The Woman Who Forgot is an immersive theatre experience that plays out as a promenade performance, in which we walk and ride the bus to various parts of Wellington, with headphones in our ears and watching the screens of our smart phones.

The audience assembled at the Wellington Railway Station, where we are each given a name tag with ‘Elizabeth Snow’ on it. We put on our headphones and set off with a small group accompanied by a guide. Once we board a bus, the thoughts of Elizabeth Snow (voiced by Loren Taylor) begin to play out in our headsets. We remember the name tags and that each of us is now Elizabeth Snow and that these are our thoughts. Elizabeth has woken up on a bus with amnesia and we live out her experience as she tries to piece together what happened to her the night before and remember who she is.

The actors we encounter – either in person or on our screens or headsets – give consistently strong performances. The first character we encounter in the flesh is played by Joe Dekkers-Reihana. He eyeballs us intensely while his voice plays out in our ears. The audience giggles nervously as we are unsure of where this interaction might lead, but disappointingly we are quickly moved on to the next location where we are met by another actor who also makes eye contact with us while we listen through the headset.

It’s an interesting separation of live body and voice and while each of these actors gives a solid performance, each character is a two-dimensional trope – the sleazebag, the formal hotel lobby staff, the cleaner, the doctor, the alternative healer – and after seeing the technique played out once, we don’t get a lot from the subsequent characters.

An exception to this is Samuel, played by Jack Sergent-Shadbolt. Samuel is Elizabeth’s brother who she calls on Skype and for me this was the most engaging part of the production, thanks to Sergent-Shadbolt’s performance and the multidimensional character who gives several insights into Elizabeth’s backstory and relationships.

The gradual revelation of information throughout is effective in keeping me engaged in the story and wanting to find out more. However, because the performance never asks me to do anything other than listen and watch, I do not feel fully immersed. There is great potential for the audience to have some agency actually to act in the role of Elizabeth Snow, yet every decision is made for us. For example, when Elizabeth decides to call her brother on the Skype, we watch the call happen on our screen and we listen to Samuel and Elizabeth’s conversation, rather than having the opportunity to ask questions ourselves. I would be far more engaged if I had chosen who to call, pressed those buttons myself and initiated a live call in which I could truly interact with Samuel, who seems to hold the most information about what is actually going on.

What I experience while watching this all play out in front of me is not very different from what I might watch on a proscenium arch stage or on a cinema screen. That is not to say that isn’t interesting but that the form offers many more opportunities to give the audience a fully immersive experience than are explored in this production. 

The through-line of the performance and the point of each interaction seems to be to pull together information so we can understand Elizabeth’s story, yet we never reach a resolution and there is no real payoff, which leaves me wondering what I have just watched and why.

It’s great to see a New Zealand work in the Festival using new media in an interesting way and The Woman Who Forgot is a technological feat. Our smartphone screens, audio and live performance are seamlessly integrated into a slick and well-managed production. Now that this strong format has been created I am interested to see what the company could achieve by further experimenting with the form and the interaction of promenade performance, live actors and technology.  

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer