"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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"'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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