Inside Storehouse in Deptford: Stunning Theatre That Baffles as Much as It Delights

Storehouse | Deptford until 20th September

Visually stunning but narratively baffling, Storehouse dazzles the eyes while leaving the mind confused.

Step into Storehouse, a vast sensory overload of a show hidden in Deptford’s historic newspaper warehouse. Conceived by Liana Patarkatsishvili and produced by her Sage & Jester company, it’s an “immersive show for the fake news era.” Imagine a towering analogue archive built on organic, nature-inspired architecture: the designers snake wicker tunnels and sculptural lamps through an enormous hangar space.

The visual impact is spectacular – at moments it feels like wandering through a dreamscape. The lights, sound cues, and even the gentle grinding of unseen machinery combine for a multilevel maze that’s aesthetically stunning.

But for all its scenic brilliance, the story of Storehouse is heavy on exposition and bewildering. Upon arrival we’re inducted as “trustees” of a fictional analogue internet archive, given staff manuals, lanyards, and even fortune cookies printed with the project’s slogans. The premise is that a shadowy 1983 project recorded every scrap of online data in hopes of mining a “Truth algorithm.”

Now the experiment has failed to deliver that Truthtopia, and the archive’s peculiar staff (weirdly frozen in time) need fresh blood. We shuffle through cavernous rooms of piled “data,” participate in odd mini-rituals (passing a bowl in front of a giant totem), and encounter characters who spout buzzwords about bias, worshipping Truth to Karma Chameleon’s karaoke and impromptu dance breaks.

The effect on the audience is exhilarating and frustrating in equal measure. On one hand, you feel like a curious explorer, piecing together clues in a sci-fi fable. On the other, you wander in a fog: threads appear (an apocalyptic AI “Great Aggregation” machine, a WeWork-like cult of Data) but then vanish.

Storehouse throws so many ideas at you, truth, misinformation, bias, even climate parallels, which none fully land. Its ambitious scope means its big questions (“Where do you find hope?”) end up lobbed to the audience almost perfunctorily.

The entire mock-archive is eerily beautiful. You’ll find nooks and crannies of stunning detail at every turn: moss-covered books, ladders, flickering lamps that change colour, ambient whispers of data in the shadows. But this is a linear story, unlike the free roaming of Punchdrunk’s immersive theatre, which increases the expectation that the narrative should make sense. We are asked to participate in a number of activities, which our group didn’t complete and that had no consequence. Finally, we are released into a stunningly lit vast space which I guess is supposed to inspire wonder, but it just left me wondering what the point was.

In short, Storehouse is a bravura piece of large-scale theatre design. If you relish being swept through a bewildering art installation of ideas, the experience is thrilling. But don’t expect a coherent plot: Storehouse feels like a puzzle missing a few pieces.

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