INSIDE STORY

Top immersive theatre group Punchdrunk have ditched their multiple-storyline style in favour of an audio storytelling tour voiced by Helena Bonham Carter. Helen Coffey removes her shoes (it's mandatory) and takes a trip into 'Viola's Room'

- Helen Coffey

I lie on the floor in all-encompassing pitch-black – as if my eyeballs have been dipped in ink – and feel my heart thudding in my chest. “No one’s going to grab you,” I think, over and over, a 37-year-old woman reduced to box-breathing to stay calm in the face of overwhelming darkness. “It’s not going to happen. They said so on the briefing sheet. They promised.”

In fact, this child-like thought runs on repeat to the extent that I’m barely listening to Helena Bonham Carter’s purring, mildly creepy tones in my ears as she sets up a classic fairytale featuring a princess growing up in a palace. Moments earlier, I’d walked into a Nineties-era teenage girl’s bedroom, before being told to lie down on one of the beds on the floor. Then, all the lights went out.

This is Viola’s Room, the new production from famed immersive theatre company Punchdrunk, staged in their now-permanent London home near Woolwich. In the past they’ve recreated the neon backstreets of Downtown Troy, an ersatz old Hollywood film studio, a dreamlike landscape of the Deep South. Elaborate worlds are painstakingly created – often in sprawling, labyrinthine sets. Tickets notoriously sell out in minutes; fans speak about past shows in hushed, reverent tones; and, for the performances themselves, phones are confiscated and locked away, while guests go forth and seek out one-of-a-kind experiences.

Prior to entry to Viola’s Room, the aforementioned briefing card reassured me that “there are no jump scares in the experience – if you see a member of staff, they will be there to provide assistance”. But one of the reasons for my nerviness is that this latest offering is a far cry from their usual fare; I’m simply not sure what to expect.