2014 Edinburgh Fringe

More details

YOU AWAKE TO FIND YOURSELF IN A DARK ROOM...

John Robertson returns to Edinburgh triumphant with The Dark Room after critical acclaim on the 2013 Edinburgh Fringe. Featured in Variety Magazine, Wired, loved by Ian Livingstone (creator of Fighting Fantasy) played by alternative celebrities like Jhonen Vasquez (creator of Invader Zim), Amanda Palmer, Brendon Burns, The Pajama Men and a host of others - The Dark Room is an interactive adventure minus the adventure and replaced with abuse.

Two years ago, Australian stand-up comedian John Robertson posted a choose-your-own-adventure-game on YouTube, entitled The Dark Room. In the video, the viewer is told that they have woken up in a dark room, and have to find their way out - accompanied by some less-than-helpful suggestions from Robertson, spot lit by a torch under his chin. The various chapters of The Dark Room have been viewed more than 4,000,000 times on YouTube. Nobody has yet made it to the final exit. Online, it has been played in every country on earth, being curiously popular in Germany, France and the U.S. It has been responsible for 70 different death threats in eight different countries.

It quickly went viral due to its relentlessly dark humour, Robertson's outrageously hammy narration, and simple yet genius premise. Inspired by its success, in 2012 he took the premise more than a few steps further, by converting it into a live show at the Free Fringe - in which a whole roomful of people AWAKE to FIND themselves... in a DARK... ROOM! The massive success of this show brought it back to the Underbelly in 2013. Now he is back once again, taking this improvised game show, where the player faces a brutal Old Testament God who loves grammar, and hates you, back to the Underbelly.

Over the course of an hour, four separate audience volunteers take on The Dark Room, with Robertson acting as some psychotic mix of Chris Tarrant and Brian Blessed. All the lights are down, except for a contraption on his shoulders illuminating his face - until right at the end, the whole audience joins in to see if they can find their way out of the Dark Room together. And we'll give you a clue: chances are they won't.

John Robertson looks forward to bringing back this improvised, interactive, multimedia odyssey. It's clever, it's heartbreaking, it's got a story to tell and a challenge to give. Will you escape, intrepid cretin?