Stage Review - The Double (Witness Immersive)

Stage Review - The Double
Presented By: Witness Immersive - Seattle, WA
Show Run: June 27 - July 27, 2025
Date Reviewed: Wednesday, July 02, 2025
Run Time: 95 minutes (no intermission)
Reviewed By: Anna Tatelman

Most larger theatre companies go on hiatus during the summer, which makes it a wonderful time of the year for smaller organizations looking to try out new or quirky material. Witness’s The Double, written by Michael Bontatibus and directed by Charlotte Murray, is an innovative show that fuses immersive theatre, modern dance, and multimedia. Although set in a modern and seemingly mundane office, as the show progresses, lights spasm, audio cuts out, and office workers go from shuffling papers to falling on the floor or approaching one another with menacing postures, all with increasing frequency. In The Double, nothing is what it seems – even everything we can directly experience with our own senses.

Since this is an immersive theatre space, there is no traditional separation from the performers and audience. Instead, audience members arrive in a vestibule surrounded by plastic wrap, where they can orders drinks or use the restroom. Small groups of audience members are then ushered through the plastic wrap into the main performance space that is reminiscent of a modern office, replete with cubicles, conference rooms, and a kitchen/lounge. Audiences are given permission to explore the space, whether that means rifling through the contents of desks, reading the white board notes, or poking about the kitchen. After a few minutes of free roaming, a video begins that reels us into the play’s narrative.

Based loosely on the novel of the same title by Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Double is about two men who look very similar and work at the same office. These characters are never given names and they are played by the same actor, so for simplicity’s sake, I’m going to refer to the first character as the video man and the second as the audio man. The video man is relatively new to the office, but becomes immediately popular among both his colleagues and management, and rises quickly as a star employee. The video man never appears physically in the space; instead, we hear and see him explain “the incident” via video footage playing on all the cubicle computers and on a projector in the kitchen.

Periodically, this video footage gets interrupted with bursts of static and flashes of light, and replaced by an audio feed of a new voice, that of the second man. The audio man has worked at the office for much longer and far more diligently. While at first the men get along, increasingly the audio man begins to feel that the video man is slowly and deliberately stealing everything from him: his work, his promotion, his office friendships, and even his life outside the office.

Actor Josiah Miller does an impressive job playing both doubles; I frankly did not know who voiced the audio man until I asked the production team. As the video man, Miller is a relatable, if perplexed, everyday man; as the audio man, his relatability gives way over time to a man increasingly angry as he feels all that matters to him being stolen away. The two narratives shift between running parallel to one another and offering vastly different accounts of what happened, making the truth near impossible to discern.

Simultaneous to these multimedia elements, four live performers move through the office (Michael Arellano, maia melene d’urfé, Carol Davies, and Ashley Menestrina). They fluctuate between conducting office routines – creating flow charts, typing on laptops, meeting with colleagues, reviewing paperwork – and dancing. The performers explore an array of movement styles, from club-style to modern dancing, all choreographed by Ashley Menestrina. All four dancers are not only highly proficient technically, but incredible at emoting while dancing. Even separated by the glass conference walls, I could feel their emotional shifts from boredom, to anger, to longing. I wish I knew more about dance so I could offer better insights into each performer’s unique talent.

Like the multimedia narratives, unsettling moments happen throughout these dances, such as when the dancers behave more aggressively toward one another, or collapse against the glass conference walls. The Double’s sometimes disparate, sometimes complementary elements of audio and visuals strikingly highlights the illusive gap between reality and fiction.

Although sometimes I feel that multimedia in a live performance is distracting or reductive, it is vital in The Double in emphasizing the various disjunctures in everyone’s experiences, identities, and emotions. Even though both doubles seem to be answering the questions of an offstage presence, we never get any indication of who is recording them or what they’ve been asked. The feeds also cut out often, making us question if the gaps are intentional (and if so, who created them and for what reason) or purely bad reception. The crisp, clear audio track of the video man makes a sharp contrast to the static and rumbly voice of the audio man, and it’s also impressive how the sound bounces to different speakers in the performance space (sound design by Trey McGee). Most of the interruptions by the audio man are accompanied by brief strobe lighting effects, and the office desk and floor lamps also change colors (lighting design by Elizabeth M. Stewart).

While I admire its thoughtful approach to multimedia, I felt that The Double could make better use of its immersive theatre elements. Although technically audience members were permitted to walk around the space for the entire show, the bulk of the action (over 60 minutes out of 95) takes place inside one conference room, and the lighting in all other areas is exceedingly dim during these times. The Double could capitalize more on its unique space and further underscore the theme of truth being subjective by having the performers move more frequently throughout the whole office. If all audience members could walk away from this show having completely different experiences of the narrative, that would further highlight the play’s core themes of destabilizing identity and truth.

With that said, The Double still makes for a compelling, unique evening of theatre. I appreciate theatre companies willing to take big swings with out-of-the-box theatre and world premieres – and in terms of offering a unique experience, compelling dance numbers, and innovative uses of technology, Witness still hits a home run with this show.

The Double is a unique show that likely resembles nothing most audiences have experienced recently or will experience again soon. Through its innovative cocktail of theatre, multimedia, and dance, Witness’s current production destabilizes ideas like identity, modernity, and truth. With its complex narrative, evocative movement, and impressive technical elements, The Double immerses us in a world where multiple versions of the truth clamor for our attention.

The Double, presented by Witness, runs on stage at LIT Immersive through July 27th. For more information, including ticket availability and sales, visit https://www.witnessimmersive.com/.

Photo credit: Sarina Solem