Eternityland
Sydney, Australia
06 August 2022
Given how impressed we were with how director Danielle Harvey channelled her alchemy in creating an immersive morbid experience centred around the legacy and literary emissions of gothic author Edgar Allan Poe, we were intrigued as to what was to ensue with the incarnation of Eternityland, a theatrical experience that promised to take us on a hero's quest through a dizzying kaleidoscope of interactive rooms.
Based in one of the more sterile corners of Sydney’s Central Business District, a pop up bar that goes by the telling name of Department of Legend and Myth serves as a portal through which a threshold is crossed to the mysterious inner sanctum of Eternityland.
Once the threshold is crossed, the way the narrative of your journey unfolds is determined by your own curiousity and willingness to interact with the strangely clad characters that roam a vast maze of twenty spaces, vaults and chambers, which are spread across two storeys and serve as a multi-faceted stage for what is essentially an LSD trip come alive.
Involving the audience in their anarchical performances ranging from acrobatic circus acts via cabaret to music and storytelling, the characters serve both as protagonists as well as guides which lead you through labyrinthine halls, loungerooms, and involve us in their seductions, without indicating a distinct path that has to be followed or imposing how the experiences should be interpreted.
The sum of the aforementioned results in a gigantic camp playground for adults with surprises to be detected in each nook and cranny, culminating in a grand finale in an auditorium where a dance party is kicked off.
Eternityland is an immersive, surreal and ambitious theatre experience par excellence at the crux of art and the absurd, which is particularly rewarding for those willing to surrender themselves to whatever multisensory experiences are presented in this fantastical, ephemeral world that deliberately blurs the lines between actors, spectators and participants.
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image from Eternityland website
