Tropicana

Synopsis

A door leads from the commuter hall of London Bridge station to a vast labyrinth beneath. This is the new home to Shunt, an artists' collective whose Dance Bear Dance won last year's Time Out Live Award. From September, the door will open each Thursday, Friday and Saturday evening for their new show Tropicana, on one of the most exciting and unsettling spaces in London.

Our Review:

25 October 2004

Go through a nondescript door in a wall at London Bridge station, step through a locker (why not?) and you enter a panelled room. You might be in an ante-room in a grand college or gentlemen's club. A measured, RP voice tells you over the public address system that tomorrow the bar staff may be reptiles, so make the most of it. Panels at different heights are removed to reveal friendly purveyors of booze.

The voice announces that the Institute is in charge, that doors are locked, that its watchword is "understanding" and that we are most alive when we fear. People smile a little apprehensively: no doubt this is a joke, but we are after all powerless and this is no place for claustrophobics. You enter an industrial-style lift with 30 others and apparently proceed downwards, guided by a liftman who takes a Polaroid snap as if we are on a Disney ride.

Darkness is the main feature of the next section, when after being 'welcomed' by a young woman in charge of a stack of cages a...

Read more of the review

Latest User Review

213.2.17.172) - 14 February 2005:

The production, set in dark haunting vaults complimented by the loud clunking of machinery and sporadic alien cries, I assume is designed to intrigue and frighten but the only frightening moment comes with the realisation that you have another hour and a quarter of this trite to sit through. Simply awful. ...

Read more and add your own review