“Viola’s Room” is an immersive theatre experience unlike any other

Usually, when you go to the theater, there is a regular order of things. You enter the lobby, then the auditorium. You are led to your seat and sit there. The show starts, you watch for however long the show lasts (sometimes with an intermission halfway through). The show ends and you leave the way you came in.

Not at Viola’s Room, the cautionary gothic fairy tale currently being presented at The Shed in New York. This is an experience far different from what you’d expect. To see this production, you start by removing and storing your shoes and socks, then spraying your feet with a sanitizing liquid. Yes, you are going to be barefoot throughout the presentation — but don’t worry, you’ll be walking on soft surfaces. You are given headsets, through which you will hear the voice of Helena Bonham Carter, all honey and cyanide, as she relates the story through which you are walking. There is a little crawling, some uneven surfaces (which feels like a warped carpet), and even some sandy surfaces. All you need to keep doing is follow the light: it will never lead you astray.

The entire journey takes about an hour, and you travel in a group of no more than six. While there are other groups before you and behind you, during your stops along the way you will not hear them. (You are encouraged to refrain from making noise during your trip.) 

The tale you are told involves Princess Viola, an odd girl who is enamored of the moon. She is eccentric compared to the other residents in the castle where she lives, and even to her betrothed, a princeling from a neighboring realm. She explores the wooded maze outside the castle gates; at its center is a lone majestic hawthorne tree. In the moonlight she dances freely, wildly, giving herself over to the night air and the pale lunar glow…

Daisy Johnson is responsible for writing the tale of the eerie Viola. The production group called Punchdrunk was responsible for another immersive experience, Sleep No More, a mixture of Shakespeare’s Macbeth with witch trials of the late 1600’s and Hitchcockian film noir. Now they have turned the expansive Level 4 Gallery at The Shed into the immersive, nightmarish cautionary tale that is Viola’s Room.

Viola’s Room is the kind of presentation that no description can come close to fully capturing. This is something that must be experienced to get its full impact. I cannot urge you more strongly to make the trip to The Shed in New York to experience Viola’s Room!

Viola’s Room is presented at The Shed, 545 West 30th St., in New York, through Oct. 19, 2025. For more information or to purchase tickets, go to http://theshed.org/violasroom.