A world that answers whoever enters it
The Imaginarium has no fixed geography. It rearranges itself around the mind of each visitor — which makes it either a paradise or a trap, depending entirely on what that visitor is carrying inside them.
Vanity’s staircase
For visitors chasing status, the Imaginarium builds upward: impossible staircases that spiral toward an oversized moon, each step a little further from solid ground. The higher a visitor climbs chasing applause, the easier it becomes for Mr. Nick to collect.
The downward forest
Visitors running from something tend to find a forest that grows the wrong way — roots in the sky, canopies underfoot — a landscape that mirrors a mind trying to outrun its own gravity.
Borrowed time
Clocks drift loose through the Imaginarium’s sky, each keeping a different hour. Time inside the mirror is negotiable — which is precisely what makes it so useful to two immortal gamblers settling a very old bet.
The Imaginarium is not a place. It is a choice, dressed up as a place. — Company programme note, 2009
Every visitor who steps through the mirror faces the same two doors, however the Imaginarium chooses to disguise them: one leads back to the mundane, unglamorous world outside the wagon; the other leads deeper in, toward whatever temptation the visitor is least equipped to refuse. Doctor Parnassus wins a soul for imagination when a visitor turns back. Mr. Nick collects when they don’t.