REVIEW: Absent, Shoreditch Town Hall ✭✭✭

Absent

Shoreditch Town Hall

1st September 2015

3 Stars

If you find staying in a hotel panic-inducing at the best of times then dreamthinkspeak’s surreal and eerie Absent is perhaps not for you.

Absent is a ‘promenade installation’, a sort of performance art inspired by the true story of the Duchess of Argyll. The Duchess checked into a hotel in 1978 and was evicted a few years later as her bills racked up. In this dreamworld she’s just been evicted into present day London. The Shoreditch Town Hall Hotel is still haunted by her presence and her legacy; visitors are free to roam around the surreal and terrifying remains.

First impressions of the hotel are extremely slick, so much so that mortifyingly I forgot I was at a performance piece, having just fried my brain sprinting from the biggest downpour in history. I thought I’d wandered into an actual hotel and asked for directions to the actual Shoreditch Town Hall, getting into a highly circular conversation with the bemused ‘staff’. It took me a good ten minutes of sitting in the ‘hotel bar’ until I realised I was actually there and that I’d been a total dimwit. In my defence, the hotel is very well crafted, with its own website, reception area, and uniformed staff – it’s clear a lot of work has gone into it.

After this self-esteem destroying start, I was left to explore the rest of the hotel. The experience starts in the lobby, where guests are given some explanatory reading material introducing the story. Visitors are escorted to an empty bedroom with contextualizing video clips on the wall. They are then free to roam the cavernous and spooky grounds of the hotel. The interiors are faded with a maze like quality; you really do have no idea what is around the corner.

There are some clever and surreal touches; innocuous wardrobes often become doors into strange new worlds and mirrors are used to create some weird and wonderful effects. One room has an inventive glass floor and there’s an intriguing reveal in the last couple of rooms. The lighting and sound is haunting and eerie throughout, with the soundscapes making every corridor a slightly nervewracking experience. Video screens are also well used, with many of the main characters popping up as you journey through.

My main issue with the show was that it seemed to miss out on a lot of theatrical potential. There were lots of ‘staff’ spread throughout the building but they weren’t given anything to do but look impassive and slightly traumatised. Dreamthinkspeak must hate being compared with Secret Cinema, but part of the reason that franchise works so well is because the cast works hard to create the necessary atmosphere and helps the audience suspend their disbelief.

A bit of live action drama would have added depth and clarity to the story, which was at times a bit confusing and unclear. Absent is supposed to have a modern setting and yet some of the décor and crockery on display looked distinctly dated. The audience seemed to be yearning for another layer of interaction, certainly judging by the number of groups who stood staring at me thinking I was one of the cast (the perils of carrying a notebook!).

Absent is a bit like a night in a Travelodge – it does the job and gives you an interesting night but you leave feeling like you could have had something a bit more…

Absent runs at the Shoreditch Town Hall until 25th October 2015.