Enitan’s Game

Last Updated on July 4, 2024

Immersive theatre for 6-11 year olds at Punchdrunk Enrichment, Wembley.

Enitan’s Game is an immersive theatre production for 6 to 11-year-olds in Punchdrunk Enrichment’s venue in a warehouse near Wembley Park stadium. At the start of the production, you walk into an old curiosity shop packed full of hand-labelled curios which the shop manager, Ged, invites you to explore: ancient toys, glass bottles kites and jam jars promising you that if you swallow their contents you will be able to fly.

It turns out that the shop had been put together by Cecil, a man of Caribbean origin who has recently passed away. His granddaughter, Enitan, grew up playing in the shop with him and now has the task with Ged of preparing his ‘nine nights’ – the traditional Caribbean celebration of life through food, stories and music. They invite you in to help and as you do they stumble across a magical scavenger hunt game that Cecil made for Enitan when she was a child and they decide to play it one last time. By playing the game you discover aspects of Cecil’s, Enitan’s and their community’s shared history: the food, the music and the experiences that connected them, and are given the opportunity to reflect on how we can keep our families and childhood with us through memories and shared stories.

The sets you walk through – the shop and the yard outside – are magical and immersive well designed to appeal to young imaginations and generate story-telling, and the production manages deftly to inform the young audience about aspects of Caribbean culture, and gently explore difficult feelings around loosing a much loved relative without ever feeling didactic. The two main characters, Ged and Enitan, Julian Smith and Rachel Oriowo in the production I saw, are engaging and involve the audience in the game in a way that feels like a natural interaction between their characters.

My one quibble would be that the game itself is a little underdeveloped and lacking in suspense. I went with an 8-year-old companion who I think found the pace a little slow, and the game itself a little simple. From that perspective, I think the production would be most appealing for children at the younger end of the age range, or for  children who are happy to explore and build their own stories and imagination,  based on the tales and amazing objects they encounter.

Enitan’s Game – Punchdrunk Enrichment
Unit 22 Watkin Road
London
England
HA9 0NL