‘The Lost Hours’ Provides a Short but Beautiful Dreamlike Diversion (Review)

With each year that passes, the VAULT Festival in London continues to extend its domain, reaching further into the edges of Leake Street beneath Waterloo Station. Side-rooms and semi-permanent pop-ups parked in alleys are now annexed into the Festival’s fiefdom, and it is in front of a shipping container at the very end of Leake Street that I find the current farthest reach of influence.

The entrance to the show I’m about to see isn’t much — just a vestibule from where the tech box is run and a black curtain, behind which I assume will be the performance. The Lost Hours is the London debut of an interactive performance devised by Canadian company 8ROJO, based on the childhood memories of artist Salvador Dalí and his sister. It is built for only one audience member at a time, so I’m alone as I mill around the entrance, waiting to be invited in. Right on time, I’m waved up by a friendly assistant who advises me that I’ll be sat in a wheelchair. I’m instructed to close my eyes once I’m settled and not to open them until I’m tapped on the shoulder. I ask if this is intended to be a horror performance and he assures me that it isn’t, that no one will intentionally try to scare me. The wheelchair appears just inside the black curtain and I settle myself in, with my backpack on my lap as there’s nowhere else to store it. I clutch it as I close my eyes and the wheelchair begins to roll back — I’m a giant scaredy-cat and I’ve been intentionally misled before.

In my private darkness I’m suddenly disarmed by the delicate scent of the space: I can’t place it but it’s spicy and herbal, unlikely to be accidental. My chair spins around, weaving from side to side, and disorienting me. Finally, I feel the unmistakable touch of a hand on my shoulder and I open my eyes to a glowing misshapen and melted face of a mask hovering before me.

I am terrified.

Those familiar with Dalí’s work will recognize the surrealism that suffuses The Lost Hours: the transformation of people into bulging or withered goblins reflecting a warped reality. I am surrounded on all sides — sides which are constantly shifting as my chair is pulled around — by masked movement artists who are performing for me. Once I get over the initial shock, I’m charmed, intoxicated no longer by the perfume of the space but by the quality of sound and the performance which ensues from it. Having both attended and performed inside shipping containers in the past, I’m aware that soundproofing is a major challenge and I am struck by the lushness and intensity of the design as well as the scarcity of audible bleed from without. It isn’t completely airtight (a police siren whizzes by on a side street at one point), but for the most part the din of rush-hour central London is quieted.

Get Shelley Snyder’s stories in your inbox

Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.

SubscribeSubscribe

A hand reaches out to me and I slowly take it, expecting an invitation of some sort. However the warm palm only lingers a moment and then withdraws to offer me a tiny model of a house to peer into. Unfortunately, my backpack is in the way now, and the miniature can’t sit properly on my lap, so I can’t see into it as intended. I wish at this moment that a locker had been offered beforehand so that I could be less encumbered, more exposed and vulnerable and open to the performance which is going on in front of me. The model is removed and the dancers return, with masks and players changed, and my chair spins again.

The space, while not notably large, seems cavernous as the black room is broken up by a series of gauzy white curtains that hang from above. As the chair is moved, so too are the curtains lifted and shifted aside to allow me to pass. The performers carry lights in their hands and use these to produce a scrim effect through the curtains: at times making the walls seem solid and other times invisible. I feel an airy vertigo take me as the sound ebbs and flows along with the shifting landscape and my own movement in the chair.

A parade of characters flows past through the haze that fills the container: a young Dalí and his sister, as well as people with heads which resemble his trademark melting clocks, houses, larger-than-life animal skulls. It’s all a happy dream from childhood, where the things that populate my imagination are all real and interested in me but are living out their own stories. At last I am confronted by a menacing creature that was borne of the fire that broke out in Dalí’s home near the end of his life. I am stricken by an onslaught of angry sound and a falling apart of the queer dreamland. A siren begins to blare and the creature serves as my escort as the chair is swiftly taken back to the entrance and parked. The sound is unbearable and I realize I’m being cast out; I stand and leave to escape the noise.

At only 15 minutes long, The Lost Hours is an accommodating stop-off after work on a weeknight, or a delicious amuse-bouche before a more lengthy performance at the Festival. 8ROJO walks a tenuous line with this production: the show works excellently for a single audience member but extending any longer than 15 minutes would require a significant upcharge for tickets in order to cover operating costs (should the company continue to develop the performance), and at £11.00 a ticket they’re already hovering near the upper boundary for what Festival guests will pay for a short show.

The Lost Hours is a charming distraction, a solo dark ride along the edge of the Festival. Audience members have no bearing on the execution of the performance and have little else to do but sit, watch, and make sure their feet don’t drag on the floor while the wheelchair is moved. The Lost Hours does boast an environmental experience: a well-designed use of the site at hand and a full engagement of the senses. Should 8ROJO return to the UK and secure funding for a more elaborate set (preferably in permanent residence somewhere they don’t have to share space with other festival shows) and choose to more deeply explore the elements of agency, they’d have all the marks of a real contender in the London immersive scene.

The Lost Hours has concluded its run at VAULT Festival.

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.