Review: DARKFIELD at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park

Image: DARKFIELD

Following their residency at Shoreditch Town Hall earlier this year, DARKFIELD returns to London with a bumper line-up of four shipping container shows - ARCADE, FLIGHT, COMA and EULOGY. Taking over a corner of Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park across October and early November, this collection of 360-degree sound experiences delivered through headphones in the pitch black invites guests to embrace the darkness and explore dream-like worlds that examine everything from free will to quantum mechanics.

FLIGHT

Photo: Mihaela Bodlovic

Set within a cross-section of a commercial aeroplane cabin, complete with a laminated safety card, working seatbelts, tray tables and overhead luggage compartments, FLIGHT invites audiences to experience two parallel realities at once. Taking inspiration from the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics and the Schrödinger's Cat thought experiment (in which an animal inside a closed box is both dead and alive until observed), it places the audience into the role of the metaphorical cat, as both their death and survival play out in parallel, unobserved by everyone outside of the plane.

Depending on your resolve, the above description is either going to be appealing or a terrifying proposition – and out of all the shows DARKFIELD has on offer during this London residency, FLIGHT is easily the most intense, helped in large part by having the most impactful motion effects. There's a persistent rumble of engines during take-off; moments of turbulence cause the cabin to jolt around, and of course, as the reality in which audiences don't survive plays out, the intensity of these effects ramps up considerably. While the show takes place in complete darkness, fleeting flashes of light through the aeroplane's windows help sell the illusion of flight even further, illuminating both the cabin and its seated passengers.

FLIGHT's use of binaural audio is perhaps the strongest of this residency's four shows, as the moments in which the chaos and carnage of the plane's destruction envelop its captive audience are rendered in terrifyingly realistic detail, with the sound of the fuselage ripping apart and the cabin being pummelled by the outside air becoming almost deafening.

Even during FLIGHT's calmer moments, there's still plenty to raise the heart rate, including a chorus of crying babies (arguably worse than death), problematic passengers, and some pretty terse flight attendants whispering in your ear - all delivered through the show's excellent binaural soundscape.

While the odds of being in a real-life plane crash are incredibly low, FLIGHT is a vivid reminder that every time we fly, we're placing our trust in people and things beyond our control. There's very little we can do to ensure our safety, besides making sure our tray tables are in their upright position and obeying the fasten seatbelt sign.

★★★★

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COMA

Photo: Mihaela Bodlovic

COMA, which first premiered in 2019, invites guests to enter a collective dream as part of a collective medical experiment. Lying in a whitewashed bunk bed, barely big enough to stretch out in, each participant is prompted to ingest a white pill laid out by their bed and slip away into a state of unconsciousness. A male voice slowly counts down from 10 and asks us to focus on remembering the details of the space, as the lights fade and total darkness takes over.

Easily the most claustrophobic of DARKFIELD's offerings, thanks to the tight sleeping arrangements, COMA takes great delight in toying with its audience, keeping them on edge throughout. Through headphones, the voice of the Doctor - which acts as the driving force throughout the experiences - constantly moves around the space. At first, it appears they're in the far corners of the room before moments later appearing alongside you, seemingly bending down to whisper into your ear.

In the background, hushed conversations from the other patients and staff members imply there's movement happening throughout the space, despite everyone being confined to their bunks. Nurses open and close curtains around you, offering little in the way of privacy and protection against whatever forces are at play within the facility.

Alongside mention of people's perfumes, or the broken coffee machine, come matching smells, pumped directly into the container, and a small sliding shutter beside your head seemingly opens and closes at regular intervals, as if you're being observed up close.

While COMA encourages participants to enter into a meditative state, there's so much going on around you; you're never able to truly relax into your surroundings, and if anything, you're more on edge than when you first entered. By the show's climax, it's hard to tell if what you're experiencing has been curated as part of the show or was a figment of your imagination, as you lie immobilised.

★★★

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EULOGY

Photo: Mihaela Bodlovic

Sitting upon a single pillow inside individual laundry roll cages, EULOGY has audience members exploring the endless corridors and rooms of a labyrinthine hotel. As always in a DARKFIELD show, they're in total darkness and wearing headphones, but the show's opening moments offer up a mechanic not present in either COMA or FLIGHT - the ability to respond to questions with simple answers, picked up through a microphone on each audience member's headphones.

Accompanying each audience member on their audio-based journey is their assigned Companion, who both 'moves' them through the space and offers reassurances and guidance throughout (all delivered through whispers). In typical DARKFIELD fashion, exactly what's going on within the hotel is never made explicitly clear. All of the hotel's companions appear to be racing each other to get to the hotel's deeper levels as quickly as possible, but exactly what's required and involved remains elusive throughout. Try as you might to wrap your head around what's going on, you're always on the back foot, even though you're meant to be in control of your journey.

On a technical level, EULOGY does an incredible job of immersing you in the show's imaginary world. As you descend deeper and deeper into the subterranean hotel, your laundry cage gently vibrates, and the sound of lift doors opening is accompanied by a gust of air, signifying your arrival in another part of the hotel. While comments from your companion and other hotel staff about how the air gets thicker the deeper you go, thankfully, aren't recreated, the cumulative effect of the binaural audio and pre-recorded performances certainly makes it feel like it is. The mind's a crazy thing...

★★★½

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ARCADE

Photo: Mihaela Bodlovic

The latest DARKFIELD production, ARCADE, rounds off their London residency. We reviewed ARCADE earlier in the year during their Shoreditch Town Hall takeover. Read an extract below, with our full review linked underneath.

"Taking control of Milk, an amnesic avatar dropped into the middle of an ongoing war between the North Block and South Block, guests respond to questions and prompts by pressing the single button on the panel of their individual arcade machine to answer 'Yes', with no response signalling 'No'. In addition, there's a coin slot and return tray to facilitate 'paying' for items such as guns and access to areas that are otherwise off-limits. They're all pretty limited ways of interacting with the story as it develops, but for something so basic, the paths it leads you down are branching and varied.

Within ARCADE, these 'Yes' or 'No' decisions can have drastic consequences. A wrong answer can result in your avatar being killed at a moment's notice (something we found out less than a minute into our playthrough), and the trajectory of your story can veer off in a wildly different direction from what other guests are experiencing without you even realising how it happened.

Violence is near enough guaranteed within the world of ARCADE, regardless of whether you try to be a pacifist or mercenary, and with every bullet fired comes some practical effects built into the arcade machine that remove the barrier between what you hear and what you feel. There's a tension and anxiety built into the show's sound design that only amplifies as you get deeper into the experience, and every decision begins to carry more weight."

Review: ARCADE by DARKFIELD

★★★★

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DARKFIELD's COMA, FLIGHT, EULOGY and ARCADE are at Mandeville Place in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park until 2nd November 2025. Tickets for each experience are priced from £13.50 per person, with discounts available if booking multiple shows at once. To find out more and book tickets, visit darkfield.org/london2025