Former Womens Locker Room at Summerhall is an odd, slightly creepy space that wouldn’t work well for most shows. Last year Chicken made a nice coop of it and has returned this year for another go, and after its daily performance it flees to protect its feathers and make room for the hungry Werewolf, the comedy-thriller immersive experience by New Zealand theatre company Binge Culture. Without question Werewolf is right where it should be; these intrepid and innovative Kiwis make the most of the dark, slightly claustrophobic “safe room” to create a highly entertaining and engaging piece.
As audience members enter and take a seat they are each given a card with instructions that are not to be shared with anyone else. Once all are in, the door is shut and the quarantine is officially on. The three wardens, played energetically by Stella Reid, Joel Baxendale and Hannah Kelly, moderate the proceedings and try to keep things on track during the course of a week (accelerated to a tight Fringe 60 minutes) as problems creep to the surface. A virus that causes lycanthropy is spreading across the countryside, so no one should be allowed in lest they’ve already been infected. Because it would be less than ideal to be trapped in an enclosed space with a werewolf unless you’re Bella Swan and being indecisive in some Twilight fan-fiction universe, right?
But is it already too late? Is an infected person masquerading in the bunker? And can everyone agree on the best course of action to guarantee everyone’s safety?
We all know from the all-too-recent pandemic that total group accord on major public-health decisions is downright impossible, and it’s fairly comical to witness similar disagreements pop up in this fictional setting. As the days pass and the situation becomes more dire and fraught, more suspicions and bigger doubts are aired as the nights descend and increasingly bad things happen.
In a show titled Werewolf, one should not expect a happy ending, and this show does not circumvent that expectation. But the overall experience is indeed a gleeful one. I can’t say that I was genuinely ever scared — and I wanted to be — but I was delighted to be fully involved with this unsettling experience, one eerily reminiscent of recent current events but far more jolly. Howl away, Werewolf. Howl away.
