‘WE STILL FAX’ Offers The Whole Package (The NoPro Review)

London’s ANTS Theatre delivers a multisensory treat straight to your home

There is a very large box in my living room, and in a far remove from this past year’s online ordering spree, I have no idea what’s inside it. The reinforced and logo’d cardboard crate arrived via private courier, has a lithium battery warning stickered to the lid, and it’s heavy.

Heavy enough to feel fun.

Throughout the lockdown period in the UK I haven’t managed to take in any mail-based immersive experiences; all the shows I’ve seen have been either via Zoom or in the socially-distanced outdoors. Many of the advertisements I’ve seen for mail-based performances have seemed more lightweight in the sense of physical scale: promises of correspondence via letter (or at most small parcels) with a mysterious party, with maybe a phone call thrown in for good measure. At no point have I seen anything like what ANTS Theatre has just delivered to my house: a whole-ass fax machine.

The premise of WE STILL FAX is that an alternate dimension which never developed the internet is reaching out to us for help — therefore, all the communications must come via telephone or fax. God help me, I thought we’d left this relic in the 90’s where it might be consigned to a dignified and dusty place in the annals of technologic history. But no: along with its continued usage in American healthcare even in this the year of our Lord 2021 (which I’d be surprised if UK-based ANTS Theatre would even know, given how advanced the NHS is), one is now sitting in my house, bolted atop a mysterious clear case sporting several tempting buttons, padlocks, and complex antennae. I want to touch everything and nothing and I can’t wait to get started.

At the appointed hour set by ANTS, my partner and I open the instruction manual (a very slickly-designed pamphlet included in the box) and call the helpline to get the machine started. No internet is required at all for the equipment, though we do need to plug it in to the wall mains and activate an electronic signal booster. Once plugged in, the clear case lights up with a rainbow of color, a hidden sound box begins projecting some very cosmic sounds that put us in mind of a TARDIS, and we begin: the manual walks us through basic checks to ensure we know how to operate both the phone and fax features and it appears our efforts are “noticed” by the party on the other end of the line: we begin receiving phone calls and faxes — honest-to-god faxes — from another dimension through the machine.

The story progresses (no spoilers here, don’t worry) and the case becomes a puzzle-box: parts of it open to reveal hidden materials, tools to solve future clues are revealed. We continue to receive and send calls and faxes via the machine itself while the sound box underneath projects an atmospheric soundtrack and messages from the other side. The Help Desk occasionally calls us to make sure we’re happy with our interdimensional product and that we aren’t treating the machine cruelly, otherwise it might refuse to work — laughing, we admit that we may have harbored ugly thoughts about it being a fax machine and then apologize for leaving a laptop nearby where it might see its competition and get sulky. At some point the machine actually records us speaking and manages to play it back; we’re shocked and hardly recognize our own voices when we hear them. At the time of booking the performance came with a “flashing lights and smoke” warning and I spend much of the show wondering if perhaps the smoke was a red herring — to our delight (and swift opening of the windows), the warning is eventually proved genuine.

All this would be impressive enough on its own, but what’s particularly fun are the hidden Easter Eggs. Banking on the audience’s insatiable desire to play with this big fascinating toy, ANTS has included encouragement to try calling any number we see anywhere in the provided materials. Some numbers are easy to contact, but others require a bit more sleuthing to work out and we experience a rush of excitement whenever we get a response. I know for a fact we weren’t able to figure out at least two, and I wonder if there were even more we didn’t manage.

I don’t know how ANTS did it, apart from a lot of programming, scripting, and copious R&D. While the story itself is fine and the Help Desk actors are great at selling the realism, it is the device itself which absolutely steals the show. Delivered and collected by private courier (all arranged by ANTS) and packaged with a keen eye for user design and engagement, the machine is a delightful chocolate box of kinaesthetic engagement.

As fully one third of the price tag goes to postage alone, this show is an absolute steal for group value at £40 + £20 postage. It lasts for about two hours (plus extra time at the end to try to find more Easter Eggs) and though I never thought I’d say this with every year that takes us further away from 1999, it left me wanting to spend even more time fiddling around with a fax machine.

ANTS Theatre’s WE STILL FAX is on sale through June 18 and available in the United Kingdom. Tickets are £60 and include postage.

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