Tickets to the event were free.
By Dave Massey twitter.com/BrumHour
…Until Proven Guilty with
Tagline Theatre
Project Director Ibraheem Hamirani, Head of Story Creation Alexandra Littler
Location is everything and Tagline Theatre’s …Until Proven Guilty, which is at The Lock Up on Steelhouse Lane in central Birmingham until 4th May, fully proves this.
Until 2016 this space was the overnight home for Birmingham’s naughtier inhabitants and the natural spookiness of the venue combined with the talents of Royal Birmingham Conservatoire final year students is impressive.
A great experience which lasted just under an hour. I’m not going to outline much about the actual experience but I’ll say a little here:
A woman has been murdered and a gang arrested, each of the six people in the team is a suspect and gang has to rat out one of their team.
The victorian building of Steelhouse Lane is imposing, and there is moments where you are left in cells on your own, feeling the history of the building and hearing some of the sounds makes for a chilling experience, the floor of the upper level has a see-through mesh floor, there is old print from drugs charities on the ceiling of the cells, and the dimmed lights. For anyone arrested in real life this would have been a stark experience.
Additional music was provided by Harry Card and helped me remember this was a fictional experience with its unnerving tones. There’s great props and costumes by Arran Pallan and Emily Davies.
Within the experience itself Craig Cattell, Sean Connolly, Harry Card, Emily Davies, Lucy Gosden, Alexandra Littler, Bobbie Calnan and Abbie Morgan play different roles solidly reacting to the participants without breaking character.
This is my third Tagline Theatre experience after a live version of Cluedo in 2017 and live escape room in 2018. I can’t wait to see what the Theatre does in 2020.
This isn’t a sponsored post.
When not writing about theatre for BrumHour, or producing Interval Theatre for Brum Radio (Tuesdays 3pm) brumradio.com/intervaltheatre, Dave Massey can be found eating crisps and claiming to be at the gym. And tweeting about Birmingham for #BrumHour.
