Scenes from the theater production Inside No 9, a new show at the Shanghai Grand Theatre. (PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)
A new immersive theater adaptation of BBC's Inside No 9 is being staged at the Shanghai Grand Theatre.
Premiering on Wednesday, it is a resident program at the studio theater of SGT and the first theater adaptation of the British TV series.
Inside No 9 is a black comedy anthology spanning eight seasons. First aired in 2014, the show was created by Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton, and consists of 30-minute episodes that each features a self-contained story with elements of comedy and horror, and nearly always a plot twist.
The show has been widely praised by critics. The Guardian's Mark Jones said that Inside No 9 was "never less-than-captivating", and Gareth Lightfoot once wrote in the Evening Gazette Teesside that the show is "hands down the best, freshest thing on TV at the moment".
Pemberton and Shearsmith won the 2014-15 Royal Television Society Programme Awards for Best Comedy Performance for Inside No 9. In 2019, Pemberton won the Best Male Performance in a Comedy Programme gong at the BAFTAs.
On Chinese streaming platform Bilibili, the eighth season of the show alone has had more than 20 million views.
Zhao Miao, director of the Chinese theater adaptation, says he "loves the ingenuity of Shearsmith and Pemberton" and admires the high quality of the TV series. He also noted that the stories of Inside No 9 make them "perfect for theater" and that "now is the perfect timing for immersive theater in Shanghai".
Scenes from the theater production Inside No 9, a new show at the Shanghai Grand Theatre. (PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)
Since the introduction of the award-winning production Sleep No More in 2016, the concept of immersive theater has been widely adopted by the drama scene in Shanghai. In fact, the concept has been embraced by many operators of murder mystery games and escape rooms.
"These games have actually influenced the drama production and helped China's theater workers go further in their creation of immersive experiences for theatergoers," says Zhao.
"We watched the entire series (of Inside No 9) and after discussions picked three stories best for immersive theater experience," says Tang Xiawa, playwright of the theater show.
"Audiences love murder mysteries, and they want to play a part in finding out who did the crimes. Immersive theater also makes the experience more vivid and exciting," she says.
While the storytelling is similar to traditional framed theater, it is the design and setting of the show that gives audiences new avenues to experience the story, she explains.
The biggest challenge in creating an immersive show is not how the story is presented, but rather, how the audiences perceive it, Zhao says.
"We have designed a journey for audiences to experience the three stories. In this journey, they start from curiosity and move on to horror before experiencing a joyful discovery," he adds.
Scenes from the theater production Inside No 9, a new show at the Shanghai Grand Theatre. (PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)
The 1,000-square-meter studio theater at SGT has been separated into three sections for each of the three stories. Audiences will walk along a corridor before stepping into the setting of the first story, in which they are passengers on a platform witnessing the drama unfolding in a sleeper car.
The second story allows audiences to peep through windows into a studio where a reality show is being made. In the third story, audiences are invited to sit on revolving chairs placed in the central courtyard of a country house and observe the movements of characters around them as the story unfolds.
A large number of innovative performance spaces have emerged in town in the past few years, according to Zhang Xiaoding, general manager of the Shanghai theater.
"We have been thinking about introducing a popular resident show in the existing theater spaces of the Shanghai Grand Theatre, and we will see if we can attract some new audiences. We've had some successful collaborations with the director, Zhao Miao, and have learned about his plans to adapt the British series into immersive theater," she says.
Zhang points out that the studio theater on the fifth floor of SGT has been a popular location for small-scale productions by theatergoers in town.
"Our chief technician and the play's production team did their research and came up with this idea to add soundproofed walls and redesign the theater into a unique space for Inside No 9, which will serve as a resident show at the Shanghai Grand Theatre for about a year," she says.
