Masque of the Red Death & An Analogy About a Giraffe

Following on from my earlier post about the Masque of the Red Death, where I succumbed to a bit of ‘RIP homie’ mawkishness about dear old Justin, I’ve had time to reflect about Punchdrunk’s production at the BAC and would like to say some more about it.

It helps if you don’t think of going to the Masque of the Red Death as ‘going to the theatre’. It’s more like participating in a game; like an eccentric treasure hunt in a historical theme park, where the rules are never fully explained and things seem to be on the verge of taking a sinister turn. It is theatre in the sense that any spectacle is theatre – and of course it is scripted, staged and performed. And it takes place in a theatre. But it is also not theatre in any conventional sense – certainly nothing like sitting through a Pinter at the National while strangers cough loudly around you, through all the best lines.

So what is it like? Well, let’s say that you’re very rich and you have a small child and you want to buy it a pony but you consider yourself to be a little bit out there, and so you decide you’re going to get a zebra instead. It was in this frame of mind - as someone heartily embracing alternative forms of theatre - that I set off to the Masque of the Red Death on Tuesday. But, instead of a zebra, I found myself confronted by the theatrical equivalent of a giraffe. Very beautiful, very unusual and guaranteed to turn heads at the local gymkhana. But unlike, say, a camel (ugly yet functional) there is no chance of being able to ride it, by which I mean there is no coherent narrative. I will leave you to think of your own instances of pony, zebra and camel theatre while I go on to explain what I mean by the giraffe.

Normally, I like a coherent narrative but it seems beside the point in The Masque of the Red Death, where you chase about after the actors as various scenes are played out simultaneously in the rooms around the house. The actors are excellent and give it all they’ve got. To choose just one – Mr Stafford the Outfitter (and I have no idea if that’s even his name or one assigned to him on the spur of the moment by another character I met later in the Music Hall; that’s all part of the fun of it) brought great intensity and mystery to his part, which essentially involves handing out cloaks. And so he should, because for as long as you are in his room, where he waits alone for the participants to drift in and out, he is the star of a one man show.

Every actor you encounter in the Masque of the Red Death has the same commitment to the character they play – from ‘Mr Smith’ in the mind-reading act that goes wrong (who is a main character, I think, God knows who but he was very good anyway), to the poor girl groaning in the basement to – well, everyone. There are too many of them to name-check them. Just go and see it and you will see what I mean. Even the cat, Pluto, (yes, it’s a real cat) performs its part beautifully. Who knows how the actors get through it with the spectators wandering in and out and peering at them up close while they do their bit. It must be disconcerting but they do it and they do it very well.

And by the way the other spectators are not as intrusive as you might think as everyone is masked and the space is not over-crowded - whether that decision was made for health and safety or for aesthetic reasons, it’s a wise one. There’s nothing like a crowd of people in jumpers and backpacks to kill the atmosphere of the place, whether you are walking around a specially-created gothic mansion in Battersea or the lost city of Machu Picchu.

Without taking away from the actors, the greatest pleasure is in the detail of the set. Wandering through it is how you imagined, as a child, it might be to wander around a film set while the action is being filmed, before you grew up and learnt that everything is shot out of sequence at a number of different locations and being on set is really boring anyway.

I’m going back tonight, to one of the Masque of the Red Death Late Nights, as a guest of my daughter, who worked on the props for it (one of many, many people involved in setting up the show over the past few weeks). One visit to the place doesn’t seem to be enough to take it all in.

You can actually volunteer as a steward as a way of spending more time there – they need loads of them – and I did consider it and even sent off for an application form yesterday. It is a dream of mine to be able to hang around in a theatre without being called upon to do any acting. But when they emailed the stewarding form back, it asked for details of my employment history and references. Ah. I suppose the only way I’m ever going to get to hang out with theatre people is by finishing this play I’m working on. Tsk.

Anyway, go and see The Masque of the Red Death, if you have the chance. It’s a beautiful, extraordinary thing.