Save The Princess is a smartly conceived choose-your-own-adventure-style show at Camden Fringe 2024 at the Hen & Chickens Theatre
“I’m just a girl on a horse”
As someone whose game experience has long been limited to 3 rounds of WiiTennis, the notion of Save The Princess did give me a little pause. Fortunately, it is as accessible to newbies as it is to full-on video game nerds as it blends inspirations from choose-your-own-adventure video and board games with a nifty web app to give us a live action video game, which has plenty to say about contemporary gaming too.
In her video game world peopled with the likes of Bario and Tuigi, archetypal damsel-in-distress Princess Plum finds herself in more distress than usual when she gains a measure of self-actualisation and self-awareness. Newly autonomous, she takes advantage of this glitch to enter the wider gaming multiverse on her own quest, to change “the code” that will allow her to take control of her destiny for once.
The lo-fi aesthetic of The UnDisposables’ fringe production is actually fairly deceptive as some inspired video design whisks us through different styles of games. Plum faces zombies and soldiers, animal villagers, dungeon masters, seasoned warriors and more besides, nodding to the breadth of the gaming world but also picking up on how much misogyny is threaded throughout it no matter the game.
The audience gets to make key choices for Plum using a web-based platform on our phones but it isn’t always immediately clear how consequential these decisions are. Afterwards, we’re informed that there’s six potential endings and not all of them involve saving the princess…I wish I’d felt some more of that jeopardy whilst watching/playing, although there is one key moment that really resonates when the ante of these decisions is suddenly upped quite considerably.
Esther Joy Mackay is great as Plum – I loved the constant video game character bounce – and Grace Hussey-Burd and Gabrielle Pausey are really impressive as they cycle through any number of side characters and supporting roles in each of the gaming universes. In this type of format, there’s always going to be a wondering about the paths not chosen, the stories not told, and that’s fine. I think the show just needs a little tweaking to emphasise the significance of the audience’s role beyond a simple choice between circle and square. I’d happily watch it again to see if we can get to a different ending.
