Club NVRLND @ Assembly Checkpoint
In its perhaps overly successful attempt to replicate a club environment, elements of the immersive Club NVRLND get lost in the fray
Stepping into Assembly Checkpoint, you are absorbed into the dense standing crowd. DJ Sammy’s 2002 club hit Heaven booms over the stereo, and you are welcomed by Nan, a spritely woman donning a tank top with the word “FETCH” across her chest, two space buns, and a visible bedazzled G-string. “Welcome to Club NVRLND, where the clock stopped in the mid 2000’s and we party straight on till morning!” announces Tiger Lily, glittering in a gorgeous orange beaded number. What unfolds over the next hour and a half is a joyous romp set to a millennial’s secondary school burnt CD collection.
Peter is near approaching his 30th birthday and is deeply struggling with the notion of growing up. His club, Club NVRLND, is also struggling to stay afloat as Peter prioritises a good time over keeping the club’s electrical wires up to code, or his staff well paid. Wendy, donned in a Madonna (c. Like a Virgin)-inspired wedding get up, arrives looking for Peter after leaving her unnamed groom at the altar. The pair have not seen each other in two decades, but as the button hanging from Wendy’s neck proves, they still hold a candle for one another. The plot seems to become progressively muddier as the lines between audience and performer are blurred in what is meant to be an immersive club experience.
The club aspect is something that Club NVRLND delivers on. The audience are free to mill about, the bar in the venue remains open throughout the performance and when there is a dance number, the music overwhelms the space. The consequence of such a set-up is that for the most part, the actual performance is often missed. Either drowned out by audience members yelling to chat or an inability to see the performers due to sightlines, it really does, in that way, feel like a club.
Of the plot we could make out, the actual story feels a little underbaked: there are halfhearted attempts to connect J.M Barrie’s beloved characters to these caricatures of club kids, but it feels somewhat hollow. That feeling is only made truer by the playing-out of heteronormative tropes that movies made in the 2000s relied upon. For instance, when Wendy is rejected by Peter, she finds solace in Tiger Lily, and they share a bi-curious kiss. This leads into Katy Perry’s I Kissed a Girl, but this potentially subversive queering of Wendy is swiftly undercut by her ending: to be reunited with Peter, a man who has throughout the play devalued her. When the two love interests kissed, there were several audience members who audibly groaned.
Having said that, it’s liberating to sing some of the songs reserved for solo belt-out showers, such as Toxic by Britney Spears and Natasha Bedingfield’s Unwritten, in a sea of people who know every single lyric too. Overall, what’s delivered in Club NVRLND is a dedicated noughties club night that you could stumble into on a weekday on Cowgate, rather than an immersive musical spectacle.
Club NVRLND, Assembly Checkpoint, run ended