Leo Doulton's collection of highly improvisational, operatic shows gives audiences the chance to influence and shape their wyrd worlds in unique ways.
Come Bargain With Uncanny Things (2025) Photo: Claire Shovelton
The Uncanny Things Trilogy is a series of shows fusing immersive theatre with operatic performance. Set within a world very similar to ours, each show invites audiences to come face-to-face with an Uncanny Thing, a supernatural being that has the power to change and shape the world around it in both positive and negative ways. Through a series of rituals, bargains, and deals, audience members are given the freedom to decide how each show unfolds, with the consequences of those choices potentially impacting the other shows in the trilogy. With a cast of five performers, all of the cast's dialogue is delivered through improvised song, though the audience is under no obligation to also sing.
Taking place across several tunnels beneath Southwark Bridge at COLAB Tower near London Bridge, the audience takes on the role of local residents who are there to help decide how best to manage the power and influence the Uncanny Things have over the borough and its residents.
Over the course of three evenings, we attended all three shows in the trilogy, which includes Come Bargain With Uncanny Things (first performed at COLAB Tavern in 2022), Come Worship Our Uncanny King (first performed as part of Voidspace Live 2024), and Come Murder An Uncanny Thing (which debuted at COLAB Tower during this run). All three shows put the community in a different position of power against the Uncanny Things and offer unique ways of interacting with and shaping the world.
Come Bargain With Uncanny Things (2025) Photo: Claire Shovelton
While the trilogy can be approached in any order, Come Bargain With Uncanny Things acts as the logical introduction to this wyrd world. With deep lore, a whole host of mechanics and information to quickly get your head around, and a sense that the decisions made by audiences can have real consequences (both positive and negative), it may initially be an overwhelming experience for those who are unfamiliar with the kind of folklore that deals with fae, changelings and hellkins.
At the start of the show, the community is presented with two requests from local residents that they need to investigate. During our visit, these included an elderly woman hoping to be granted more time to connect with her family before passing and a blossom tree whose glowing leaves were concerning those who lived nearby.
In order to deal with these requests, the audience must get advice and guidance from Guildmaster McCall (CN Lester), The Wyrd Gazer (Amy Kearsly), and Carol (Sarah Griffin), the local council representative, as to how best to approach the unwieldy Uncanny Thing, who will seek out any loophole possible to push back against the community's demands. For the community to achieve what it wants, it needs to stay on top of what's happening in all corners of the space.
Come Bargain With Uncanny Things (2025) Photo: Claire Shovelton
Those working with The Wyrd Gazer must plan and enact small rituals to gain valuable information from the Uncanny Thing, as well as solve puzzles to craft potions that temporarily change the Uncanny Thing's form. This informs how those working alongside Guildmaster McCall approach the Uncanny Thing for the larger invocations to solve the community requests, as that valuable information on its true nature informs how best to approach it. Those creating small, handmade offerings for the Uncanny Thing need to also be aware of any new information gained from the others groups so its likes and dislikes can be taken into account when trying to win its favour.
Audience members who have experience playing games like Dungeons & Dragons or regularly do roleplaying games will likely find it easier to get their heads around all of this information, but those who haven't dabbled in those worlds may at first be overwhelmed and confused about how to best approach these tasks. Given the improvised nature of each performance's narrative, which again is based entirely on what the audience decides to do, missteps can have fairly costly ramifications.
This cycle of receiving requests, planning offerings, potions, and rituals repeats three times across the course of Come Bargain, giving the audience time to get their head around the show's intricacies. By the third and final request of the evening, our audience had seemingly mastered their respective roles, which allowed us to temporarily communicate with the recently deceased Angela, the elderly woman whose initial request we had not chosen at the beginning of the evening. Helping her children get some much-needed closure was a fittingly poignant ending to the show, and it showed that helping the individuals within a community can be just as meaningful as helping the collective.
Overall, the tone of Come Bargain balances being both ominous and haunting, yet inviting. CN Lester and Amy Kearsly's operatic, improvised performances throughout the show, which take the form of both individual pieces to smaller groups and as a duo during the invocations, go a long way to creating this atmosphere. Often, the pair's ethereal hums will echo throughout the space, acting as a backing for the snarls and growls coming from the Uncanny Thing (Leo Doulton), which remains bound within a circle at the far end of the space for the show's duration.
Come Worship Our Uncanny King (2025) Photo: Claire Shovelton
The second show in the Uncanny Things Trilogy, Come Worship Our Uncanny King, is much lighter fare. With the Uncanny King sitting atop a throne in the centre of the space, the community is there to give praise and thanks to the supernatural ruler. There's no justice being sought, no scheming and underhand tricks to be wary of, and no duty to do right by anyone other than the King. We have found ourselves in their court, and we are there to entertain them.
Structurally, the show shares a lot of similarities with Come Bargain, though the stakes are a lot lower and the mechanics are simpler. The audience once again splits off into smaller groups to work on various activities against the clock, which are later presented to the Uncanny King. Those into arts and crafts will naturally be drawn to creating offerings with Adorer (CN Lester), while elsewhere in the space, the community will also work on creating short processionals such as toasts, hymns, and performances with The Master of Processionals (Hester Dart) that highlight the best qualities of the Uncanny King. Additionally, debates on a selection of topics decided by the King give the community further chances to pander to the King's ego, with them making the final ruling on whose argument was the strongest.
Come Worship Our Uncanny King (2025) Photo: Claire Shovelton
Come Worship Our Uncanny King is billed as a comedic farce, which is fitting. With much less of a focus on trying to help the wider community of Southwark, the cast has much more room to play with the audience's suggestions and build upon their light-hearted creations.
During our visit, an offhand comment about us having a pair of cats at home quickly spiralled into an extended dialogue throughout the court about their virtues, which culminated in an improvised choir of operatic meows from CN Lester and Hester Dart. Given so much of the show's content is decided by the audience's choices, cats became a running theme throughout the rest of the performance, with both audiences and cast harking back to these moments throughout the evening.
Later in the show, following a suggestion from the King that they'd like to see us create a competition in their honour, a wordplay-based game was presented to the court, with all of the participants, including a wordless Silent (Sarah Griffin), who took part with gestures instead of words, slowly bowing out to let the King win. It was a sycophantic decision from the audience to throw the game in the King's favour, but it was rewarded handsomely with boons, which allowed the King's court to have their wishes and desires granted.
Come Worship Our Uncanny King (2025) Photo: Claire Shovelton
Rounding off the trilogy, Come Murder An Uncanny Thing sees the community return to seeking justice for the people of Southwark. With The Vigilante (Amy Kearsley) having bound an injured Uncanny Thing, the group must decide what to do with the dangerous being now in their control. From the outset, it's made clear that the Uncanny Thing has caused great pain to the people of the borough, with direct mention of the events that unfolded in Come Bargain, and the show's central tension is formed around the question of whether we should be kind or cruel to it. In this show, the audience holds the greatest amount of power over the Uncanny Thing, and without the oversight of council officials, have much more freedom to decide how best to use its powers without any of the red tape present in Come Bargain.
Come Murder An Uncanny Thing (2025) Photo: Claire Shovelton
For those looking to enact vigilante justice, crafting remedies will punish the Uncanny Thing. Bound to enact what we as an audience wish it to, there is again total freedom for visitors to shape the narrative of the show. Suggestions that it should remove its own teeth or feel the pain it's inflicted on others as retribution were offered up by the audience during our visit. Those instead looking to instead create positive outcomes from the Uncanny Things bounding can craft uses for the Uncanny Thing to enact with The Lawful (Hester Dart), such as reducing the pain of those in the local hospital or providing shelter to the area's homeless population.
All of these remedies and uses come at a price, however. The Uncanny Thing will assign a value to each request based on how much of its finite power it will take to enact. As an audience, we don't know exactly how much power it has to give before destroying itself, so all of our choices remain hypothetical in the first half of the show, with a final decision needed after the show's interval.
Come Murder An Uncanny Thing (2025) Photo: Claire Shovelton
That central tension of Come Murder - whether to use the Uncanny Thing's power to better the world around us or use it to punish itself - comes to a head in the second half of the show. All of our propositions must be debated and weighed up against one another. The Uncanny Thing will decide the order in which it enacts the remedies and uses, so not everything we demand of it may be possible before it dies.
Conflicts of opinion between the audience are a given, with them trying to balance helping the community with punishing the Uncanny Thing for what it's done. There are conflicting ideas from the cast also, with The Vigilante and The Lawful clashing on what the best course of action is, acting like an angel and demon on the shoulder of each audience member. We'd wager most audiences will ultimately want to mine the Uncanny Thing for as much as they can, be it positive or negative, without showing the supernatural being mercy, so the question becomes how much can be achieved before its death.
Come Murder An Uncanny Thing (2025) Photo: Claire Shovelton
Having now spent roughly 7 hours inside the wyrd world of The Uncanny Things Trilogy, the thing that's really stuck with us is how much freedom each show affords its audience. When we interviewed Virtually Opera's Leo Doulton last month, he referenced Parabolic Theatre's 2019/2022 show Crisis, What Crisis? as a key influence that informed the creation of this work, and that is certainly present throughout each part of the trilogy. It's rare that a creator is willing to hand over total control of a show to the audience, let alone three shows.
By offering the audience that freedom, it allows them to forge their own path and take real ownership of what unfolds. It's a testament to the show's cast and crew that each show doesn't spin off into chaos, unless, of course, that's what the audience decides they want to do...
★★★★
The Uncanny Things Trilogy runs until 30th March 2025 at COLAB Tower near London Bridge. Standard tickets for each show are priced at £45, with tickets for all three shows available as a bundle for £105. For more info and to book tickets, visit designmynight.com
Read more reviews of immersive experiences like The Uncanny Things Trilogy here.
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