They've Stolen Our Memories - Time To Find Out What They've Taken In This Interactive Theatre Experience
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We meet our four fellow interactive theatre participants in a pub near London Bridge and after introducing ourselves we get a text message asking us to meet in the nearby park. There's a brief moment of confusion before we realise we all have the same message and it's how this evening begins — good thing we didn't tell Whatsapp to block that contact.
After a short time loitering and being eyeballed by a wandering patrolwoman in a security vest, our phantom texter sneaks up on us. She reveals that we've all had parts of memories erased and she wants to blow the lid on this whole memory wiping cover up. We don't remember signing up to have our memories erased, but then, we wouldn't would we? Also, what's been erased, is it something we'd rather forget?
Before we can say Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind we're whisked off by our conspiracy theorist Sarah on a fast walking wander through the local area. She's full of nervous energy and her paranoia is infectious — to the point where we expect the Deliveroo riders zooming past us may be in on the conspiracy. We nearly accost a man on his phone on a street corner before we realise he's playing Pokemon Go and definitely isn't part of the experience.
The frenetic pace doesn't let up as we're whisked between indoor and outdoor locations, solve clues, hack into a company's mainframe and discover that a shadowy organisation has lots of data on us. It's harvested from our actual online profiles, so feels scarily real as we're confronted with our own Facebook photos — some of which we don't recognise, are these the memories we've been robbed of?
The whole experience is around 90 minutes, the intimate numbers and the fantastic acting from the lead means we're fully embroiled in the plot as it develops around us. Now that we're in a post Cambridge Analytica world the show resonates more strongly than it would have a few years ago, and the production company have tapped into that fear brilliantly. Unlike the procedure we may or may not have been exposed to, we won't be forgetting this evening any time soon.
Recollection by Any One Thing is on until 30 April. Tickets are £30 each. All images (c) Any One Thing.
Last Updated 05 March 2019
