Coma debuted here at Edinburgh Fringe in 2019, and it returns to the festival alongside two of Darkfield’s other short, immersive audio installations, Flight and Arcade. Each takes place inside a shipping container: Coma’s is kitted out with 24 bunk beds, each with wipe-down mattresses, headrests and a pair of binaural headphones.
Climbing inside, you’re invited to take part in a medical experiment by taking a white pill and slipping into a collective dream, which begins to simulate a coma. The audio seems to suggest you should actually take a physical pill that’s been left next to you, but, searching around the bed, I find nothing (my subsequent Googling of other reviews suggests there should have been something there).
Regardless of whether you take the pill or not, the lights soon lower you into darkness, and the experience begins. Darkfield’s USP is essentially ‘pitch-black binaural experiences’. These are usually combined with other elements, like smells and motion, to heighten the experience. But as a package, it’s underwhelming.
Yes, the binaural sound is clever. Yes, it feels like someone is standing right next to you, talking just to you - but there’s even less narrative here than the thinly plotted Flight. Any sense of a story beyond ‘this is a collective experience’ is absent. Meanwhile, though the use of scents that you pick up at certain scenes is clever, the delivery is clunky: you can actually feel them being pumped into your bunk as a cool, soft waft of air across your forehead.
And then, after barely beginning, it’s over. I’ve already forgotten most of the ‘plot’ by the time I’ve extracted myself from my bunk and emerged into the bright sunlight outside the container. That’s what happens when a production is all style and no substance.
COMA is at Assembly George Square Gardens, Edinburgh, until 31 August 2026 as part of Edinburgh Festival Fringe
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