Tag Archives: Amelia Stephenson

BRIDGE COMMAND

★★★

Bridge Command

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BRIDGE COMMAND at the Bridge Command

★★★

“complex and polished enough to build a community and keep them coming back for more”

Bridge Command is part escape room part video game, where participants must work as a team to captain a space ship and complete a fully immersive sci-fi mission.

The world is meticulous, if incomprehensible. Set in a distant future in outer space, participants are members of an intergalactic navy, who must fight alien pirates and navigate high stakes crises. Fans of Star Trek will rejoice, it’s a chance to be part of this fantasy world. For those less familiar with classic sci-fi tropes, some of the jargon is hard to follow. However, this is the kind of experience where a fan could keep returning, with many missions and different roles on offer.

On our mission, we must visit a space port to retrieve a data-pad for our home base. We are all assigned roles, with different responsibilities on board. Some of the team are familiar with the world, already able to excel at the game. While we do receive extensive training, it’s somewhat daunting to a beginner. While most escape rooms deploy a range of skills, and have obvious rules to the world, Bridge Command is more chaotically plotted. It is exciting though, the stakes are high, if not entirely clear.

There is a charming eye to detail. On arrival we don navy overalls and are asked if it’s our first time teleporting. We travel through a ‘teleportation device’ where the startling light show leaves no doubt at the impressive level of tech that will be involved throughout. The bar gives us drinks in flasks, strapped around our suits. Then our team is introduced, and the mission begins. We are ushered through room after room, shown an astonishing array of well thought out immersive space craft and bombarded with the lore of the world. This is where I get a bit lost, but for some of the team it’s clearly a thrilling chance to play.

It is easy to see that Bridge Command is a dream come true for fans of video games, sci fi, and role-play. The world building and enthusiastic commitment to character from the performers makes the experience feel very real and as we come under fire from enemy spaceships, it is genuinely stressful.

For me, there was too much to learn in quite a short time and then the actual game play felt confusing as the aim wasn’t clear. However, it would work well as a team building experience, or for those who’ve always secretly wished they could command their own space mission. This experience is complex and polished enough to build a community and keep them coming back for more.


BRIDGE COMMAND at the Bridge Command

Reviewed on 15th October 2024

by Auriol Reddaway

Photography by Alex Brenner

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More reviews from Auriol:

KING TROLL (THE FAWN) | ★★★★★ | NEW DIORAMA THEATRE | October 2024
COLIN HOULT: COLIN | ★★★★ | SOHO THEATRE | September 2024
THE ROCKY HORROR SHOW | ★★★★ | DOMINION THEATRE | September 2024
VITAMIN D | ★★★★ | SOHO THEATRE | September 2024
BITTER LEMONS | ★★★½ | PARK THEATRE | August 2024
ENG-ER-LAND | ★★★ | KING’S HEAD THEATRE | July 2024
SH!T-FACED A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM | ★★★★ | LEICESTER SQUARE THEATRE | July 2024
VISIT FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN | ★★ | HAMPSTEAD THEATRE | July 2024
MEAN GIRLS | ★★★★★ | SAVOY THEATRE | July 2024
SKELETON CREW | ★★★★ | DONMAR WAREHOUSE | July 2024

BRIDGE COMMAND

BRIDGE COMMAND

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Illicit Secrets – 4 Stars

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Illicit

Illicit Secrets

COLAB Factory

Reviewed – 20th August 2018

★★★★

“impressive visual verisimilitude and accents beamed straight from the forties”

 

In a disused rug factory in South London, the intrigues of the wartime codebreakers of Bletchley Park are woven into an immersive version of this familiar narrative. A ground floor room and basement are transformed into the famous stables in which the German Enigma machine ciphers were cracked. Here, the audience mingles with heroic figures such as Alan Turing, Joan Clarke and Dilly Knox, cracking codes together and playing chess, after which the strands of hidden affairs, espionage, sickness and forbidden sexuality intertwine with appropriate cleverness, before resolving over a glass of ginger wine.

The production company, Mechanical Thought, blends game mechanics and puzzling with theatre, as if immersion isn’t novelty enough, but it’s a seamless fit. The nature of the genre means that no two experiences are the same, but in Hut 6, I can vouch for the calm yet commanding performance of Tom Black as Gordon Welchman, the epitome of pipe-smoking ultra-intelligence, as he assisted our group (eventually) crack vital intercepts. These were rushed in by a breathless Amelia Stephenson as Joan Clarke, in real life the longest-serving member of the Bletchley Park team but, since various film versions, better known for being Turing’s short-suffering fiancé.

As the evening progresses, it transpires that all the casting is excellent, with impressive visual verisimilitude and accents beamed straight from the forties. David Alwyn is a crepuscular Dilly Knox, Timothy Styles angsts for England as Alan Turing and Beth Jay blushes brilliantly as Mavis Lever. Christopher Styles’ direction avoids any sense of spoof, evoking the repressed yet militarised demeanour of the period. There is plenty of ‘Fritz’, Old man’ and ‘Doodad’, but with clipped delivery and authentic hairstyles, all are wholly plausible.

The COLAB Factory appears to have a fan club of regulars and it’s not hard to see why. The space may be cluttered, smelly and a little short of oxygen when rooms are full, but the proximity to the performances creates a visceral sense of involvement. There are short-comings, inevitably. The high standard of the scripted parts puts pressure on the improvisational elements, which falter in pace, though not in characterisation. The art direction is thorough, but on a budget, and the location not ideal. However, these are all details that will improve, especially if they manage to take the production, as hoped, to Bletchley Park itself.

 

Reviewed by Dominic Gettins

Photography by Paul Russenberger 

 

COLAB FACTORY

Illicit Secrets

COLAB Factory until 28th August

 

Related
Previously reviewed at this venue
Hidden Figures: WW2 | ★★★★★ | March 2018
For King & Country | ★★★★ | April 2018

 

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