‘Viper Squad’ is A Plan That Comes Together (Review)

It’s Autumn 2020 and I’m logged in to a Zoom call from my couch in London, but I’m experiencing nostalgic whiplash as a parade of late-80’s American television commercials are playing on the host’s screen. The “holding room” for CtrlAlt_Repeat’s new production Viper Squad is a tinny crescendo of catchy choral jingles accompanying a parade of pastel shoulder pads, jettisoning me out of the bleak present and back in time to my childhood living room.

I’m giggling.

Viper Squad recruits its audience directly into their very own online paramilitary task force — an augmented-reality A-Team — and sets them to work defusing a delicate hostile takeover of a Wall Street bank in 1988, in a direct homage to the Hollywood action films and video games of the late 80’s.

As the performance begins and our commander inducts us into the squad, I note that some of the characters she introduces to us aren’t visible, indeed some are just voices over additional host feeds. What impresses me is that there is obvious live audio augmentation going on: our contacts in the field sound like their voices are relaying back to us over crackling radio waves. I believe in an instant that they’re busy operatives who can’t maintain visual feed in the course of performing their objectives. Some have an 8-bit display of their biometrics (heartbeat, vocal waves, a digital portrait) furthering the impression that we’re interacting with an arcade game character. The comedy element is strong as their personalities are all dialed up to 11, a firmly tongue-in-cheek representation of action film tropes. I’m still giggling.

There’s a small audience tonight — just four separate logins, with seven audience members total — and when we’re broken down into three core groups (“Negotiation,” “Technical,” and “Tactical”), it’s evident we’ll be getting a lot of personal attention throughout the experience. And so I do: I end up the only member of Tactical, which means that I get plenty of one-on-one time with the field operative when we move into breakout rooms, directly discussing the emerging intelligence and our field team’s movement directives before returning to the larger group where I make uncontested tactical decisions.

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One of the other groups ended up with the lion’s share of the seven audience members, so the members of the team are regularly rotated through control via the commander’s direction when Negotiation is needed. For the most part we each get a chance to make at least one important decision or interaction. There are one or two audience members who aren’t as keen at being in the spotlight, but given the low turnout, it’s difficult to leave room for a less-engaged attendee to fade into the background. Generally, the cast handles the reluctance with gentility and allows the attendee to step back, and they smooth over any clumsy accidents committed by the audience: in one case, a team member gives the wrong answer and is visibly disappointed in letting the group down butthe cast remains supportive and encouraging.

With CtrlAlt_Repeat selling up to 14 individual tickets per showing (with deals available for multiple attendees per household, resulting in possibly up to 20 persons per show), it may be that my experience was not indicative of the way the production was built; Viper Squad may be constructed with the expectation of larger groups (and the inherent challenges that come with) such as those I experienced in the troupe’s freshman production of Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Symmetric Mailshot. If so, less-involved audience members would have the space to sit back and enjoy the show without being pressured to answer the constant calls to action the way this performance necessitated; however, the more engaged audience member who seeks out immersive shows for the rush of individual attention and agency may not experience the pleasure I had in this particular performance in a bigger crowd.

With a cast of seven spanning two continents and an 8-hour time difference, some of whom double- or even triple-up on roles and some of whom are swing cast, CtrlAlt_Repeat’s seamless execution of digital presentation continues to be impressive, even more so after learning that Viper Squad had a rehearsal process of only two and a half weeks. The cast shows evident experience in immersive audience control and, on the whole, drives the narrative forward, though in some cases a few improvised responses could be interpreted as slightly hostile: at a few failing points, one character suggests we “choked under the pressure,” which is entirely in-character but not entirely encouraging to audience members experimenting with agency.

All in all CtrlAlt_Repeat’s sophomore production has shown evident growth over just three months: the supporting audio/visual design done by Rebekah Finch and David Alwyn floors me with its grainy, gritty detail. It’s an experience suited to a scaled-down Secret Cinema event delivered via Zoom — the only way my experience might have been improved would be to include more puzzle solving: clue-seeking engagement via some back-end web site or telephone calls, similar to their first production. If the experience is indeed meant for more people, this might help to boost individual agency. However, in a choice between spending three months building websites or designing more engaging A/V elements, I believe they made the right choice to make Viper Squad something new and special.

Viper Squad continues through November 22. Tickets are £19.46 — 27.54.

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