Review: Jury Duty

Style: Virtual crime thriller
Where: Zoom

Rating: 4/5 stars

In this world turned upside down, emergency legislation has been rushed through to do away with barristers. Now the accused in court have only you – the intrepid members of the jury to determine their guilt or innocence. Good luck!

Staring Tom Black (previously seen in Crisis, What Crisis? and Crooks 1926) as Harry Briggs, an investigative journalist possibly turned arsonist, this online adventure lets the audience decide the fate of the accused. You are guided throughout by a faceless convenor (Joe Ball) who manages your experience whisking you from Zoom room to Zoom room to talk with your fellow jurors and the accused.

At first the experience can feel somewhat overwhelming with an enormous initial data dump of documents for you to sift through and decipher for clues. However, if you work well with the other jurors you soon get a handle on the information and as the experience goes on your are able – through emails and phone calls to piece together a reasonable picture of the events?

Or are you? This is a complex story that keeps you engaged right up to the end. We were lucky in that we did correctly suss out the ending, but I don’t think it would have affected the fun we had on the journey had we got it wrong.

I’ve been missing theatre – and particularly immersive theatre – so much since the lockdown started. And while there’s nothing quite like being there in the flesh, this is a very clever and well-adapted piece that takes full advantage of the technology we are all living on now to deliver a well crafted and engaging story. And while there were a few technical glitches, they didn’t interrupt either our enjoyment of our sleuthing.

Zoom isn’t the same as real life. But this was the best time I’ve had on a Zoom call thus far. It was a glorious relief from the tedium of the medium. It was as well crafted as the best immersive theatre, just clever enough to challenge the audience and just solvable enough to give a satisfying and fun experience.

If you’re bored of box sets and tired of the tedium this is the perfect antidote. My only quibble is that once you’ve done it once, the experience isn’t very replicable. So I won’t be able to do it again and again, much as I would wish to.