YouMeBumBumTrain: six months in the world’s biggest doll’s house
Cities. We can’t get enough of them. The sights and sounds, the hubbub and density, the colour, the bars and clubs, the emporia chock full of outfits we couldn’t possibly pull off and furniture designed for wealthier, more decorous lives. But one belief we’ve all shared, is that in a city you could be anyone you want. “Come through this door and discover who you really are…”
Vintage cocktails sipped in repro fashion, sensuous salsa dancing, morning raves, a serviceable pub with reasonably priced beers. We continue to ponder the possibilities from a sofa-bound doom scroll. We talk proudly of the stranger corners, the unmarked doors we’ve somehow been behind, to newcomers and visitors. It’s ours, this is, whatever it is.
Here in London, as in many other modern cities, you can also navigate the whole mad circus on autopilot. Get your earbuds in, cue up your playlist, and drift along keeping the stimulation at a tolerable arm’s length. A defocused dreamscape to navigate on the way between tasks or people.
“You look like you’re having a nice day?” Pausing at crossing and a stranger disarms you with a question. Your mind and body race through a defence sense-check. Do they want money? Is it some charity scam? Why would someone be talking to me? You can’t remember even meeting anyone on the street that you now know by name. It’s like the faltering interstitial dialogue in open world computer games. “Hey buddy!” A nagging fear, that this is what life used to be like. Or is that also just a film and TV trope?
Don’t get me wrong. I love living in London, but you’d have to be blind not to see that we wander through the environment mostly within our curated little bubbles, parallel solipsists breaking character only to smile at a barista or enter the odd PIN number.
You are the hero/villain/delete as appropriate
I mention this as background to the extraordinary experience of taking part in You Me Bum Bum Train – perhaps the most truly immersive theatre show ever staged – and yes the word immersive has been tortured to death at this point. However in this instance it’s richly deserved.
The show, which ran from late November 2024 to mid-May 2025, is in fact a kind of artistic/psychic reconnection device. For those lucky enough to have gained a ticket, they will become a single audience member/participant traversing the show one at a time, embarking on an unwitting Mr Ben type adventure, opening doors only to find themselves in 25 or wildly different scenarios.
Each scene has been artfully written to challenge who you are; so you will react, and play the scene you’ve landed in, with absolutely no preparation. This is deliberate of course. Each scene is beautifully physically rendered, some are confrontational or emotionally challenging, others funny or calming. The result is nothing less than a waking dream. To describe it ‘theatre’ sells it incredibly short.
Nothing to see here, move along please…
Delightfully analogue in a world drowning in digital dopamine, YMBBT are STRICT about no one taking photos (performers or passengers). The show’s intensity relies on no one taking part ever revealing what happens so that every ‘passenger’ experiences it as a total surprise. It also somehow galvanises a shared sense of community for the performers, as promise keepers and secret preservers…
Everyone in the everything machine
As one of the 400 plus volunteers enacting and realising the show each night, one is also gifted something incredibly special – an opportunity to break through the social membrane that keeps us insulated from each other most of the time. We become children on a mission, playing dress-up inside a massive dolls house of a production, a sprawling set hidden inside 4 floors of an unregarded office building off St. Martin’s Lane.
Our job is to engage strangers all night. In character. Improvising our contribution within the demands of the scene. The cast themselves will likely be new each night, or certainly new to you. Every night is the first day at school - you must be guard down, enthusiasm up, ready to make friends, to hit your marks.
Inside, this team of volunteer performers, set makers, producers, musicians, bar staff, security people, assembled, night after night, month after month. We were cast in a scene by the producers after filling in a form and turning up to be glanced over. Perhaps you loved the first scene you tried and became a regular. Other people tried to take part in almost all of them. Your role might include singing, acts of worship, physical comedy, confrontational shouting, or any of a myriad of vital technical skills to keep the whole thing going. How they ever managed this before WhatsApp, I shudder to think.
I took part about 20 times between November 2024 and May 2025 in two quite contrasting scenes. And although there were ups and downs, almost everyone I spoke to found the show gave them access to an aspect of themselves that didn’t have another outlet. Some learned skills to get them going on a career in theatre, becoming scene leaders or learning how productions run (though few other shows will be like this one). In countless different conversations, I sensed a recurring theme – people love to have a thing to do, a role to play, something to contribute. A chance to be part of something magical (even when it’s exhausting at times).
Just… connect
Now I’m no actor… but as a writer and muso, who loves being on stage and long curious about improvisation, I found a scene in which one was introduced to the ticket holder as a different character/role every few minutes. It was a charming, Ealing-comedy-esque high wire act, and a joy to be part of. But the thing that’s really stayed with me wasn’t what I got from it. In a more enduring sense everyone who took part was doing something incredibly rare. We were contriving a new reality for a procession of complete strangers every night. The opportunity to be part of that, and to be part of a different kind of social interaction, was a real privilege.
We weren’t real actors, professionals protected by agents, ennui or actual training. I think that’s what gave the show something of its edge (and risks of failure) - openness, trust and vulnerability are all in play. For newbies to a scene there’s just a 5 minute rehearsal about 10 minutes before the show starts. Through the trap door we all go.
We have spoken for years of ‘consumption’ in arts and media. What do consumers want? We must know and bring it to them! Algorithms will tell us who to cast! You must write dialogue drowning in visual detail, because no one is actually watching! Creativity with focus grouped narrative structures and dance routines.
Yet here was a show that entirely ignores this concept and the passivity it implies. In You Me Bum Bum Train every performer was trying to create an illusion convincing enough for the ‘passenger’ to believe it, respond, and in a way discover who else they might be, in a different world.
Perhaps the most bittersweet staging was the night where about 20 of the ticket holders were in end of life care. They were among the most committed and creative participants I saw come through – ready to submit to the scenario and all-in on just being in the moment. (There were evenings that were a tad investment banker-heavy where one was less sure anyone had really entered the spirit - but then, bills to be paid!)
Ultimately the show is predicated on the belief that a kind of everyday magic is possible, when we break out from the performer/audience paradigm, when there is room for talent and confidence to emerge. Thousands of unlikely connections happen. There are a LOT of feelings.
So, here’s to who we met and what we learnt on the train. Here’s to connection with strangers. Here’s to being intentional in eccentric settings. Reality always was rather over-rated.
