Before

I heard of immersive play from my roommate when I lived in New York. I watched Sleep No More, arguably the most famous immersive play by that time, and it totally blew my mind!

  • When you are watching actors/actresses play on a far-away out-of-reach stage, and wondering if those actors/actresses are laughing or crying, do you wish you could stand next to them?

  • When you are watching the major characters drive the main storyline, have you ever wondered what a minor character that you are more interested in is doing at this moment in his/her life?

  • When you are crouching yourself to fit into the small seat, thoughts on stretching your legs and even walking around?

Immersive play is, let me quote Aladdin the Musical

Exactly what you wish for!

The stage is limitation free, or to be accurate, there is no defined stage. The theater usually has many rooms or scenes. Big or small, stories happen everywhere anytime, just like your everyday life. You can choose to follow a single character, and get to know his/her stories well but miss other characters, or you can choose to stay in one scene and get to know every story happening in that one scene but miss the sequels and prequels of those stories.

You have to make trade-off every moment, again, just like your real life.

OK, let’s jump into the topic: the Speakeasy!

First of all, make sure you do not go alone and you invite a partner. The title of The Speakeasy official page is

The Speakeasy - Immersive Theatre Romantic Dates Group Celebrations

Double or triple dates are also encouraged. Just DON’T go alone, unless you enjoy embarrassing yourself.

Before you go, make sure you read the instructions email carefully

  • where to meet
  • what to dress
  • what to say at the entrance

Dress code is enforced very strictly. Make sure you understand what cocktail attire means. Dressing otherwise will make yourself look like someone transporting back in time, and break the integrity of the scenes.

During

Unlike Sleep No More, I cannot find any walkthroughs online. Probably it has not been around as long as Sleep No More, and the stories in The Speakeasy have been changed a lot such that few patrons can summarize the entire story lines even by watching multiple times.

Some preliminary might be helpful for us to understand the stories

Prohibition

Prohibition Era (1919-1933) was a notorious period in US history when alcohol is forbidden by the constitution. Looking back from modern perspective, this law is nothing but ridiculous. However, it did have some grounds at that time.

  1. Social moralists needed something else to work on, since slavery had been a past by then and racial inequality hadn’t raised enough attention yet. Between “Morman polygamy” and “temperance” movement, they chose “temperance”, considering the power of church at that time.
  2. Feminism was awaking. Women had been fighting to win the right of women to vote (and they won the women’s suffrage on 1920). At the same time, “temperance” is one of their political appeals, too. Many housewives had been beaten or even abused by their drunk husbands. With the love for their husbands, many of them chose to forgive their husbands and falsely attributed it to the use of alcohol.
  3. 1918 was to the end of WWI, and US published a wartime act on 1918 to forbid sales of alcohol. Due to various reasons, this act was finally written into the constitution later.

WWI

World War I (1914-1918) ended right before the Speakeasy stories.

Depression

The Great Depression (1929-1940) started when the Speakeasy stories were about to end.

There were multiple scenes in the bar:

  • the bar
  • the hallway
  • the dancing room
  • the casino

I have been staying in the bar with my partner most of the time, since it seemed to be where the main stories happened.

Father & daughter

At first, we saw a father with his daughter. The father seemed to be a soldier suffering from PTSD. All the people in the bar despised him, since he didn’t seem to take good care of his own daughter. The father was running between the bar and the casino, buying drinks with all the money he won in the casino. It was unknown to me where the wife had been, but it was not very hard to imagine that she might have run away from him considering his current situation.

Despised as he was, his daughter is the favorite of all in the bar. A middle-aged woman with heavy makeup, reached out to the daughter and encouraged her to pursue her dream of becoming a singer. Yet the father was typically a control freak, confronting the woman in the crowd and asserting his absolute control over his daughter. The father spoke to the woman in a sarcastic tone, implying that she was too old as a prostitute. The woman ran away with tears… See… it is very hard to understand why the father had been single all alone :/

After several conflicts with almost every customer in the bar, the owner of the bar told the guard to throw him out. The fight burst out between the father and the guard.

After the father was subdued by the guard. Both were lost into the deep of their memories.

The stage light was cast into the father, when elsewhere became dark.

The father was a soldier in WWI, and his fellow soldiers were all killed by then. He was wounded, hidden among the bodies and was not found by enemies. He thought of it as a shame that he didn’t die with his comrades, and started getting addicted to alcohol, as a way to forget his cowardice. Then suddenly the time flied, and the father became a worker and he seemed to lead a strike. He was singing Solidarity Forever and fought against the suppression by policemen. And he seemed to fail again. Back to now, he was the drunk father addicted to gambling.

Guard

Then he left quietly, for the casino. And the stage light was focused on the guard of the bar. He seemed to have a glorious past as a famous wrestler. He was always the focus of the stage whichever rival he was faced with, until one time he was totally knocked out. And he seemed to lose confidence in himself ever since, and became the guard of the bar. In his memories or dreams, he seemed to keep training, in the hope of coming back for another championship.

Sadly, we lost the rest of their stories. But well, who does not know the endings after watching so many hollywood movies? :) Father would find another job and marry the middle-aged woman, and daughter would move towards her dream of singing with the help of her stepmother. The guard would be encouraged by an old friend and started training and won the wrestling champion again.

Ordinary man

This was a hilarious scene. For reason that I cannot remember, we followed some characters into the dancing room, and watched a character (let’s call him ordinary man :P) speaking to himself and a narrative voice in his head. The narrative voice (which was played by some hidden audio) kept telling the ordinary man that he was born ordinary, lived ordinarily and would die ordinarily. The ordinary was trying to argue that he wasn’t and he was trying to think of something extraordinary to do tomorrow. With the perfect timing, my partner just slipped in a simple question, “like what?” The ordinary man hesitated for a second, and replied, “I don’t know yet! But I am thinking!” Then the narrative voice spoke, “I know — nothing!”

Again, it was very sad that we didn’t manage to see the ending of this ordinary man. He would be extraordinary for sure, but I am really curious how.

Gay

When we were watching this ordinary man speaking to himself in the dancing room. The middle-aged woman barged in and opened a closet, surprised to find two men hide in it and ran away with screams. The two men quickly dressed up and ran to the bar, and we made a decision to desert this ordinary man (facepalm) and follow the two men.

The two men quickly walked to the counter, and it seemed that the middle-aged woman had spread the news. Everyone was staring at them in disgust. At that time, relationships between the same sex were not as widely accepted as today. The older man cried to everyone in the bar, “Please don’t! I got a wife! I got a family!” Obviously, the spread news would ruin his reputation and very likely get him fired.

There was one moment I wish I could walk up to tell him that it was ok to be what he was, and the society years later would finally accept them as they were. Then I realized that well… this was a play (facepalm).

Depression

The play cross multiple years and periods, from WWI to the Great Depression. Therefore, it was quite easy to lose track of what was going on. Some old characters were gone with unknown endings and some new characters just appeared with unknown backgrounds.

Many stories that happened towards the end of the play, which assumed knowledge of previous stories. Therefore, I did not really get any of those…

The atmosphere just gradually became depressing towards the beginning of the Great Depression. The characters came into the bar and invited everyone for one last happy dance before the Great Depression. One last happy dance before we were dismissed.

After

I am planning for a second return to the Speakeasy, probably not recently (considering my health condition), but definitely will someday.

I guess that’s the charm of immersive plays. There is always something new for you in each of your returns, either some newly added storylines or some characters you have missed in the past. Or even better, the same characters you interact with in a different way this time.

Hope my health condition gets better soon, and we will dance to the second round of Speakeasy :)