Double review – unsettling audio that turns your home into a sci-fi dystopia

Available onlineDarkfield’s eerie two-person sound experience is a gothic horror that ingeniously overcomes the usual pitfalls of online theatre‘This is supposed to be a controlled space, a safe space,” says Christopher Brett Bailey at the start of Double, and he’s right. We are not in some unfamiliar theatre, like the shipping container where Darkfield has conducted similar audio experiments, but in our own kitchen. We’re meant to feel protected here, so it’s all the more alarming when the play sets you on edge. It’s as if your very home has been transformed.This is how it works. You and a companion download a smartphone app. At the appointed hour, you sit opposite each other over the kitchen table and put on headphones. Instructed to close your eyes, you have an intense 20-minute sound experience that has the immersive quality of Simon McBurney’s The Encounter. At one point I’m convinced Brett Bailey is not just whispering in my ear but leaning on my shoulder. Continue reading... https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2020/jul/15/double-review-darkfield #theatre #stage #culture