Prepare to unleash latent yearnings you may be harbouring to tread the boards when visiting COLAB Theatre’s production of Bertie Watkins’ ‘The West’. In an age of inclusivity, opting for an interactive genre is a theatrical winner, especially when audience members enter fully into the world of a Wild West where gunslingers stand trial in Ulverston Town, writes Carolyn Hart Taylor.
Entering COLAB’s building is virtually entering ‘The Wild West’. Suddenly you’re in a saloon bar in Ulverston, playing cards and singing West Virginia. Spaghetti Western tunes are whistled ominously, the town marshal arrives alerting folk of a train robbery at Blackrock, and henceforth we are genuinely involved, thirsty for more cowboy action.
Events develop, and working collaboratively we interrogate our gunslinger in jail, using his sweetheart Belle Star as collateral. As a group, we come together to vote for bar, church, bordello, farm and cowboy boot store. We even get to spend the ‘honest’ dollars earned for restoring justice to Ulverston.
A division amongst the townsfolk in court meant hollering ‘lynch him’, or ‘free him’ as the judge delivers a wonderfully comical trial.
All the actors did a grand job of strutting around in Stetsons and chaps whilst directing events in a way that encourages us to jump on board.
Die-hard Western fans partake in the obligatory shoot-out with the eight shots supplied that they are advised to use wisely!
Most ran with it, adopting a Southern drawl as they talked to actors, others were more low-key, but by being there, everyone is part of Ulverston Town and all part of the Wild West!
Prompting us to examine what we have created is a Matrix-inspired theme that shakes us out of our cowboy existence and into the world of the ‘blue pill’ that asks us to question what is reality, and if we make our own, can we change it?
Interestingly, audience members being instrumental to events share responsibility for the production’s success, so maybe that’s why some became so involved, as well as the fact that it is sheer good fun being part of the cowboy/cowgirl experience and abandoning reality to enter the experience whilst deciding how far you are willing to go in it.
Ingenious immersive concept, total escapism into an alternate reality where anything can happen. COLAB Tavern, 16 Harper Road, London SE1 6AD until October 1st. Times: Weds – Sat 7.15pm, Saturday matinees 2.30pm. Admission: £28.50.
Booking: www.colabtheatre.co.uk
