Generation of Z – London Review

I went to Generation of Z last week, and having gone in with rather low expectations, came out quite impressed. It’s not particularly scary – the amount of people in the audience means you feel a certain security in numbers, but to be honest, I was quite relieved about that. It was much more of a piece of theatre than I had expected. I thought it was mainly going to be an hour of shuttling people around a building while various zombies jumped out at you. But no, there are real characters and several narratives at play. If you can, go with a few people and make a conscious effort to separate. Some people might not like the fact that there are four different story arcs happening while you can only participate in one, but if you have at least one friend in each plot line, you can compare and contrast and fill each other in afterwards on the bits you didn’t, which elongates the experience. If you don’t do this then there is a risk that you will feel like you have missed out, and also that you may not completely understand the plot.

I do think that this was an immersive show, much more immersive than some other shows which use this description. To start, the very plot line revolves around you being there – the other actors are there to guide you to safety – none of the action would be happening without the audience’s presence in the first place. Plus there are other opportunities to get involved – you may be asked to distract a zombie, or, in my narrative, comfort an injured soldier. I worried there would be a lot of waiting around while action happened elsewhere but this was kept to a minimum, there was always something going on.

For a show that was only an hour long I thought they did a pretty good job of fleshing out the characters, and there was definitely one that everyone just falls in love with and roots for almost immediately (Hoo-RAH!). There’s a lot of action along the way – a bit of blood and a few surprises which I wouldn’t want to spoil. Be prepared for gunfire and they’re not kidding when they say there’s violence. I like that they built in a bit of intrigue into the plot. What seems like a straightforward premise – you have stumbled into this place and the zombies are approaching, you need to get to safety – soon becomes less obvious as everything is not quite as it seems… This aspect of it was actually more spine tingling than the zombies baying at the gates.

There were a couple of issues. One I mentioned – you may find the storyline a little unclear if you don’t have anyone to fill you in afterwards. Also, while they have definitely tried their best to make each arc compelling, with equal action, some do seem to be more dramatic than others. I was a little envious hearing what had happened in the other groups. And finally, the ending is a bit weird. I’m not spoiling much by saying that you do manage to escape but at the end it wasn’t really clear to who you ultimately owed your survival. We weren’t really sure what had happened at the end.