For the show, Punchdrunk transformed a vast building next door to Paddington Station into the forgotten world of Temple Studios, a legendary film powerhouse. Audiences are asked to step into the world of Temple Pictures where the Hollywood studio system meets a forgotten hinterland filled with dreamers who exist at the fringes of the movie industry. Here, celluloid fantasy clings to desperate realism and certainty dissolves into a hallucinatory world. This theatrical journey follows its protagonists along the precipice between illusion and reality.
The show has proved hugely popular with a celebrity crowd attracting visits from everyone from Lily Allen to Michael Sheen, Emily Blunt, Derren Brown, Matt Smith, Madonna, Adele, James Corden, Benedict Cumberbatch, Daisy Lowe, Zooey Deschanel, Marion Cotillard, Aaron Paul, Ellie Goulding and Kirsten Dunst. Both Florence Welch and Andrew Garfield have also given cameo appearances in the show.
The show has witnessed two marriage proposals from audience members along with an army of loyal fans, two of whom have been to the show an astonishing 48 times.
The Drowned Man: A Hollywood Fable is inspired by Büchner's fractured masterpiece Woyzeck and set in a seedy Hollywood underworld.
Led by Felix Barrett, Punchdrunk is the internationally acclaimed theatre company whose previous award-winning productions include Faust, The Masque of the Red Death, Tunnel 228, It Felt Like A Kiss, The Duchess of Malfi, Sleep No More and The Crash of the Elysium. Their current New York show Sleep No More won a 2011 Drama Desk Award for Unique Theatrical Experience and a Special Citation For Design And Choreography at the 2010-11 Obie Awards.
