Lennox Mutual - Photo Credit: Candle House Collective
By Grace Hatchell
II’ll be honest with you: when a show asks me to answer my phone instead of taking my seat, my first thought is, “Is this theatre… or am I about to argue about my broadband?”
Then I found out the call was coming from New York City theater — and suddenly I’m sitting up straighter, because if NYC is ringing me directly, I assume something strange, brilliant, or emotionally destabilising is about to happen.
Lennox Mutual is not your run-of-the-mill theatre (or theater, as they spell it across the pond). There’s no velvet curtain, no warm prosecco, and absolutely no polite coughing from row D. Instead, there’s just you, your mobile phone, and a very calm voice asking questions that feel suspiciously… personal. It’s customer service, but make it existential.
Critics in the States have been quietly spiralling over it. The New Yorker described the experience as “icy melancholy” with flashes of flinty humour and “heart-clutching shock,” adding that the minutes spent on the phone with Lennox Mutual were among the most satisfying of a deeply frustrating year. Which, frankly, is more than I can say for any call I’ve ever had that began with “Please listen carefully, as our options have changed.”
Created by Candle House Collective, Lennox Mutual is a one-to-one live performance experienced entirely over the phone. No stage, no travel, no hiding behind the tall person in front of you. Just a series of calls, unfolding at a time and place of your choosing, gently poking at your emotional boundaries like a polite but persistent American stranger.
You’re dropped into the world of a fictional “life en-surance” company — yes, that spelling is intentional, and yes, it’s already making you nervous — where customer service representatives guide you through a layered, serialized story about existence, choice, and what exactly you’re leaving behind. Each call lasts around 20–25 minutes, and there are three in total, which is roughly the length of a short play… or one very intense therapy session with hold music.
The thing is, this isn’t just theatre you watch — it’s theatre that waits for you to press a button. Combining theater, interactive fiction, puzzles, TTRPG energy, psychotherapy, poetry, and alternate reality gaming, Lennox Mutual turns your kitchen, bedroom, or lunch break into a stage. Every decision has consequences. No two callers have the same experience. And at some point, you’ll forget you’re “in a show” and start wondering why you’re emotionally invested in a fictional company’s internal processes.
Co-creator and co-director Evan Neiden says their work gives audiences the sensation of accessing an alternate reality — one where the participant is vital to the story. Co-director Jacob Leaf adds that over multiple calls, audiences explore Lennox Mutual’s customer service department with the aim to connect, transform, and empower. Which is ambitious, considering most customer service departments struggle to locate a human.
And who is this for? According to the team: mystery lovers, theater fans, sci-fi nerds, meditators, poetry appreciators, stargazers, note-takers, music makers, people who hate bureaucracy, people who secretly love it, D&D enthusiasts, alternate reality gamers, purpose-seekers, time-wasters, the spiritual, the agnostic, the enlightened, the chaotic, anyone born on a day ending in “-y,” and — most importantly — anyone worldwide with a mobile phone and a bit of emotional curiosity.
So if you’ve ever fancied answering a call from New York City theater without leaving your sofa, Lennox Mutual might just be the most unsettling, intriguing, oddly comforting missed call you’ll ever be glad you picked up.
Lennox Mutual – Candle House Collective
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