Edinburgh Fringe 2025
Darkfield: Radio
Darkfield
Genre: Audio Play, Experimental, Horror, Immersive
Venue: Summerhall
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
Three different scenarios, all based on the usual Darkfield fare, they pose various philosophical questions to make you really consider just how you might answer.
Review
By now, anyone familiar with Darkfield will know the score – a small room, eerie soundtrack, and submersion into total darkness for around twenty to thirty minutes. Darkfield: Radio is one of the numerous Darkfield offerings available at the Fringe this summer, but perhaps one of the less successful ones. Not to say that it isn’t good – the concept is exceptional, as always, but rather that Darkfield: Radio is almost too ambitious for its own good.
With three scenarios to choose from – Eternal, Visitors, and Double – they each occur at the same time, which is perhaps where the downfall lies. Visitors, the scenario undertaken by this reviewer, requires you to move towards a dimly lit door towards the end of the experience, and in doing so, a red light shines through, breaking the dark illusion. I also experienced the Eternal show during this Fringe run, and the sudden red light was unsettling, and disturbed the immersion experience. This is entirely a logistical issue, but still one that should be mentioned.
The show itself, though, was spectacular. Visitors requires you to bring a loved one along, as it’s an experience for two – and in doing so, you are visited by the undead who perhaps aren’t so peaceful after all. Two ghosts, Alex and Jean, speak to you through the binaural sound, and without any spoilers, the experience is unsettling to say the least. After comparing notes at the end, the two of us realised that perhaps there was more to Visitors than first seemed.
Eternal, a solo show, is also one to recommend. Experienced laying down in a bed, with just enough room for someone to shuffle in beside you, it explores eternal life, and just how far you’d go to achieve it. The sound was more visceral in this one, and perhaps more terrifying, and I found myself tensing up more than once.
I can’t speak for Double, as it was the only one I wasn’t able to experience, but, like Visitors, it’s a Darkfield show for two. Apparently it explores the Capgras delusion, where the sufferer is convinced that a loved one has been replaced with an exact replica with malign intentions. Suitably spooky.
For all three shows, however, there isn’t much you can do to actually influence the narrative, however, and as such, Radio is weaker than other Fringe 2025 offerings. You instead are rendered a passive participant instead of being in control of your own destiny, which is perhaps why Arcade stands out so much among this year’s shows.
Slightly weaker than the other Darkfield offerings, Radio is still one fully worth the experience, and its immersive experience and eerie effects is guaranteed to send a chill down anyone’s spine.
