During the Halloween season, we are often confronted with visions of ghastly ghouls and spooky specters, jumping out from every dark corner. I mean, that’s just the nature of the beast this time of year. But, what if you could see things from the other side…literally. What if YOU were the ghost and it was your job to confront, perhaps even scare, the living?
That’s the concept behind THE SHADOW SPACE, a fantastic immersive show that is being remounted this October. I unfortunately missed the show during its original run back in May, but I am certainly glad I caught it this time around.
The premise is simple: you are recently dead and you are about to start your afterlife. Of course, you need to learn how to go about it and so the team from Being Dead are here to help. They have picked out a simple haunt (basically a home) for you to observe and interact so you can get the hang of being dead.
This is such an insanely simple concept, but THE SHADOW SPACE infuses the idea extra bits to make it interesting and quite humorous during the opening sequence, as our spirit guides helped us get acquainted with being dead. The living can’t see us, of course, but WE can see them…and even interact with certain objects. Equipped with a black light, anything that shines pink under it is something we could interact with. Of course, we didn’t want to move it while the living was looking, but it led to some great sequences when we could shake things up.
THE SHADOW SPACE felt very voyeuristic because, once we were set loose in the house, we were able to get up close and personal with the living…and it was like we weren’t even there. I leaned in close while people were whispering, I even read text messages over a character’s shoulder, and they didn’t even acknowledge us. I mean, sure, we were dead and they were alive, but those are signs of a wonderful actor when they can continue doing their roles even despite the myriad of distractions going on around them.
During the beginning sequences, I was reminded a lot of an old Sega Genesis game called HAUNTING STARRING POLTERGUY. In it, you were a ghost messing with a family in their home through all sorts of traditional ghost tricks. I LOVED that game, and this was like a real-life version of it. I think it was on the third time I flipped the lights on and off, with the living going “What the hell is going on?!” that I thought to myself: I would love to spend my afterlife like this.
While I would have been perfectly content just messing with the living for the duration of the show, the story went much deeper than that. Through the course of the evening, we eavesdropped and heard of their trials, their tribulations, their secrets, and their lies. The show may have started off simple but it quickly became a tangled web of drama, as these people before us were very flawed. Uncovering the mysteries they held, learning more about them, was fantastic. The free reign we had to follow characters and listen in on them as we saw fit was a nice touch. If for some reason, I was done listening to one conversation, I could shift to another, to hear more of the great story.
It was made even more so by our interactions. Those pink-tinted objects found throughout the house, they could be moved, and places strategically, by us ghosts to make sure the living found them. Of course, when a particularly juicy secret was dropped in someone’s lap that wasn’t supposed to know, watching the ensuing drama unfold was a delight for me. I was definitely living my best ghost life by stirring the pot from the great beyond. It was awesome.
There were also some escape room-like elements as well, as some of those objects led to other things. A locked chest might be opened by a key, which can only be found when you do certain things. It was a cool way to help uncover additional plot points.
While tinged with a lot of fantastic humor (thanks to our ever-present and wonderful spirit guides), there was also some serious stuff going on. In fact, the back half of the show, something very unexpected happens, and the entire show shifts into a different mode. It took me by complete surprise and added another layer of depth to the show that really blew me away.
What could have been a hokey experience was something incredibly well done, and that is to the credit of creator Shelby Bond and co-writer / co-producer Dan McCann. The two of them and their team definitely created a wonderfully enjoyable hour in which I truly felt I was living in another world. On the spectrum of all immersive theater, THE SHADOW SPACE is a relatively low-key affair, taking place in a single space that didn’t require much set dressing. However, with such a captivating story and concept, it blew me away more than most do. It’s the perfect example of how a fantastic story can really grab you and bring you into the world, without the need for special effects or elaborate settings.
And of course, the cast was wonderful as well. Our two spirit guides were hilarious and helpful. Josh Pritchard, our main guide, was wonderful in his directions and sarcastic-laced humor were spot on. His new assistant, played by Emilie Rimmer, played her role of “newly dead” quite well, as she was learning the ropes and doing her best to try to understand the strange world she was now living in while also trying to keep us under control. I loved their interplay together and they were a great way to both open and close the show.
The two couples we followed for the evening were fantastic as well. Andrew Ferguson, Samantha Turret, Kelly Hutt, and DW McCann were our hapless living victims for the evening, and they were wonderful to watch. In immersive shows, it’s got to be hard to not interact with an audience member who is standing two feet away from you, but these four were like watching a soap opera unfold on television right before our eyes. They lived their lives whether or not someone was watching them, truly bringing their characters to life. It was very impressive!
Honestly, I walked in not really knowing what to expect but I truly loved every minute of THE SHADOW SPACE. It was smart, innovative, and made me smile more times than I could count. Despite the ghostly presence, it’s not your traditional fare for Halloween so don’t expect to get scared. However, if you want an incredibly interesting evening filled with a great story and world you can get lost in, I highly recommend it.
THE SHADOW SPACE runs from now until November 3 for two shows a night, six nights a week in the heart of Los Angeles. You can learn more and buy tickets online at: https://www.theshadowspace.com/
