JOHN NATHAN
Your kitchen
FROM THE venue, you would be correct to infer that this is theatre for an age when playhouses went dark. Created by audio wizards Darkfield, whose co-artistic directors are immersive specialists David Rosenberg and Glen Neath, Double is created for an audience of two — preferably a couple who are in a long-term relationship.
Darkfield specialise in shows that take place in lightless spaces such as a shipping container. What images you see are conjured in the mind and triggered by sound through headphones. The same is true with this 20-minute audio thriller, broadcast via an app downloaded on to a smartphone by each participant.
As the moment of performance approaches, tension is ratcheted up with messages that count down to the start. A computerised female voice declares that the event is live. We are listening to something called Darkfield Radio, whose catchy, tuneless jingle promises “no news, no music, no opinion”.
But there is music; the kind of audio wallpaper that generates foreboding precisely because it was composed to soothe. Follow the instructions, close your eyes, and you’re both in… another kitchen with a radio, footsteps, a clock and a voice that informs you the person opposite is no longer the trusted partner with whom you sat down, but a replacement.
Rosenberg was an early pioneer of binaural three-dimensional sound technology in theatre. So I wouldn’t blame him if he felt a smidgeon of resentment when the technique was used to such acclaim by Simon McBurney in The Encounter.
The result is sound that you can almost feel. For the technically curious, recordings are usually made by placing microphones into the ears of a mannequin head. So what the model “hears” is later conveyed in a way that transports the living listener to the environment where the sound originated. In McBurney’s case, an Amazon mosquito is so present that the urge to swat it away is almost overpowering. In this show, ambient sound from your own kitchen becomes difficult to differentiate from the audio being piped into your head. And the experience is all the better for the uncertainty.
But where the emphasis with McBurney is on storytelling, Rosenberg’s chief talent lies in creating environments. Here, a buzzing fly, footsteps on a creaky floor and a shattering glass could each trigger the reflex that opens your eyes. But don’t let it. The result is like entering a parallel universe, a kind of String Theory otherness that turns the familiar into something identical, but also chillingly malign.
To experience it for yourself, go to darkfield.org/radio — it’s available until August 1