Theatre Review || Punchdrunk’s Burnt City

Posted on August 31, 2022

It has been a long time since a Punchdrunk show has graced London’s stages and after ‘Sleep No More’ years ago, I couldn’t wait to see ‘Burnt City’. Now it was not quite the explosive homecoming that I was hoping for, it was still an enjoyable evening at the theatre.

The company’s new wraparound epic, directed by Felix Barrett and Maxine Doyle, fills two huge buildings in south-east London with scenes inspired by Greek mythology, specifically the fall of Troy. You start by entering through a “museum” filled with artifacts from the sacked city. Then you get to wander around both the city of Troy and the Greek camp. In some ways, there is everything that you expect from a Punchdrunk show: dreamlike and disorienting, baffling your senses as you push through drapes or shuffle down dimly-lit corridors.

We appear to have slipped into the Underworld where the inhabitants and sackers are doomed to repeat the fall of the city on a nerve-ending loop. We are watching this loop from multiple perspectives – including that of the Gods – I spent a considerable amount of time following around both Hades and Persephone.

Greece is all blue chill and sepulchral stateliness whilst Troy is passion, claustrophia a bustling slightly seedy place devoid now of people. Even the crowds behave differently in the two cities: in Mycenae they hover in the vast space in large groups; in Troy they split up, pursue individual characters and poke around bedrooms.

Punchdrunk shows are never particularly dialogue-driven, but this probably has the lowest word-count of any show I’ve seen. In my opinion, the biggest drawback is that there is almost no narrative-drive. The more that you know about Greek mythology the more that you can piece together the narrative and discover Easter eggs in the set. But if your knowledge of mythology is sparse you will just have to wander the sets and marvel at the choreography. The show is unforgettably stylish, but I found the very scarce narrative contributed to a lack of momentum in the piece.

The best moments of the show, in my opinion, were the two most narratively driven moments. When the Greek troops arrive at the gates of Troy, a group of men move towards a desperate huddle of Trojan women, one of whom is strung up, half-naked and bloodied. The terror and tragedy – of female sacrifice and male violation – pervades the vast room. The other moment being the end of the cycle before the loop starts over again – in the Greek camp we see all the souls of the Lost City and the Greek troops move in a frantic and tortured dance of the dead presided over by Hades and Persephone. I needed a a few more moments like this to make the show more full.

Visit for the atmosphere and the choreography, not the plot.

Burnt City is located at One Cartridge Place, London, SE18 6ZR. Tickets are on sale here. The run time is 3 hours but at any point in time you can leave the show and sit in the bar.