Bacchanalia

Taking Euripides’ Bacchae as their starting point, Sleepwalk Immersive’s debut production immerses us in a horror story of gods and men.

The Crypt - located under a church in London’s Bethnal Green - has already hosted several interactive shows this year based on established works. The Midnight Circle company took inspiration from Dorian Gray and later Frankenstein but Sleepwalk go much into the history books with a tale written around 405BC.

Bacchanalia started off conceptually as a one-on-one show before being expanded thanks at least in part to an online fundraiser. In its current form, six actors are watched by up to an audience of up to forty members. It comes with high expectations with all dates on its two-week run already sold out.

The young Mayor Pentheus has much to celebrate as he takes up his new role - and, yet, much to fear. His cousin Dionysus has been going around enchanting women and telling all that will hear that he is the son of Zeus, something Pentheus publicly decries as a complete lie. The demigod takes umbrage and delivers a terrible vengeance on the mayor and his family.

Bacchanalia builds up its world fluently from the moment you step in. The setting has been updated to late Sixties America: newspapers pinned to the wall of Pentheus’ office tell us that Tricky Dicky is in the White House, in the three main performance spaces there is a decidedly hippy vibe and the soundtrack perfectly evokes that post-rock ‘n roll era.

The story has been slimmed down with only six of the characters and core scenes retained from the original tale. This narrowing gives Sleepwalk artistic director Sebastian Huang’s production a necessary focus as we follow parallel narratives and choose to hang out with the strait-laced mayor (Christian Loveless), his charismatic nemesis (Peter Broughton) or Pentheus’ mother Agave (Fania Grigoriou). Movement designer Ruth Howard has a ball directing herself as Nymph and Jordan Ajadi’s Xanthias as they cavort with abandon through this subterranean playground, perfectly expressing their master’s Bohemian influence through bold dance and costume.

Whether Bacchanalia intentionally pays homage to Punchdrunk’s recently-finished The Burnt City or not, there are definite and welcome echoes here of that show. The black cloaks handed out at the beginning are infinitely more comfortable than the signature white masks and fit in very well in the dimly lit Crypt. Sleepwalk puts a high emphasis on wordless interactions and dance to expand on and push forward the narrative, another Punchdrunk hallmark. In this intimate space, we wander and explore the atmospherically dank and dark environment as we wish to peruse Pentheus’ files or check out Agave’s bedchamber, for example.

If they ever wanted to go back to their roots, the bigger company could do worse than seeing how Sleepwalk have imparted a real sense of time and place to Bacchanalia. Unlike their Burnt City which was arguably more about immersive design than drama, Huang has balanced the scenery and the scenes: the pacing is excellent, the acting effusive and there’s plenty to admire in each room. It is hard to think how anyone could be bored in its helter-skelter 80-minute running time.

If anything, Bacchanalia left me wanting more: more of how the libertine Sixties infused and affected the lives of our characters, more of what Nymph and Xanthias got up to when away from their corrupter and much more of Dionysus expounding on his world view. With any luck, the success of this run will translate into a longer and bigger show.

Photo credit: Ivy Torbin