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Take off your shoes and socks, spray your feet with sanitiser, and you're ready to brave Viola's teenage dream (or is that nightmare) of a bedroom with Helena Bonham Carter, writes PATRICK MARMION

For strictly professional reasons, I took the plunge for the latest 'immersive experience' from Punchdrunk theatre company.

Viola's Room is a 1990s-themed teenage gothic fantasy by novelist Daisy Johnson, based on a short story by the Victorian author Barry Pain, here narrated on headphones by Helena Bonham Carter. Tramping around barefoot (following sanitisation with a spray), the texture of changing floor surfaces (shagpile, wood boards and, eventually, sand), adds a sensory dimension, alongside whiffs of essential oils (or was that just the smell of cleaning fluids? He could do with more charismatic defiance from Emmerdale's Ayden Callaghan as his leading man, but Honeysuckle Weeks is frightfully charming as his all-forgiving wife, while Sara Crowe quivers with shock as a family friend, and Narinder Samra is deceptively louche as his histrionic accuser.

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