New Neighbors, Old Mysteries Greet You In ‘Welcome Home’ (Review)

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve seen many immersive theatre companies turn to Zoom and other online mediums to find some way to put on a show. Those shows aim to recreate parts of the standard immersive experience with things like interactions with actors and branching pathways. But the one thing they’ve been unable to capture, for obvious reasons, is the tactile aspect. So, with Welcome Home, Shine On Collective trades the actor-participant interaction for something more hands-on.

Welcome Home is a mix of a puzzle box (think Hunt-A-Killer) and a radio drama, filtered through the lens of immersive theatre. The premise is simple, you’ve just moved to a new suburban town and the locals have given you a welcome box and a meal (for this review, No Proscenium did not receive the meal portion of the experience). Like many puzzle boxes there’s a mystery to be uncovered here and this one centers around the man who previously owned your home, Eli, and the other people who live in the pleasant (or is it?) suburb.

Learning about and solving that mystery takes two main forms in Welcome Home: puzzles and phone calls. The puzzles throughout the box are varied, including one that requires coloring with crayons, and feel tuned to a good difficulty. They’re hard enough to provide some challenge, but not easy enough that the box is a complete walk in the park. Many of these puzzles lead to phone numbers, which brings us to the second part of Shine On’s show in a box.

The phone calls are why this can feel like a sort of audio drama. Don’t worry, you don’t need to actually talk on the phone, but you will hear calls and voicemails from the town’s residents. The calls are well acted and build out both story and setting where you’ll hear from a surprisingly high number of your neighbors. Having audio be a core component of this experience actually reaches to the company’s roots: Shine On’s first Hollywood Fringe show was centered around an audio tour, and the company has used recorded audio in many of their live immersive works as the spine of the production.

Get Kevin Gossett’s stories in your inbox

Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.

SubscribeSubscribe

Those two parts and the ability to sift through the box makes for an effective experience. It’s nice to see a local immersive theatre company branch out into a new medium. And not just trying something new out, but doing it so effectively that Welcome Home could be confused with a puzzle box from companies who only make puzzle boxes. Everything feels high-quality and there are a few tricks along the way that echo things you might find in an escape room or immersive theatre show.

Even without the dinner, Welcome Home makes for a lovely date night or fun roommate hang activity. It lets you bring immersive theatre into your home, but provides a welcome break from screens with a show that you can safely physically interact with. And while this show has a limited run, its very nature as a “show in a box” would make it perfect for a more open-ended run.

Welcome Home runs September 18 and 19 as well as October 23 and 24.

Boxes are $80, including a dinner for two, or $120 for a dinner for four. Check their web site for service areas/pick up location.

NoPro is a labor of love made possible by our generous Patreon backers. Join them today!

In addition to the No Proscenium web site, our podcast, and our newsletters, you can find NoPro on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, in the Facebook community Everything Immersive, and on our Slack forum.

Office facilities provided by Thymele Arts, in Los Angeles, CA.