Punchdrunk's The Drowned Man: 'their playfulness and need to bewitch has not dimmed' Andrez? Punchdrunk's trailer for The Drowned Man That's what I did and I was ushered through a dark doorway and down the back stairs of the shop. I quickly began to feel I had made a mistake and that Andrez might actually live there and I'd feel very stupid once I found him and looked at him expecting a performance. But battle fears like this and continue, through a narrow corridor, barely lit, with boxes piled high all around and you'll find him, hunched over a machine. He shows you a reel of film and whispers in your ear, terrifying you with his urgency. As for the full-length show, The Drowned Man is an adaptation of Woyzeck. They have teamed up with the National Theatre on what is the "next large scale show after The Masque of the Red Death," according to Artistic Director Felix Barrett. Barrett says they have found the perfect place to stage it. They won't let on where it is, but it's somewhere huge (200,000 square feet) and very central: "We've wanted to do a big show for ages, but we just haven't found the space." Georg Buchner's text Woyzeck appeals to Barrett because, he tells me, it has something of the Punchdrunk style: "It has a strange, splintered shape. It's so compact and sparse. He died before it was finished but never said what order its scenes should come in. It defines the whole Punchdrunk form because it doesn't matter which order you digest them in, an inevitable, terrible conclusion is perching on your shoulder. The show will transport the story to the Sixties and will be set in a film studio at the point when "the Golden Age has started to crumble," says Barrett. The man you encounter in the tiny section that's being played out over the next two weeks has advice for you and will appear himself in The Drowned Man, which opens in June. Pay attention to what he tells you, says Barrett, as it may prove useful. In the end, it's impossible to rate this live trailer as a show in its own right - it's just a snippet of what's to come. But it does prove that despite their global success Punchdrunk's inventiveness, their playfulness and their need to bewitch have not dimmed. If anything, they are burning brighter.