The Burnt City – Punchdrunk at Woolwich Works

Last Updated on September 25, 2024

Punchdrunk returns to London theatre with a bang.

While the Uber Boat we took from London Bridge City Pier to Woolwich Arsenal wasn’t quite a trireme, we were soon thrown into a world of kings and warriors in Punchdrunk’s ‘The Burnt City’, the debut production for their new home in the redeveloped Woolwich Works, which we first found out about when we toured the space a few months ago.

Heavily adapting the two classical Greek texts of ‘Agamemnon’ and ‘Hecuba’, this interactive piece of theatre and performance art is a sight to behold. As an audience, you are led from an exhibition of questionably ancient artefacts into a dream world seen through the eyeholes of tight-fitting plague doctor style masks. The form of a Punchdrunk play, now world-renowned, is to wander and explore through scenes and set pieces performed around you by roaming actors.

Starting in a burnt-out Mycenae, populated with border guards and Charleston dancing survivors, a catwalk dance sequence was a highlight, along with the beautifully balletic movements on anti-tank structures. The immediate reference for the audience for a burnt-out eastern European style city will now, of course, be from the devastating images of Mariupol in Ukraine, the production rightly steers away from any identifying detail but it has been in production for nearly a decade now, only suddenly prescient. After ducking under hessian sheeting and wandering through an abandoned temple, we were eventually led, along with a crowd of other audience members, through to the much more built-up Troy.

Photo by Julian AbramsThis space is very much of the popular ‘Shakespeare Land’ aesthetic, a sort of post-soviet Eastern Europe, with worn-out cafes, hotels and military uniforms and a Bakelite finish. Hidden gems included a feast set filled with tins on plates and in tureens (we would show you but photographs were so strictly prohibited we were asked to put our phones into locked satchels to carry around with us) and indoor greenhouses complete with suspicious-looking occupants. The sets are admittedly fabulous with details to the nth degree. If you enter a room there might be a notebook and inside will be relevant text on almost every page. The newspaper you find in an empty birdcage will also hold clues to the plot. Head of design Maïto Jobbé Duval outdid himself on the details of the production, although there were no spaces that provided the wow factor of previous performances. No element created the wonder that has come to be synonymous with Punchdrunk the ‘how did they do that?’ of it all, there was never the feeling of wonder that comes from a magician successfully pulling off a trick, it was all understandable. That isn’t to say that the work done was not beautiful however and it was greatly helped by the masterful and dynamic use of lighting which created vignettes so striking that at some moments it really did feel like being inside a beautiful film.

Photo by Julian AbramsTo the performances, which were of Punchdrunk standard, two figures come into a spotlight, they tussle and writhe, eventually, as the music swells, one of them takes their top off and the other emotionally offs them and does some more writhing until the light fades and the performers can slink off into the shadows. A tried-and-true formula that in its first few viewings is especially effective. For some reason, the emotional final performance, featuring the especially brilliant Hecuba, as played by Sarah Dowling, was performed in another room an hour earlier for a smaller audience with very little difference. This leads to a recommendation if you do choose to book tickets and truly it is the best version of interactive theatre in London right now, that tickets are booked for a 2-hour slot rather than a 3 hour one. This is due to the fact that for the final third of the performance, having lapped the building multiple times, you can tell from the emergency exit signs where the edges are and we didn’t really see anything new, either in terms of spaces or performances. While previous Punchdrunk productions would leave the audience knowing there was more to see, in three hours it was perfectly possible to see all the spaces three or four times and each of the performance vignettes once or twice. For us, this included a break in the Porsche sponsored bar, which serves beer, wine and soft drinks and sits in the corner of Troy.

Another recommendation would be to wear comfy shoes and bring as few layers or bags as possible since the queues for the bag check are long and the space is hot, especially with both a face mask and a plastic witch doctor mask as well(!)

Overall, if planned correctly, ‘The Burnt City’ is one of the most unique nights out in London and an incredibly rewarding and beautiful experience. The fruits of supporting theatrical talent in London are right here and with the riverboat pier on the doorstep and the Elizabeth line on the horizon, opening similarly close by, the Woolwich location is easily accessible.

Punchdrunk’s ‘The Burnt City’ runs from the 21st of April with tickets available online here,
One Cartridge Place,
Woolwich,
London, SE18 6ZR