Non-Player Character: Live Virtual Reality Musical

A fun new concept to fuse VR with musical theatre, but executed disappointingly. Although he didn’t wear it at the very start, the presence of the VR set on the main NPC guy at the front made it difficult to create a connection between players and audience. And with the players also in VR sets doing things which were not explained to the audience, it seemed pretty pointless to be there as an audience member, as the NPC man pointed out to an audience member at the start of the show - ‘why would you come to an interactive musical and be in the audience?’. We were told we could be interactive with the players through a site on our phones, but all this amounted to was giving them virtual rocks. In the time I stayed to watch, the only singing or acting was by the NPC person, none by the other partakers. It wasn’t explained why we had to tell each player/actor they were going to die, and it all felt somewhat like a lived-out fantasy of a 6-year-old/as if we were parents of a swimming class watching from the cafe when the cafe actually can’t see the pool really at all. Cool concept though! And impressively stage managed remotely.

I found this deeply frustrating.
It was a poor 'let's play' and a poor musical.
It's clear that a lot of thought went into it from a technical standpoint, but it isn't a show, it's a tech demo - its place at an Arts festival (and for £15 at that) is genuinely baffling.

My team and I went to see this show, Brandon is such a strong performer! great music! and fun! Very Impressed with the musicianship of Maurice Soque Jr. as well! Well done!

The concept was exciting. The opportunity for audience members to participate was intriguing, however, when I went, it seemed very clear that the “audience members” were not randomly selected (audience participants would most likely spend more time talking over each other) and the row of “audience” behind us that were able to sing along before the actor sang a melody seemed planned also. It was difficult to hear and understand the actor throughout.

Loved the opening. And how they dealt with technical issues. For a while I thought the issues were part of the show they handled it so well. The end was too preachy for my taste. I’ll probably forget about that and only remember the neat concept in a few years.