The phone call came yesterday afternoon. “Hello,” said a calm female voice. “It’s Tabitha from Vescovo & Co. I believe you would like to make an appointment?”
Visit the website of Vescovo & Co, and you will read about a company established in 1926 as an “international health protection agency” charitably funded by “the Knights of Malta”. In truth, however, Vescovo & Co, with its offers of “free contagious & infectious disease testing” and talk of pathogens, viruses and fungi, was an elaborate front for a collaboration between Jack White and the Punchdrunk theatre company (famed for its remarkable immersive theatre events that involve such delights as ballet dancers, chainsaws and collaborations with Damon Albarn and Adam Curtis) that culminated last night in a secret London show.
The title of White’s recent album, Lazaretto, is a reference to the quarantine stations once used for maritime travellers, and so it was fitting that Punchdrunk set this production in a faintly sinister medical research centre, and made its narrative the outbreak of a contagious disease.
A little after 11pm a text directed me to an anonymous office block on Arundel Street, just off the Strand in central London. Fans stood incongruously on the pavement, looking up at the glare of the foyer. Many were there alone, and several had travelled from outside the city, thrilled by this curious goose-chase.
We were summoned inside, where music by Chet Baker and Dave Brubeck played in the empty lobby. Two crisp officials took names, handed out numbered wristbands, and instructed us to fill in a form that signed away all rights and internal organs. “I’m worried about the ‘sudden death’ part,” said one patient, frowning at the small print.
A solemn blonde woman in a pussy-bow blouse gave us surgical masks and inspected our hands before we took the lift up to another floor to meet Dr Fleming.
“Thank you Francesca,” said Dr Fleming, as the blonde woman disappeared back to the lobby. She demanded we use the antiseptic hand gel from the dispenser on the wall, gave us blue surgical gowns, protective foot coverings, a bag for our belongings, and led us, one by one, to treatment rooms to change.
An ominous soundtrack played through the Tannoy: something industrial yet strangely breathy, broken only by an occasional announcement paging a doctor to another treatment room. I sat on the chair in my surgical gown, surveyed the table of swabs and sample pots, and flicked through a leaflet about a urinary tract infection called pyelonephritis. Then a doctor swept through the blue cubicle curtains and planted a stethoscope to my chest, shone a light in my eyes and asked how I was sleeping.
There were two more rooms – the first stocked with wire cages from which came the scuffling, squeaking sound of laboratory rats. Another patient and I sat at desks and were told to complete three perplexing maze tests to the best of our ability, before being led to the final chamber, a dimly lit series of blue-curtained cubicles where we were instructed to attempt to master a Rubik’s cube, then to listen to eight songs – from Gregorian chants to Karen Dalton songs, and write any words or memories they might conjure onto a blank sheet of paper. After some time, white-coated officials distributed small plastic bottles full of an amber liquid. “This medicine has traces of alcohol,” they said firmly. “Down in one.” I slugged back the shot of whisky. The woman in the next cubicle slurped and coughed loudly.
Suddenly the room was charged with panic. A patient had been identified as contagious and the clipboarded medical staff hurried us quickly into a darkened corridor that was rapidly filling with dry ice. The room took on a strange form: mist and blue surgical gowns, the occasional flicker of the whites of patients' eyeballs above their surgical masks.
And then the most terrific sound: a searing, wild-hearted call, as a light flew on and Jack White and his band appeared. The patients shrieked and rushed towards him, jumping, jostling, writhing. White played like a man with a severe case of the rockin’ pneumonia – hair in his face, at times pushing his way into the crowd. It was a short set, just a handful of songs. Highlights included a blistering rendition of Lazaretto’s title track and a ferocious take on the White Stripes’ Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground that lurched into John the Revelator and St James Infirmary Blues before the doctors rushed the stage and White, displaying all the signs of some incurable disease, was rushed away on a stretcher.
As the dry ice cleared, we all poured out of the building, still in our surgical gowns, a sudden tide of blue washing onto the pavement outside. Officials handed out “Prescriptions from Jack”: certificates signed by Doctor John A White III of Vescovo & Co that offered handwritten medical advice: “Be sure to eat your Ovaltine,” instructed mine. “Pet a horse,” said my friend’s.
And as we all stood recovering on Arundel Street, an ambulance drew up, blue lights flashing. There was a fevered rush of the crowd as the thoroughly contagious Mr White was hurriedly loaded into the waiting vehicle and rushed off into the night, sirens wailing.
