Technology and live performances have always been a thing, going all the way back to storytellers building fires to draw a crowd. In more recent years, we’ve seen clever use of modern innovations to present fantastic things to theatregoers. On the West End, Stranger Things: The First Shadow wows audiences with clever back projections and state-of-the-art effects, and on a lower budget, touring shows such as John Robertson’s The Dark Room and Foxdog Studios have been using clever bits of tech to enhance their shows for years.
Non-Player Character: Live Virtual Reality Musical is a bold attempt to bring cutting-edge virtual reality tools to the stage. Brendan Bradley has been working on the concept for a few years now, wowing gadget enthusiasts across the world with small-scale tech demos. The idea is a fascinating one; utilising a Virtual Reality environment to tell a story, using musicians and skilled actors.
In a way, it feels like the next obvious step from shows such as Critical Role and Dimension 20 – taking improv storytelling to a visual level. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work. Instead, Non-Player Character: Live Virtual Reality Musical takes talented performers, slaps expensive plastic on their heads for an hour, and makes the audience watch a low-res video game. In other shows, technology enriches the performance. Here, it’s a barrier.
The show suffers from the fundamental problem that watching people who are unfamiliar with a game play it for the first time isn’t very interesting. This isn’t Twitch, it’s live theatre, and watching artists struggle to come to grips with VR Headsets, then fail to engage with the actual story that makes up the bulk of the show isn’t very interesting.
Brendan Bradley is clearly very, very talented. The show we saw also featured the Solve It Squad, who are an incredibly talented troupe of performers. The musicians were good. If they all took off the headsets, ignored the video game with 1994-level graphics and disorienting camera angles, and just put on a show, we’re sure it would have been amazing.
Instead, we were saddled with tech issues and a confusing story that seemed to have something to do with grief and self-discovery. It’s hard to tell, it’s buried under everything else. The songs seemed strong, but were wedged in between fiddling with helmets, incomprehensible graphics, and sound problems. When a show has its own special ‘technical issues’ song, that tends to be a sign that waiting for a computer to reboot is as much a part of the performance as any other element.
There was also an ‘app’ style element that allowed the audience to contribute to the show on a superficial level. It contributed nothing to the story or the experience, just serving as another barrier between the performers and the viewers. At the end of the show, we had a Q&A section which also added nothing to the show, and it made it feel more like a tech demo than an actual production, but it was nice to see the cast without their VR helmets on.
As it stands, this show feels like a waste of technology and talent. Despite a lot of potential, we can’t recommend Non-Player Character: Live Virtual Reality Musical unless you’re very curious about the technology or you simply plan to sit at the back with your eyes closed listening to the songs. Fingers crossed that the next iteration of this idea will be much better.
You can book tickets for the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe show here, and find out more here.
