The Encounter NYC Reviews and Tickets

"No production on Broadway has ever thrown the doors of perception open as widely as 'The Encounter,' Simon McBurney’s astonishing one-man show...McBurney sustains the momentum of his story as tensely and enjoyably as if it were a Rudyard Kipling yarn...It may be he who’s running and dancing and leaping and sweating. But by the end of this nonpareil show’s two intermissionless hours, you are as lightheaded, exhausted, baffled and invigorated as if it had been you."
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"Closing one’s eyes in the theater can be a sign of boredom. But shutting the peepers at McBurney’s utterly transfixing mind-tickler 'The Encounter' is a valid expression of rapture...McBurney is a wryly engaging performer who can command an audience by sheer force...In this primal, lysergic movie for the brain, McBurney covers a dazzling array of topics...Part mystic thriller, part tricksy aural illusion, 'The Encounter' offers a meeting of ear, mind and soul you will never forget."
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"This is thrilling in its way, but as you begin to adjust to the tech tricks you also begin to wonder how relevant and expressive they really are...It’s immersive, yes, but not so much theater: It’s more like watching a radio show in a studio, with special kudos to the Foley artist. Even McBurney’s exhausting efforts to bring the story to gestural life are undercut by the sound...'The Encounter' may be happening in your head but, ultimately, it’s someone else’s trip."
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"Given how thoroughly the audience is let in both on the technology and the artifice, it's remarkable how quickly and completely the piece becomes an immersive narrative...'The Encounter' is an extraordinarily visceral, often hypnotic piece of storytelling. It must be added, however, that any solo show running close to two intermissionless hours asks a lot of its audience, and this one is more impactful in the moment than in terms of lingering resonance."
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"At first glance 'The Encounter' feels like a radio play accompanied by thick layers of sound effects, some live and others pre-recorded. Then the set, an anonymous-looking radio studio, comes to hallucinatory life, and suddenly you find yourself swept up in Mr. McBurney’s high-tech dramatization of McIntyre’s bizarre yet somehow believable tale. The result is a piece of storytelling that is as haunting and enthralling as a half-remembered dream."
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"It's a mindblower...All of this is conveyed ingeniously by McBurney in an attic set as he re-creates for us the story through the use of much electronic gear that alters his voice for different characters...The show is a wonder, but I couldn’t help but feel it also was a bit of a con that forced us to pay more attention to the technical gimcrackery than to the extraordinary tale unfolding. Would imaginative staging with an actual cast, have had as much impact? I’d like to think so."
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"This virtuosic theater maker’s transporting bells and whistles indeed make 'The Encounter' the next best thing to being there...Those deriving little stimulation from learning the customs of a people who live in diametric opposition to us urbane types, may find themselves drifting off during the intermission-less show. It didn’t happen to me...'The Encounter' is a demonstration of the power of technology to immerse us ever more thrillingly in narrative art."
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"The one-man show 'The Encounter' is a public podcast, complete with high-quality headphones for every theatergoer and enough yawns for an anesthesia symposium...Simon McBurney is no entertainer. He’s a peddler of pretentious, self-satisfied wisdom and overhyped novelty...This intermissionless, nearly two-hour snoozefest has a massively self-generated sense of what it is."
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"Sonically, it’s mind-boggling. Dramatically, less so. The rambling tale gets trying as it switches from past and present and from jungle to McBurney’s daughter’s bedroom. It’s unlike anything else on Broadway, and it is a head trip. But sometimes 'The Encounter' goes in one ear and out the other."
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"'The Encounter' resembles an immersive, sensory take on the old-fashioned radio play, with multiple voices, heavy breathing and other sounds fully engulfing the listener. But after a while, the novelty wears off and you are left with unending bits of description and psychological contemplation. You can’t help but wonder whether it was really meant to be experienced live in a Broadway theater...Wouldn’t it make more sense to listen to the piece with your own headphones on your own time?"
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"While 'The Encounter' could easily settle as a radio-play, McBurney's up to something far more ambitious...The nearly two-hour intermissionless performance is a tour-de-force as McBurney entertains, enlightens and instructs with mesmerizing talent...At times it may feel like sensory overload. I zoned out at points but much like the most vivid dream, this 'Encounter' is impossible to shake."
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"A dazzlingly disorienting head-trip...McBurney's performance is a marvel of athleticism as he bounds around the stage from microphone to microphone. But it's way too easy, sitting in the dark being lulled by sound machines, to drift off for extended periods. The show feels much too long and, at points, way too heady...While 'The Encounter' ticks nearly all of the boxes of 'snob hit,' it ends up a breath of fresh air for audience members who believe in theater's ability to push boundaries."
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"'The Encounter' comes off more as a demonstration of technological capabilities than engaging storytelling...For a good twenty minutes or a half-hour, the technological display is very entertaining. The narrative, however, isn't, as McIntyre's inner monologues grow tiresome and the environment recreations seem redundant."
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"McBurney gets inside one's head, but he never penetrates one's heart or mind...'The Encounter' becomes entangled in its fundamental contradictions, its method of storytelling strangely at odds with the ideas it hopes to convey...These circumstances are hardly ideal for creating drama, and the text proves even less helpful...Whatever else you say about 'The Encounter,' it is executed with supreme confidence and skill. Still, this is a voyage without a satisfying destination."
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"Perhaps the most arresting facet of this towering accomplishment is that it all feels as though it's been created just for you. Delivered as it is through a headset you're provided upon taking your seat, the soundscape is intensely intimate, which only makes the shivers cut deeper...This is theatre so pure, it doesn't need sets. But in eschewing them, 'The Encounter' gets them as no other show ever has—and oh so much more, too."
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"The dazzling artistry of 'The Encounter' is initially exhilarating but grows tedious after 30 minutes...It’s essentially a glorified radio show. Technically breathtaking and superbly performed, its length exceeds its narrative interest...Gradually the chronicle becomes murky as the audience sits in varying degrees of darkness listening to McBurney through their headsets. Rambling on without a clear sense of plot, his tale devolves into an endurance test."
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"McBurney is able to achieve an immersive theatrical experience by having a deep understanding of the essence of human perceptions, and making full use of everything that’s readily available. McBurney, with the help of sound designers Gareth Fry and Pete Malkin, has turned the performance into a synesthesia-inducing, orgasmic auditory experience, and the rigidly structured Broadway theatre into an intimate, elastic organism that breathes through various dimensions."
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"Part of the thrill of 'The Encounter' is the astounding binaural technology...The result is practically like watching a 3-D movie...Yet most of what makes 'The Encounter' such an extraordinary theatrical outing is in the beautifully crafted telling of the tale by McBurney...In every moment, he brings enormous passion and conviction to the proceedings...The piece occasionally feels longer than it should...Still, audiences with an open mind will undoubtedly be changed for the better."
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"Whether you'll love 'The Encounter' depends on how much you value a show's vive la difference factor...The unique storytelling approach's grip on my senses wasn't quite firm enough to hold me for almost 2 hours. During the last twenty minutes or so, I caught myself sneaking glances at my watch...Even if it weren't about 20 minutes too long, you might find all those voices and philosophical observations about time, life and, death as often distancing as fully engaging."
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"This is more sound effects than story, and as such only held my interest for so long...The story takes second place to the 'show.' McBurney is a combination of storyteller and magician/technician–emphasis on the latter. We marvel at his technical skills over and over again...In the end it seemed less important that the tale was told and more important that McBurney was at the center, doing the telling. He is griot, who loves the sound of his own voice, looking for a tribe. Not my cuppa tea."
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"Definitely a triumph of technology...It’s basically a radio play staged live in a Broadway house by one very talented vocally gifted performer...I could list the heady concepts discussed and theorized upon but the list would grow long and overwrought. Sadly, this is also an apt description of this play...Somewhere along the path the novelty began to wear off...There wasn’t enough of interest on the stage to keep me invested visually...The story grew convoluted and confusing."
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"An aural rollercoaster. In its aftermath, the show leaves you with intellectual whiplash...The layers of ideas that underpin the show make this an unexpected and probing Broadway offering...Most of all, we become acutely aware of the act of storytelling in 'The Encounter'–the mechanics, the microphones, the music, and the objects of theatrical manipulation. Yet, we convert these articles of stage fiction seamlessly into this aural adventure, all the while knowing it’s a trick."
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"At one point, McBurney asks you to close your eyes, thus allowing a sound picture to form in your head of something not actually happening. There will be temptations to close your eyes again, especially when the narrative begins to wear thin...You may find yourself drifting off, overwhelmed by the convincing aural landscape into losing the thread of the storytelling. This tendency for the drama’s contents to be subsumed by its form is 'The Encounter’s' most significant weakness."
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"Relying on sounds and downplaying the visual struck me as an odd way to tell the story of a professional photographer...The final phase of Loren McIntyre’s journey is a payoff for patience, when attention is drawn to the stage, as the performer takes off his shirt to reenact a shamanistic ritual, and the lighting, set and projection designers go to town, Simon McBurney’s well-honed theatricality–visual at last–matching the mystical, mesmerizing real-life fever dream he has been voicing."
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"With the advent of television in the 1950s, radio drama lost its popularity. Why anyone would think that this form would now be entertaining, with the Internet and high tech everywhere, is beyond me...Simon McBurney is a wonderful actor with his vocals and technology, and if he were born and active in the '20s to the '30s, his one-man show would be spectacular...McBurney is everywhere, but that doesn’t stop your brain from wanting to snooze through it all."
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"McBurney is a passionate storyteller, both wily and wild; he needs no technological marvels to make his case. Yet the headphones emphasize the personal relationship he establishes with each auditor and it challenges us to reflect on how and why we surrender to his tale...Headphones are isolating, however, and they make the experience somewhat less communal...But when the sound is flooding and McBurney is chanting, 'The Encounter' is mood-altering and mind-expanding enough."
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"This production certainly qualifies as the most unusual offering currently on Broadway...The novelty wore off for me rather quickly...The story is frequently interrupted by the voices of expert commentators and, annoyingly, McBurney’s 5-year-old daughter. There are mystical and philosophical overtones and a rather ham-fisted critique of modern materialism. Although it held my interest better than anticipated, I did not find it compelling theater."
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"We see that the theatricality—all sound, all the time—is not a device grafted onto the piece; it specifically fits the play’s examination of reality...It seems clear that people who are interested in this sort of adventurous theatrical spectacle will love 'The Encounter'...Other viewers might understandably opine that the emperor has no clothes; he (it) certainly has no scenery....It is the sound designers who are responsible for the binaural wizardry of the piece; think of 3-D for the ears."
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"McBurney’s conversations with his daughter beautifully illustrate the fractured, if not fractious, quality of time and place. 'The Encounter' also easily trumps the book’s ability to convey the concept of beaming...Also, McBurney, a most engagingly relaxed performer, delivers big when he turns himself into wild beasts while experiencing oneness with the rain forest. It’s quite a show, both visually and aurally."
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"The show is one big aural onslaught that, as intriguing as it can be, goes on so long as to leave one in a state of mental exhaustion...The sound effects are stupendous...McBurney puts on one admirable, original performance...This is Broadway’s unique show at the moment. Whether you will leave with great admiration for McBurney and the audio magic being performed, or leave with a headache, or perhaps both, depends upon your outlook and endurance capacity."
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"This is a unique theatrical experience. It might be compared to a live radio broadcast aided and abetted by contemporary audio were McBurney’s role not so emphatically physical. Close your eyes occasionally. Visual imagination provides. The story is fascinating, the script visceral and intimate, if a tad long. Acting is a tour de force...'The Encounter' is well served by sound designers Gareth Fry and Pete Makin. This is unquestionably the best and most intricate you’ll hear to date."
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"This could have been a simple action-adventure tale with McIntyre as a Harrison Ford-type hero. But McBurney, who also directed the show, adds layers of meaning and dimension...He forces us to question our reality as he breaks down the familiar conventions of theater...The creator-performer daringly submerges himself into an alternate universe of sound and sensation, taking venturesome theatergoers on a wild ride."
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"The two-hour tale of a white guy being seduced by the rituals of noble savages and engaging in various hallucinogenic ordeals that help him see the world in a new way struck me as the same-old-same-old. Maybe it was better in the book but in the theater, my mind wandered...A shorter play might have helped to keep me—and it—better focused. Instead, his one rambles on for two intermissionless hours and then kind of dribbles to an end."
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"No matter how serenely I tried to let the sounds in my headphones and the events onstage take me on a visceral inner journey, I couldn’t get beyond the sense I was hearing a radio play with plenty of sound effects and incidental visuals. It is, I hasten to say, a compelling radio play...Whatever else happens on Broadway this season, it is unlikely to be anything like these nonstop two hours. I’m sad that it felt to me like an engrossing, high-end novelty act."
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"McBurney is a remarkable performer of incredible stamina...As ingenious as the show’s presentation may be, if you’ve ever dozed off to a podcast in the dark, you have some idea of the challenge that awaits at the Golden. And If you ever tire of listening to white men, yes, mansplain lessons they’ve learned — let’s face it, mostly about themselves — through their encounters with people who are unlike them, then you may want to pass altogether."
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"His performance is a verbal and physical tour de force...This late, rather long segment of the play dips into a New Age-y kind of mysticism that might not be to everyone's aesthetic taste. But taken in its entirety, 'The Encounter' is a bracingly original theater experience, and McBurney confirms his place as one of the most imaginative figures in the English-speaking theater."
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"Technologically, it’s pretty fun stuff. Alas, the story becomes so disorienting and meandering that it doesn’t make for a great night at the theater...As the second hour evolves, 'The Encounter' becomes more like performance art, with McBurney losing himself in McIntyre’s cacophonous dehydrated delusions...As an aural experience, 'The Encounter' is an accomplishment, but the story takes too long to arrive at an unsatisfying destination."
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"McBurney draws us in with him, sometimes deafened with layers of sounds. The experience is fascinating and at times, exciting...It is also fatiguing and demanding, 110 minutes without an intermission. McBurney is an intriguing performer, drawing us into his exhausting world with enthusiasm...'The Encounter' is a unique sensory theatrical experience, technology with immersive sonic effects that lend a feeling of isolation in a crowded theater."
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"It’s somewhat overwhelming. At times, the story was difficult for me to follow, as it contains conversations with people we’ve never seen, and I found the exchanges confusing....I left the theatre with a 'How does he do it?' question rattling around my brain, which it shared with another question,'Why does he do it?!'...The evening was very much like watching a brilliant actor play all the roles in a radio program, one which contained vividly drawn characters and an exotic setting."
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"The intermissionless hour-and-50-minutes, with themes about natives and the power of nature, comes off like a long sit (I also thought the exchanges between McBurney and the voice of his daughter were a tad too cute), but generally, this is a hypnotic work that breathes new life into the one-man show genre. Loud kudos-in-the-headphones to McBurney and cohorts, who include Michael Levine (design), Gareth Fry and Pete Malkin (sound)."
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"Various voices and strange sounds play through the headphones, ostensibly transporting audience members to an exotic place far away. Or, as the case seemed to be for many on the night I saw the show, transporting them straight to sleep. McBurney's storytelling chops leave much to be desired; for long stretches of the show, it's virtually impossible to figure out what's supposed to be going on, or why McBurney seems to be indulging such dreary stereotypes."
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"It's one of the most extraordinary shows I've ever seen...The adventure moves swiftly and it's funny, disturbing, surprising. But what will really capture you is the way the story is told, through radio play-like audio that is completely immersive...As we travel with McBurney, fear for him, he becomes more open to the mysteries of the world. And so do we."
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"The planes of fantasy, reality, and make-believe are beautifully brought together in the absolutely brilliant production...Conceived, directed, and performed by Simon McBurney, the show expertly combines humor, drama, and sound effects wizardry...McBurney’s performance is nothing short of excellent. The actor changes accents, postures, and movements as he literally throws himself into the world that he and his team create. The other star of the performance is the sound design."
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"The aural delight wears off in about 25 minutes and the rest of the 2 hours is filled with his bizarre story that is at times incoherent, other times rambling, other times mildly interesting when he is effectively teaching you about these very different people and providing insights into cultures and civilizations that are unlike anything we have seen...The show was not nearly worth the advertised ticket price...It has the it's different quality going for it. That's about it."
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"Even in public, it feels like we're in a time and space all our own...With sound designers Gareth Fry and Pete Malkin, McBurney transforms our own relationship to reality, space, and perception through the constantly shifting sounds in our headphones...McBurney's performance is captivating: He's exactly the kind of storyteller you'd happily listen to even in the absence of these technological interventions."
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"The effect is the creation of an interactive and different experience for a Broadway stage. A side effect, however, is the tendency to want to nod off. Something about being cocooned in the headset environment along with a plot that isn't overly exciting had me fighting off sleep for most of the presentation. About 30 minutes of the one-hour, 45-minute play could probably be cut. Perhaps then it would hold attention more. As it is, it certainly is a unique experience in storytelling."
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"Audiences must wear low-tech headphones to actually hear the show, giving things a gimmicky feel, but McBurney gives a consistently fine performance so it’s worth keeping one’s eyes open...There are many twists in the story of Loren McIntyre...Compelling? Yes, but the show drags at times...This isn’t the easiest show to follow. Although 'The Encounter' is not for everyone, fans of '3D audio,' radio plays and one-man monologues will find a lot to love in this ambitious production."
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"The sound is so authentic that you’ll be looking over your shoulder to see who’s coming down the aisle only to discover there’s no one there...With all this going on, the story is almost an afterthought...At its worst, the show is akin to an amazing sound demonstration at a stereo store. At its best, it’s a radio play masquerading as a Broadway attraction – but a radio play that Orson Welles would have cut to a half-hour from its current 110 minutes."
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"This immersive show, which employs technology in impressively creative ways, never registers as a complete piece of theater...McBurney’s performance is undeniably impressive...But this performance alone is not enough to sustain the audience for almost two hours...'The Encounter' drags, leaving the audience wondering how long he will remain in the jungle. In its attempt to take us away from the devices and mindset of tracking time, 'The Encounter,' instead, reminds us of them."
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"After a while, sitting with stereophonic sound for two hours is certainly not for all theatergoers. Even though the attempt to transport to you to the Amazon rainforest is tantalizing and an interesting experience, the play is not for everyone’s taste, particularly at the prices that Broadway productions demand."
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"It’s a delicate and intricate dance between writer and star Simon McBurney, and his sound designers Gareth Fry and Pete Malkin, in this one-man play...At the end it’s all just a little too unclear–the story is unable to uphold the heft of its internalizing questions. Despite the bright lights and big sounds, you’re kind of just left in the dark."
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"It is fascinating and at times uncomfortable. Unfortunately, the nearly two-hour story McBurney tells goes on too long. After a while, you just want your freedom back...The time and effort required to write and produce this play are to be applauded. McBurney put his heart and soul into this work, and it shows on stage...'The Encounter' fails to deliver. Technology is a wonderful thing, but immersing the audience into this wall of sound is not great theater."
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"You might think that all this meta-rumination would impose an intellectual distance between us and the show’s main narrative. Yet we follow McIntyre into the jungles as eagerly as if we were children lost in an adventure novel...On its own, much of McBurney’s script has an old-fashioned romanticism, idealizing the elemental pureness of a Rousseauvian world. It’s much more the form than the content here that truly transports us into parts unknown."
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"It’s a story told with vivid precision, both linguistic and theatrical...It’s a deeply immersive experience, completely transporting. You seem to fall out of time with McIntyre and McBurney, rapt by this gripping thriller...What elevates this story — a gripping adventure in its own right — is that it so matters to McBurney...This is a piece that asks about the price of progress, but never forgets the possibilities. Sensational."
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"Shut your eyes at any point and you feel, thanks to McBurney’s expressive range and the ingenuity of the sound design, that you are in the Amazonian jungle...For me the show is at its best when it demonstrates the capacity of McIntyre and Barnacle to communicate...No less extraordinary is McBurney’s own ability to transport us into another world in a two-hour encounter that makes strong demands on an audience, but ultimately rewards them."
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"'The Encounter' is not unlike one of Katie Mitchell’s dramatic deconstructions, except that the artificial composition builds up not before our eyes but between our ears and that, in a Complicite keynote, the process is never allowed to overshadow the material. This account of the lessons and wonders that a technology-free Brazilian people may have to teach us is conveyed by using contemporary technology to create a palpable impression of those wonders."
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"It’s a performance of startling inventiveness and precision, simultaneously conspiratorial and confrontational. His persuasive storytelling is dense with detail...But what looks like a one-man show in fact relies on the invisible efforts of a brilliant technical crew. Inevitably it’s the richly layered sound design by Gareth Fry that impresses most...'The Encounter' is a hypnotic, almost religious experience that warrants those two much-abused terms, 'immersive' and 'unmissable'."
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"McBurney’s love of anthropology and huge respect for his subjects shines through. Each audience member is lost in their own sonic world, in a crowd of others. It’s a stunning communal and personal epiphany, but it’s almost too much, too heady. Part of McBurney’s genius is to reel things in a little bit...As the effects subside, we’re left with a new understanding of the limits of technology, as well as its strengths."
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"Really gets into your head...The power of this story is enough to knock you flat...Transporting, is one word for 'The Encounter'; it takes you into the minds of other humans and into the darkest shadows of the jungle, but it is also, at its essence, simple storytelling. As McBurney points out at the beginning of the piece, winding yarns is a primal, vital instinct that sets us apart from other species. And this is a demonstration of that instinct at its very best."
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"McIntyre’s story is richer in sensory experience than in concrete fact...Plenty happens, much of it violent and strange. Settlements are set on fire and abandoned...A bit of this goes a long way and McIntyre’s various shamanistic encounters eventually offer diminishing returns...This is a show thematically concerned with ways of seeing, but its greater rewards come from its journey into sound."
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"It’s not too bold to say that 'The Encounter' is out of this world. McBurney’s one-man show is simply like nothing you’ve ever experienced...Starting out as a casual chat, the night at the Barbican soon engulfs us not only in a remarkable story and idea of reality, but also an incredible piece of theatre...'The Encounter' is not just an incredible piece of storytelling, but a true questioning of our existence and society’s perceptions of the world...Simply mind-blowing in every sense."
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"McBurney’s latest play certainly asks a lot of its audience...'The Encounter' engages the audience in a relationship of complicity in a variety of (seemingly contradictory) ways: through intimacy and distance; through ethical engagement and critical detachment; through bodily participation and philosophical debate...The five senses are constantly, powerfully invoked...The final ethical demand of the play is one that touches on the very essence of theatre."
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