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Review May 22 2009 « | »
Tunnel 228 by Punchdrunk and the Old Vic A cheerful queue marked the entrance to 'Tunnel 228' at dusk last night, the pop-up brainchild of The Old......

Josie Breese

A cheerful queue marked the entrance to 'Tunnel 228' at dusk last night, the pop-up brainchild of The Old Vic and Punchdrunk. Muted by the monotone order of silence from a balaclava-ed usher, visitors patiently filed forward, donning regulation surgical masks. With no further guidance, individual exploration proceeded through the cavernous inter-connecting space beneath the railway tracks at Waterloo.

Participants navigated their way past heavy man-powered machinery, a subterranean lake and a neatly landscaped avenue of artworks on plinths, through redundant office spaces and frustrated by empty recesses filled with darkness. Despite the dusty gloaming, orderly lines of visitors formed before exhibits and even opportunistically in front of closed doors.

Such obedience in the crowd having just arrived from work, many suited and booted, took on a discomfiting resonance against the overarching theme of the oppressed worker taken from Fritz Lang's sci-fi vision of urban dystopia. 'Metropolis'. The repetitive motions of industrial workers fueled Ben Tyers' complex mechanism circumnavigating the space. Imaginative artworks dotted throughout stand against its monotony in a grim alter-reality, worryingly evocative of the grind of capitalism at work.

Duality lurks around corners and up stairs in 'Tunnel 228', reversing back on itself and disorientating those in attendance. Bursts of delicate graffiti by Xenks and Busk and Lightning & Kinglyface's paper forest suffused with twinkly music and streams of paper butterflies are eerily forboding. Illusions are shattered by disquieting scenes including Polly Morgan's horrifying taxidermy tableaux and Slinkachu's isolating minute scale, spied on through peepholes, dramatic shafts of light and whole ceilings of bare light bulbs.

The power of these uncanny revelations is energised by Punchdrunk group members. Bodies stand frozen in unexpected places, interspersed with manikins or silently coaxing visitors into seedy hidden spaces. Visitors glad participate with their inhibitions concealed behind masks (the theatre group has insisted on them for a number of past performances). This unique collision of performance and art presents an irresistible mix of attraction and repulsion through bizarre sensory assault. The only shame of the sold out 'Tunnel 228' experience is that it will not run for longer.

Tunnel 228's website has moved on, but the Guardian has good pictures of the show {here}.

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