Crisis? What Crisis? An immersive and complex adventure

Immersive theatre is a hard thing to get right. You have to complete throw your audience into another world in order to make them forget the real world outside. Crisis? What Crisis? at COLAB Factory somehow makes this look easy - whilst also filling your head with all manner of puzzles.

Crisis? What Crisis? is an immersive theatre piece where every decision the audience makes affects the outcome of the show. It it very much reminded me of plying a choose your own adventure story. Every small action could massively impact the story of the overall piece and we all had to sacrifice things in order to stop larger elements of the story from going wrong.

In the case of Crisis? What Crisis? the audience were made up of various political professionals, aiming to help the Labour government survive a vote of no confidence in 1979. It was a theme I had very little knowledge of but clearly many other audience members came fully equipped.

This experience is most impacted not by the actors necessarily but actually by the rest of the audience you’re playing with. When I went I found that some people became very passionate about the game - to the point where I assumed they had been a part of the production! A lot of people had much more knowledge of the era and it’s political climate which was very helpful for making the right decisions and so from that respect I felt a little useless as it didn’t seem there was much that I could bring to the team.

The small things I got to do, such as authorising the use of a helicopter and making place settings for an important meeting, were interesting and adrenaline filled, however there were definitely points when I had no idea what people were talking about and everyone was rushing around me with papers and documents.

It should be noted that this piece feels more like a puzzle or escape room combined with theatre. There was nothing passive about the storyline - every decision had an affect and therefore as an audience we felt fully responsible for every situation that was created.

Events like this can find it so hard to keep everyone engaged and therefore I thought it was a nice touch that they also had themed seating areas where people could rest if everything became a bit overwhelming, as well as a couple of characters who weren’t as involved with the politics of the game and could therefore provide more light entertainment for those, like me, who struggled to keep up with everything.

I think the piece lacked a little cohesion at times. It certainly felt like people were making very important decisions without consulting with the whole group. When it came to announcing all of our policy changes at the end, the vast majority of decisions I wasn’t even aware of because I hadn’t been present for those conversations. It would have been nice if more decisions could have been made as a collective group as it did seem like those who got particularly enthused were able to steam ahead of the rest of us at times.

Overall, I thought Crisis? What Crisis? was a really interesting night out however I think it is essential for puzzle-solving immersive theatre like this, that you have a passion or prior knowledge for the theme of the piece already as things probably won’t be clear enough to those who enter with no clue. That being said, the team did a wonderful job of trying to accommodate for everyone and keep everyone involved and the night, no matter how little I understood, was incredibly entertaining.

5 Star Rating: **** 4 Stars

To See or Not To See? To See