★★★

“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.

AUTUMN at Park Theatre

★★½

“Harry McDonald’s dialogue is snappy and Charlotte Vickers’ direction energetic, but little can save the meandering aimlessness of this story”

This new adaptation brings Ali Smith’s 2016 novel, which is widely viewed as ‘the first post-Brexit novel’ to the stage.

Across two timelines we follow 13-year-old Elisabeth Demand as she befriends her whimsical elderly neighbour Daniel Gluck and the same two characters, 20 years later as Daniel lies comatose in a care facility. There are also a couple of scenes which deviate into the fantastical. A scene between Daniel and his sister, which takes place in a dream world and a scene which details the life of 1960s pop artist Pauline Boty.

Harry McDonald’s dialogue is snappy and Charlotte Vickers’ direction energetic, but little can save the meandering aimlessness of this story, which follows an unlikeable and uninteresting protagonist.

Grace Venning’s set design is playful, props are pulled from drawers and a chaise longue is propped against a backdrop of autumnal trees. There’s innovative use of plastic dust sheets, especially in an evocation of The Tempest. It’s this moment too where Ali Hunter’s lighting design comes into force. Jamie Lu’s sound is most interesting in its subtle hum of the care facility.

There are some glittering moments. Daniel and his sister, who charmingly calls him her summer brother, dance around each other while she’s dressed in a suit of armour. Gary Lilburn as Daniel is joy encapsulated. With a mischievous glint in his eye, he embodies the aging bohemian, making it achingly clear that this story should follow him, by far the most interesting character. This scene particularly sparkles, in part because of clever movement direction from Vickers, but also because of the stunning performance from Nancy Crane. She multi roles throughout the show, some highlights being the smug bureaucratic Post Office worker, the knowing Eastern European cleaner and the New York psychotherapist. She gives each of these women a depth and realism and brings an effortless wit. For much of the show she watches on from the side-lines, a peculiar directorial choice, but her reactions are scene stealing. Lilburn and Crane’s playfulness and joy in this scene is a delightful respite from the gloom that hangs over much of the play.

Both Rebecca Banatvala and Sophie Ward are also strong, as mother and daughter, it’s just that their characters are hard to pinpoint. Elisabeth is utterly joyless, with a single-minded focus on Gluck, which is never fully untangled. Her mother is under explored, and her state of the nation monologues feel tired, nearly a decade on. While ostensibly a political commentary, nothing new or fresh is discussed. Characters bemoan their tiredness with the system, the liars, the current situation. There are comments on racist graffiti and the migrant crisis but it feels tangential to the main narrative. This play doesn’t fully decide what it is, whether it’s a family drama or a state of the nation lament. And it’s not clear what, in 2024, it is adding to the conversation about Brexit, which is relevant or interesting to today.

BRIDGE COMMAND at the Bridge Command

★★★

“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:

BRIDGE COMMAND

BRIDGE COMMAND

AUTUMN at Park Theatre

★★½

“Harry McDonald’s dialogue is snappy and Charlotte Vickers’ direction energetic, but little can save the meandering aimlessness of this story”

AUTUMN at Park Theatre

Reviewed on 18th October 2024

by Auriol Reddaway

Photography by Harry Elletson

Previously reviewed at this venue:

AUTUMN

AUTUMN