The Destroyed Room

It begins with what seems to be the recording of a debate, as guests gather to digest world events. They sit among potted plants and standard lamps, discussing the things they have witnessed and debating the ethics of watching. Around them, cameras film their every word and every reaction, beaming them live onto a big screen. But as the debate intensifies, slowly and as if in a dream, the atmosphere begins to change.

The Destroyed Room is about the profusion of lenses, which brings the world right into our rooms but also keeps it at a distance. It’s about what we see and what we turn away from. And what’s coming.

The Destroyed Room takes its inspiration from Jeff Wall’s famous photograph, which shows a ransacked room, where every item of furniture has been torn up and destroyed.

Press

“★★★★★ The Destroyed Room is an aneurysm of a show, a leap into the eye of the shitstorm. Lenton pins down the complicity, complexity and contradictions of modern, mediatised life, in which awareness is inescapable, ignorance is wilful and inaction is - or at least feels - inexcusable.”

— What's On Stage

“★★★★★ This is what theatre is all about’”

— Edinburgh Guide

“★★★★ Timely and incendiary… The Destroyed Room makes the whole audience complicit in the unfolding destruction, asking where our limitations in active participation lie. It may not be comfortable, or offer easy solutions, but it feels like both a timely and necessary piece of theatre.’”

— The Stage

“★★★★★ A bold and brave production, confident enough to take risks and pose big ethical questions without fretting over the lack of easily available answers. This is big, electric stuff – go and see it”

— TVBomb

“★★★★ provocative, compelling and daring”

— Guardian

“★★★★ burns itself into the mind…cuts close to the bone of our decaying western liberalism… visionary, perfectly realised’”

— The Scotsman

“Taking its title from Jeff Wall’s famed photograph of a ransacked room, which makes the viewer wonder what happened to leave it in such a state, the latest from the brilliantly inventive Vanishing Point considers Western privilege and the threats it faces. Matthew Lenton’s productions have often had a particularly voyeuristic quality (one was entirely viewed through glass), and this one, touring Inverness, Glasgow, Edinburgh and London, teases at the ethics of what we look at and how we view and talk about the world from our window.’”

— The most unmissible culture of 2016, Lyn Gardner, The Guardian

Credits

A co-production with Battersea Arts Centre
In association with Eden Court and Tron Theatre
Created by Vanishing Point

Conceived and directed by Matthew Lenton
Design and Lighting Design by Kai Fischer
Sound and Music Composition by Mark Melville
Costume Design by Jessica Brettle
Creative Associates Elicia Daly and Pauline Goldsmith
Assistant Director Sarah Short

Performers Elicia Daly, Pauline Goldsmith and Barnaby Power
Camera Operators Samuel Keefe & Daryl Cockburn

Production Manager Fiona Fraser
Stage Manager Lee Davis
Deputy Stage Manager Kara Jackson
Lighting Supervisor Ashley Bolitho
Sound Supervisor Amir Sherhan
Video Supervisor Ellie Thompson
NIDA Student Placement Jacqueline Lucey

PR New Century PR (Lesley Booth)
Social Media Niall Walker
Photography Mihaela Bodlovic

Audio Equipment supplied by BLACKBOX Pro Audio