The End of Us
Southwark Playhouse
7th November
4 Stars
I’ve come across many curiosities as a reviewer but I’ve never been to a show that has a different storyline every single night.
However, there’s nothing conventional about By The End of Us by the company BlockStop. In this tale, we follow Mia Cupler (great name) – an assassin tasked with pursuing a data hacker and disabling her fiendish plan. A government agent is also tracking the pair, with his own mission and agenda.
The twist is that the whole enterprise is framed as a video game, with the characters wearing headcams and being controlled by commands from the audience. Mia is controlled by an audience member in a separate room (whose commands we can here); the agent is controlled by audience votes via keypad at critical moments.
It’s an audacious concept and it worked extraordinary well. It boggles the mind to think how much planning has gone into it; there are several live audio and video links to maintain and the whole thing is entirely changeable and unpredictable. There were a few skillful moments when they subtly moved proceedings along when the audience got a bit stuck or suggested something really illogical.
It wasn’t as remote and impersonal as it may sound, with some genuinely funny moments emerging thanks to some erratic audience decisions. Wearing a hi-vis jacket on an undercover mission, a secret agent falling over his own trip wire and an audience member having to be talked out of sending Mia unarmed against a hacker with a gun.
Melanie Grossenbacher was brilliant as Mia (although we never saw her face due to her headcam) – she kept the whole show flowing in a very natural and seamless way. Dan Thompson was also very amusing as the incompetent secret agent, entirely at the mercy of the whims of the audience.
The only area for improvement was the audience interaction; it would have been great to find out the thinking behind some of the audience’s calls. A woman sat near me looked visibly raging at the general ineptitude of her fellow audience members; I would have loved to have heard what was on her mind during one of the quieter points.
It’s not often that you see something that feels genuinely different, executed in a modern and innovative way. The End of Us makes for an unusual yet entertaining experience, whether you’re an avid gamer or not.
