Review: Viola’s Room, a Moonlight Dance With the Devil From the Creators of Sleep No More

“Always follow the light,” advised the attendant, relishing in the double-meaning, before my small group of three intrepid explorers entered Viola’s Room, now performing at the Shed. The production is by Punchdrunk, the London-based company that is the world’s premier purveyor of immersive theater. Sadly, their work doesn’t often come through these parts, although fans of this type of theater will be well aware of the 14-year run of Sleep No More.

Unlike that masterpiece of choose-your-own-adventure theater, Viola’s Room is linear, meaning we all follow the same winding path through Casey Jay Andrew’s labyrinthine set, guided forward by the audio in our individual headsets and, of course, the light. And that works well for a story that is so much about fate—how a single choice can send us down a path from which it is impossible to turn back.

Viola’s Room is based on Barry Pain’s short story “The Moon-Slave,” about a princess who runs away from her betrothment ball to dance alone in the moonlight in the center of an abandoned hedge maze. She returns to the palace unscathed, but not unchanged as she finds herself irresistibly drawn back to the maze with each full moon. It’s a 10-minute read, which writer Daisy Johnson and director Felix Barrett have expanded to an hourlong journey, exploring every dark corner and subtextual crevice in a story that proves to be more than just a campfire spine-tingler.

We remove our shoes and sanitize our feet before entering this dark mosque. Viola’s Room is a tactile experience that we feel from the bottom up as we pad over soft carpeting, creaky floorboards, tightly packed sand, and grassy earth. As we journey forward, we feel the walls of the set closing in, disorienting us with every turn, before we arrive in a great opening with a crooked tree at the center. It’s impossible to not feel your pulse quicken as you step gingerly through the maze, led forward by the distant light, with the music of Gareth Fry’s sound design surging in your ears. It’s like being in a movie.

Helena Bonham Carter narrates the story, whispering a tale of obsession and compulsion (and perhaps addiction) in our ears, luxuriating in dark vowels and seducing us with her snake-like sibilants. The sound of her voice is enough to make your hair stand on end.

Barrett and his team deliver a master class in horror, which is more about what you cannot see than what you can. Simon Wilkinson’s lighting is the star of the show, controlling our vision at every moment, and occasionally casting us into complete darkness. This is no haunted house. There are no actors, so you can rest assured that no one will jump out at you. But with just the subtlest breeze on our legs, Punchdrunk sends our imaginations reeling.

Other senses are engaged as well: The smell of sandalwood and hanging laundry conjured childhood memories for me, bringing me back to a place to which I can now only visit in my mind.

There’s a secondary plot humming alongside the tale of Princess Viola, which is mostly told through a young woman’s bedroom to which we return three times. In the first it is filled with books, beloved toys, and award ribbons. A Tori Amos poster hangs on the wall. The last time we visit, most of those items have been packed away, the walls half-painted in an inconspicuous beige. These scenes, more than anything in the text, tell the story of the passage of time and the loss of youth, as irresistible as the waxing and waning of the moon. I’m still wondering what became of the room’s occupant, and the thought makes me incredibly sad.

But we all bring our own emotional baggage into the theater, which cannot be checked with our shoes. Viola’s Room may be a linear experience, but I suspect each viewer will still go on their own journey.