The Viewing At Ninth Life: Immersive Theatre Experience Provides Ample Reason To Visit Catford

The Viewing At Ninth Life: Immersive
Theatre Experience Provides Ample
Reason To Visit Catford
The Viewing, Ninth Life ★★★★☆
BY ALICE GRAHAME

  Photo: Ali Wright

South-east London can feel like something of a wasteland when it comes to cultural
opportunities, so an experimental immersive theatre experience at a new venue in Catford
brings with it a certain amount of intrigue.

The venue is Ninth Life, run by the creatively-inclined Laine Pub Company. It features
ambitious artistic elements more associated with summer music festivals: a large
community mural, papier mache animal sculptures, an LED hula-hoop act, a pair of

walkabout performers dressed as a mad scientist and a genetically-modified shrimp and, on
the night we visited, a DJ set from festival favourite Jimmi Needles.

  Photo: Ali Wright

The pub’s Artistic Director Dr Claire MacNeill has brought in creative talent from the likes
of Boomtown and Wilderness, and improvisers from the Crystal Maze Live Experience, to a
huge Victorian bar on an uninspiring corner of a Lewisham trunk road.

Being inexperienced in immersive theatre escape games, and unsure what the typical
audience demographic is, the health and safety waiver form we're handed on arrival does
little to quell our nerves.

Photo: Ali Wright

We're introduced to Morgan Turnkey, an estate agent with exclusive sales rights to a new
development above the pub, and are cast as the potential buyers. We're then whisked
through a secret door, Alice in Wonderland-style, into another world, and propelled on an
adventure through a labyrinth of magical spaces, each one holding clues to a mystery for us
to solve. A cast of brilliant young performers is on hand to either guide or confuse us. The
challenge, created by Benjamin Tucker of Buckbuck Games, keeps us enthralled as we work
our way through a web of puzzles.

Photo: Ali Wright

The nine spaces, designed by Natasha Coverdale, are lovingly decorated to delight the
senses. In one an enormous caged pink fluffy cat purrs seductively. In another — a wood-
panelled gin palace — a steam-punk mad-hatter generously offers drinks strong enough to
entice even the shyest audience members to discover their theatrical side.

Photo: Ali Wright

The team has done a fantastic job creating a show that brings some wonderful festival
magic to the city, and one of the best nights out in Catford... ever.

The Viewing, Ninth Life, 167 Rushey Green, Catford, SE6 4BD. Tickets £25, booking until 29 June
2019 (Friday and Saturday only).

Last Updated 23 April 2019

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