Special Edition: Viola's Room
A guide to Punchdrunk's latest (very dark) immersive
Hi friends. We’re not quite done with our exploration into foods, safety, and happiness, but this past weekend I went to British theatre company Punchdrunk’s newest show, Viola’s Room, and, finding nearly nothing online about how to approach it, I wanted to share with you. So, this will be a special edition only about this new immersive—how to prepare and what to know before you go. There will be no pictures because phones are not allowed in the experience, but I wouldn’t want to spoil it for you anyway—and you wouldn’t be able to see regardless. This show leans heavily on audio storytelling to guide you and help you find your way, using music and tone of voice to agitate or soothe you.
Viola’s Room is from the creators of absolute cult favorite Sleep No More, where the audience wears stark-white plague masks and follows characters from Shakespeare’s Macbeth through synchronous storytelling by multiple characters. These shows have very little in common.
In Viola’s Room you won’t be asked to wear a mask; in fact, you’ll be taking off your shoes and socks. The show is experienced fully barefoot, and when you enter, you’ll be asked to remove anything loose, anything that emits light like phones or smartwatches, and footwear. They’re returned at the end of the show.
After entering The Shed and getting your ticket scanned, groups of six are ushered into a darkened room (if your group is larger than six, expect to be broken up), and fitted for headphones with a small box of sound equipment you wear as a crossbody bag throughout the show. The first room is instructional—listen to it carefully. It will explain the hour of near-total darkness you’re about to experience, and that you should always follow the light. When a light turns on, follow it. When the lights turn off, stop moving, no matter where you are. And always stay with your group of six; this is your family now and you’re probably going to touch them accidentally a few times through the experience (if you flail like me).
Now the story begins. Your group will weave throughout corridors and spaces without light, that can be narrow and involve walking over unknown textures. The narrow hallways are soft, so if you worry you may not fit, I promise that’s not an issue. The floor surfaces and textures leave nothing you can trip on, so don’t worry about that either. But since you won’t be able to see the person in front of you, use the audio as your guide. The story of Viola’s Room is narrated expertly by Helena Bonham Carter (written by Booker Prize-shortlisted Daisy Johnson), so soothing in the first room (which features beds) that I nearly dozed off. It’s based on the 1901 story “The Moon Slave” by Barry Pain, about a princess escaping a life of stability for an obsession. It’s a good idea to read it ahead of time, especially if multitasking in the dark is difficult for you, as you might miss some of the really beautiful story while navigating the hallways. During soft moments in the princess’s life, the storytelling feels like a lullaby, in docile tones with dim lights creating shadows from whimsical cloud lamps overhead.
When the peace is broken in the story, HBC’s tone takes a turn, rushed whispers in your ear telling you to hurry or move quickly out of that scene. The background music speeds up and even though you see no danger, you feel the urgency to go forward into the total darkness ahead of you.
Other audio cues greet you in young Viola’s bedrooms. Woven through the princess tale we meet the girl who is reading that story and learn about her through her bedroom—the true sanctuary of middle-class teens. Books, music boxes, posters, and bedsheets all tell us that this is a child of the grunge ’90s. The room is always dim but there’s a hint of sadness besides that. It’s once again led by the soundtrack.
Brilliantly atmospheric, whenever we enter the spaces of the teen Viola, a ’90s playlist guides us: Soundgarden, Tori Amos, and the Smashing Pumpkins lead us through doors across Viola’s space, becoming more urgent as time goes on, more angsty. I couldn’t help but feel sympathetic to Viola, trading innocence for angst, remembering how that soundtrack felt to me the first time I heard it as a teen myself, and what it feels like now, in 2025. No matter how cozy the space felt, the music encouraged us to get up and move on.
There are no jump scares in this experience, but it can feel eerie and a little sad. The ending is somewhat inconclusive, and though there are heavy suggestions, it’s up to you to interpret the final room (on Reddit you’ll find vastly different thoughts). But the abruptness of the finale, while intentional, leaves you totally disoriented when you’re thrust back into the full light of The Shed after a full hour of quiet darkness.
In burlesque there’s a concept called musicality, which translates from the actual meaning of the word to more of a physical understanding of how your body moves on beat. I kept thinking of that during Viola’s Room—the way the atmosphere matched the sounds, and our movements followed in turn. The mix of background music, feature soundtrack, and HBC’s shifting tones are the show, with the visuals coming in second. There are scents too: the unmistakable musky teen bedroom smell, a slight burning, a woodsy musk. There are textures on your bare feet: sands, grasses, carpets, pillows. But it’s the sound that really moves the story. While there was an option for hearing-impaired guests, I did not try it and can’t speak to that version of the show. I do wonder if the show is as impactful and how that translates—so if you’ve tried it, I’d love to know more.
Two years ago, in a neuroscience of sound course, I dove into how different sounds within music were used by different early tribes to denote family and status and acceptance. You knew who you were by the sounds you made, and what felt right to you (a different form of musicality). I’m wildly simplifying this, but it’s continued throughout time, with specific sounds speaking to certain groups of people; think about the mainstream of pop and the niches of metal or chanting. The soundtrack of Viola’s Room calls to an elder millennial—and all of my group of six were elder millennials save for one Gen X—and reminds us of our most disorienting time, when we didn’t know where we belonged or what we should look like. HBC’s storytelling picks up from there, using that emotional touchpoint to walk us through the tale of a woman growing up in the wrong story. The connection creates a perfect experience.
All in all, if you’re expecting Sleep No More, this isn’t it. This is dreamier, faster, with no live actors. It’s a linear story to Sleep No More’s meandering tales. It’s well worth the $50 admission price to walk through the sounds of your formative years and, with Viola, consider your choices, your rights and wrongs, and your own fairytales.
If you’re looking for another immersive experience in New York, try Magic at the Clock Shop:
Did you experience Viola’s Room yet? What did the soundtrack feel like to you? How did the music encourage you to move? Let me know.
Goodnight, Commenters.
Don't forget Massive Attack! I struggled not to sing along (though I guess nobody except the backstage people would have heard me)