Even if you have literally never wanted to be part of the crew of a spaceship you’ll probably have a fun time at Parabolic Theatre’s Bridge Command, an immersive theatre show slash team-bonding exercise slash LARPer paradise that sees you and your fellow contestants take command of the, uh, bridge of a spaceship and undertake a variety of missions that run the gamut from diplomacy to warfare.
Occupying the spot in the Vauxhall arches that formerly hosted renowned gay sauna Chariots, Bridge Command is not a slick, cutting-edge vision of the future, and presumably budgetary limitations are part of this. But that’s fine: it very much has its roots in a wobbly sets golden age of sci-fi, with the earlier iterations of Star Trek looming particularly large.
After donning our military jumpsuits, we are ‘teleported’ into the depths of space and onto an Earth battleship that will form our base of operations. There is a background scenario here, wherein humans fled a polluted Earth, found a magic element in the depths of space, went back home to fix Earth, only a load of colonists stayed behind and set up new galactic dominions, and we’re out there looking for more of the magic element. It’s best not to think too hard about it, but at the same time the performers throw themselves into it with impressive conviction - I was particularly delighted when the lady operating the teleporter earnestly fielded questions relating to my phobia of teleporters.
Following said teleportation we’re invited to have a drink at the ship’s bar because this is immersive theatre and there’s always a bar, and then drinks in hand go on to our mission briefing where we’re assigned our sections of the bridge - I was on beam weapons, FYI.
The show is based around a graphically limited but pretty impressive piece of software that links all our stations together via various technical displays, radar and a big front window into space. I was complimented by the training officer, who seemed impressed at how quickly I mastered the knack of blowing stuff up - who says theatre critics lack real world skillsets?
Although press have only just been invited in, Bridge Command has been running since March, and a major USP is that it rewards repeat visits by recording your previous adventures and ensuring that when you return you don’t do the same mission twice, and that future missions are indeed somewhat tailored to you. Our crew included a couple of quite LARPy veterans, and it made for a nice mix – it was their conviction, as much as anything, that helped me get immersed in our mission to sneak a covert operative onto an abandoned space station deep into pirate territory.
I really had a lot of fun, and while there were clearly some limits, it was a joy to experience an immersive show where you had a meaningful sense of agency – if we’d collectively decided to sack off the mission, or attempted to join forces with the pirates, I believe the show’s on-site creatives would have attempted to accommodate us. It’s genuinely lovely that it’s built its own community. Apparently it’s being expanded with an alien world area for away missions – I love the idea that it’s a constant work in progress, with new ideas being funnelled in all the time.
But ther are presently some frustrations: the semi-improvised nature of our mission combined with I guess financial and technical limitations meant that it ended on a bit of a damp squib – there wasn’t an epic finale, we just sort of snuck away from the pirates chasing us. There was also an attempted moral conundrum thrown into the mix that I found hopelessly gauche. Maybe it’s churlish to look at everything Bridge Command has achieved and say ‘here’s where it could do better’, but I do think truly dramatic storytelling is an area it obviously struggles with, and you can either shrug that off or point out that this idiosyncratic and enjoyable London experience has the potential to be even better. Whatever the case, it thoroughly deserves to live long and prosper.
