Fiction

If David Lynch had written Inception, it might be a little like Fiction. Plunging its audience into total darkness, David Rosenberg and Glen Neath’s latest collaboration plays with the imaginative landscape of dreams, a realm in which anything is possible. It doesn’t make sense, but then it was never meant to.

Seated in the pitch-black auditorium, our minds are relied upon to create the show’s images, while Ben and Max Ringham’s 3D binaural sound powerfully evokes our surroundings. The technology is astonishing, instantly transporting us away from our seats and towards – well, we’re never quite sure where.

Fiction is a slippery thing, made to be forgotten. Memory, as the show tells us, is unreliable, especially when it comes to dreams. The piece is built up in layers: multiple overlapping fictions that peel back. Sometimes we are in a hotel room, chaperone whispering into our ear. Sometimes we are in a car, rain hammering on the roof. Snippets of information are fed to us, constantly contradicting each other. What to believe?

Like Ring, Rosenberg and Neath’s last binaural project, Fiction is a full-on headfuck. The sound is constantly teasing and tricking, while the twisting dream logic keeps us constantly off-balance. And that impenetrable, isolating darkness never stops being unsettling. Also like Ring, though, the content is enslaved to the form. This is theatre of atmosphere rather than theatre of ideas. And enchanting though it is, its spell—in true dream fashion—wears off soon after waking.