He shrugged. ‘Anywhere, I suppose. It didn’t really matter. But now, I don’t know. I really like being with you and I’m thinking I could stay on a little more.’
Petra waited for him to say more, but they only looked at each other – their eyes meeting and darting, evading and meeting up again. ‘I’d be glad if you can. But you must do what you need to do.’
He sighed, a long exhale. ‘Well, we’ve still got those Metamuse tickets, right? If you still want to go with me, it’d be a pity to miss the next show.’
She looked at him and he looked at her, and there was nothing left in the universe but the charged space between them. She shunted her chair closer to him and he cleared the glasses aside and took her hand. Then they kissed, right there in the pub, like kids, lost in the fantasy world they’d built.
9 The second show is different.
Cabinet is staged in a vacant four-storey Victorian office block, once Leamington’s central post office and stores, right next to St Mary’s Church in the middle of town. This time the queue snakes past the bus stop and around into Priory Terrace, the theatre audience waiting excited and trepidatious in the drizzle; you feel a little awkward and self-conscious alongside the long-haul workers going home and the rough sleepers bedding in in front of the church. Your frivolous interest in functionless art is too flippant for the moment.
Check-in is in the basement parking lot, temporary lockers erected to store coats and the forbidden phones. This time the invitation has advised the audience to wear comfortable footwear that you don’t mind getting dirty. Cabinet is going to be one of those vast immersions Metamuse is famous for. You’ve read about similar immersions in the Tokyo and Boston runs. These are not plays to be watched passively from beginning to end – they’ve built an entire world for audiences to explore on their own, wandering the sets and scenes and picking up on any one of the complex, interconnected storylines playing out in loops across the venue. Main strands might play out over several floors of a building or swoop from room to room, while small secondary scenes will lure just a handful of guests in a tucked-away closet. Every audience member’s version of the show will be different, depending on where you choose to walk, all within the producer’s very carefully controlled manipulations, of course. You might think you have free choice, but you’ll be nudged and herded. As you queue, you’re trying to regulate your expectations. You want to balance your will to win the game, to find the best bits, with a more relaxed wish to just go with the flow.
The invitation has also warned you that you’ll need to wear hard plastic masks. Some guests may experience claustrophobic symptoms; staff will be on hand to guide any affected audience members to decompression zones. You’ve seen the terrifying, crow-like things in reviews of previous Metamuse shows, but still, once you’re through check-in and have slipped on the mask in the featureless holding room, you’re not prepared for the overwhelmingly eerie effect of wandering into the installation along with hundreds of other anonymised watchers kitted out like Black Death serial killers.