Reviews of Immersive Productions in London

There are staples of Christmas theatre: pantomimes, Dickens, picture book adaptations and, of course, The Nutcracker. There's joy in the familiar, but also a sense of stasis - cycles repeating and not moving forward. Vox Vanguard's production revels in the former while firmly rejecting the latter: this is The Nutcracker reimagined. Firstly - the setting. It’s not … [Read more...]

Fitting neatly into the Christmas work party space, the immersive A Christmas Carol is a good excuse for a meal, with a cheerful dollop of Dickens on top. Jack Witham's Jacob Marley introduces us to the affair. We're cast as spirits hired to spook the miserly Scrooge (Alexander Barclay) into changing his bah-humbug attitude to Xmas. You know the drill. It's a fun, … [Read more...]

The term ‘Immersive Theatre’ isn’t well-defined, but, despite some efforts, SHIFTY by Foxtale Ensemble isn’t it. Let’s start with the good: five female actors from across Europe (Greece, Lithuania, Norway, UK) meditate upon city life through movement, monologue and marbles. They evoke characters who notice, forget, search and find. The script is at times poetic, at … [Read more...]

1979 was a pivotal year in the life of British politics.  Following what has become known as the Winter of Discontent, Margaret Thatcher tabled a vote of no confidence in the Labour government under Prime Minister James Callaghan.  The government lost the vote, there was a general election which swept the Conservatives into power for the next 18 years. One has to … [Read more...]

To me, it seems the core theme of The Great Gatsby is complicity. It asks, relentlessly, how far you would go to get something you want or need, and what you would turn a blind eye to. It’s this subject that makes the story so potent for an immersive experience: Alexander Wright’s production invites theatregoers / Gatsby-party-attendees to become complicit in the … [Read more...]

It is a cheap trick for a stand-up comic to tell the audience that they are great, but of course it works every time. Cheaper still for an audience member to declare this. But at CULT at the Pleasance Theatre we were a great audience. The secret, of course, to a successful immersive, interactive show like this one is that it's down to the clever work of the cast to … [Read more...]

It’s not often as a critic that you find yourself wondering if you’re at the theatre or in a strip club. That’s the game that House of Kittens’ Amatory Asylum plays with you. For one thing, we are after all in an underground club - albeit a swanky private members’ club in Mayfair. For another thing, there are quite a lot of women taking their clothes off. It’s a … [Read more...]

When aiming to tap into the collective imagination of an audience, fairy tales are always a fantastic place to start. These stories are baked into our collective consciousness from childhood and the reimagining and reinterpretation of them often gives life to evocative work, as a result of this collective understanding. The Vaults, ever home to the experimental, … [Read more...]

Interactive, immersive and promenade. Three words that when individually placed in front of the word theatre get me excited. However, if you add all three, then it's time for something unique, and this was certainly true with Fire Hazard Games Underbelly production 80 Days - A Real World Adventure. Following registration, I was emailed details on where we would be … [Read more...]