Review: The Traitors Live Experience

Groups of up to 14 players take on the round table and attempt to outsmart and outplay each other in this nerve-wracking live adaptation of the smash-hit BBC series.

Photo: Grant Walker

In recent years, no other TV series has captured the nation's collective attention in the same way as the BBC's The Traitors. With nearly 15 million people watching the finale of The Celebrity Traitors last November and 10 million viewers tuning in for the nail-biting Series 4 finale, the show is far and away the biggest thing on British television right now.

With the latest civilian series having had a reported 400,000 applicants, the odds of being cast on the series are, of course, incredibly slim. Thankfully, there's another way for wannabe Traitors to see how they'd fare at the round table, and it's a short walk from Covent Garden...

The Traitors Live Experience, which has been produced by Immersive Everywhere (Peaky Blinders: The Rise, Doctor Who: Time Fracture) and opened just off Seven Dials last July, faithfully translates the smash-hit series into a condensed 2-hour-long interactive experience packed full of deceit, betrayal, and social deduction for groups of up to 14 people at a time.



In the Live Experience, nearly all of the action takes place within a wood-panelled room complete with a round table, around which teams vote to banish players, the Traitors decide on who to murder, and challenges are completed in an attempt to increase the overall prize pot. Alongside the players, a tartan-clad host takes on Claudia Winkleman's role, guiding players through the experience and explaining the challenges.

Photo: Grant Walker

Upon checking in at the venue, players are seated together with the rest of their session's participants, and each player is asked to enter their full name and select whether or not they'd like to put themselves forward as a Traitor into one of several tablets that circulate around the group. With up to 14 people in a session, smaller groups are combined, and in their designated corner of the Cloak and Dagger Bar, everyone has an opportunity to chat before being called up to the round table.

Almost immediately, players take this as their opportunity to start sizing up their soon-to-be teammates. You can expect questions about people's pre-existing relationships, if they've seen the show before, and, of course, if they'd like to be Traitors, to be the main points of discussion. There's a case to be made for smaller groups or couples to try and ingratiate themselves with the rest of the team during these opening moments, as the connections made here may have an impact on how the game unfolds, but as the TV series often shows, it's a fine line to walk.

Photo: Grant Walker

Once seated at the round table, the Traitors need to be selected. With every member of the group wearing blackout goggles, the host (during our visit, it was Maximilian, who was excellent throughout) places a hand on the shoulders of the players chosen as Traitors while circling the table. Regardless of whether players volunteered to be Traitors or not during the introduction, it's an intense opener, and with a dozen or more sets of eyes immediately scanning the room for clues as to who was just selected once the goggles are removed, it's hard not to become hyper-aware of your body language and how even the smallest gesture could be misread.

Thankfully for anyone nervous about being imminently banished or murdered, or not getting value for money, there's roughly 45 minutes afforded to players before anyone is removed from the game, with several challenges, a breakfast table discussion, and an anonymous vote on who the group believes to be Traitors all coming before the first player is eliminated.

Much like in the series, there isn't a load of information for players to work from during the early round tables, so names are initially put forward with a certain amount of hesitation. We found ourselves on the receiving end of one such accusation during the second round table, based purely on us having taken a sip of our drink at a certain point in the game, and ended up being the second most voted-for player that round.

Minor things such as the squeak of chairs and the rustling of clothes when the Traitors remove their blindfolds to strategise (a concession the experience has to make as groups remain in the same room for most of the experience) can also quickly become the focus of the round table discussions. While they're valid observations for groups to bring up, they do go against the spirit of the TV series somewhat.

Photo: Grant Walker

Regardless of how well players do in the challenges and round tables, everyone runs the risk of being ejected from the game and should go into the experience having made peace with the idea that they may be the first one out. Unlike in the TV series, where those who are eliminated remain in the dark about how the rest of the game unfolds, The Traitors Live Experience sees banished or murdered players sequestered in a nearby lounge to watch the remainder of the game unfold via a split-screen video feed.

Inside the lounge, the recently departed have the opportunity to influence how things unfold at the round table from beyond the grave, openly discuss and dissect players' gameplay in real-time, and most importantly, order drinks to be delivered to their room.

Prior to banished players being escorted away from the round table, they're asked to reveal to the group whether they were a Faithful or a Traitor. For those still in the game, it's another high-tension moment as they await to see if the group's decision was the correct one. For those on their way out the door, it's a prime opportunity to ham it up as all eyes fall on them. As for those murdered in the night, they're silently removed from the room while the rest of the group is blindfolded, leaving behind nothing but an empty chair.

Photo: Grant Walker

The only moments of relief from potential murder or banishment come during the challenges, where the group can shift their focus away from each other and onto a common goal - earning gold. The difficulty varies from challenge to challenge, with the reward scaling accordingly. In 'Dig Your Own Grave' - one of several new challenges recently added to the experience - teams select numbered graves to try and match symbols, earning them either gold or other rewards.

'The Whispering Room' sees the group split into four teams and try to assemble a sentence from different phrases whispered in each corner of the space, and 'The Covenant' requires the group to work together and move dials embedded in the round table into the correct positions against the clock. Regardless of which challenges each group gets, they're all entertaining and engaging distractions from someone's impending removal from the game, though the gold earned off the back of each challenge feels fairly inconsequential to the overall experience.

Alongside earning gold, the challenges also provide players with the opportunity to earn shields, which protect those in possession of one from being murdered, and daggers, which allow a player's final decision at the next round table to be worth two votes. The impact of these additional powers will vary from group to group, but they have the potential to sway the game in players' favour if earned at the right time.

During our visit, we managed to gain an advantage over the rest of the group and took control of the game's only dagger, but it had little impact, with every player before us voting to banish the same person at the round table. The shields, however, proved to be far more impactful, with multiple players trying to keep whether or not they had one under wraps to ensure the safety of more people, strengthening alliances and making the Traitor's jobs harder.

Photo: Grant Walker

By design, every public session of The Traitors Live Experience will include several strangers. While this mirrors the TV series, which is made up almost entirely of strangers who meet for the first time on the show (secret connections like Diane and Ross excluded), it's a different proposition for an experience that costs upwards of £50 per person. There's always going to be an element of luck when it comes to being grouped with strangers, but the concern a lot of people likely have: that booking in a smaller group means they'll be outnumbered and ejected straight away, appears not to be the case (for us at least..).

During our visit, our group of four was paired up with eight other players at the table (all of whom already knew each other). Instead of them targeting the minority of strangers in the room, they focused their attention on each other in the early rounds, clearing the way for the entirety of our group to make it to the endgame with our previously mentioned sip of drink being the closest call any of us had.

We'd love to say that we entered the experience with an airtight game plan to make it to the end that we executed perfectly, but it was much closer to the opposite, with very little pre-planning on our part besides committing to misspelling at least a couple of names on purpose.

Photo: Grant Walker

With the number of remaining players eventually reduced to just five, those still in the game find themselves entering the end game, where those banished no longer reveal if they're a Faithful or a Traitor, and each round requires players to vote on whether to conclude the game or banish again. Of all the nerve-wracking moments in The Traitors Live Experience, this is by far the most intense, and the rapid pace at which it plays out only adds more tension.

Without having time to really process it, we made it to the final two players and were asked to stand up and reveal if we were a Faithful or a Traitor. In a miraculous turn of events, which we would never have predicted just two hours earlier, we had won, splitting the gold between us - a Faithful victory.

Sadly, a life-changing amount of money isn't on offer for those who win at the Live Experience, but a foil-embossed certificate and eternal bragging rights are a pretty solid alternative...

Photo: Grant Walker

While a handful of the experience's necessary compromises may undermine the social deduction elements that sit at the core of the series, The Traitors Live Experience succeeds in translating the paranoia, tension, and unpredictability of the TV phenomenon into a hugely entertaining two-hour-long game of deception.

Once accusations start flying around the round table and every glance, gesture, and offhanded comment becomes a potential piece of evidence, it's remarkably easy to get swept up in the thrill of the experience and forget that you've only known your fellow players for a couple of hours.

Regardless of whether players leave victorious or are banished long before the end game, The Traitors Live Experience captures the atmosphere of the series brilliantly, and for fans who've always wondered how they'd fare in the castle, it's likely as close to being cast on the series as they're going to get.

★★★★½

[Tickets gifted in exchange for an honest review]

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The Traitors: Live Experience is located at 60 Short's Gardens near Covent Garden. Tickets are priced from £32.50 per person. For more info and to book tickets, visit thetraitorslive.co.uk

For more reviews of immersive experiences like The Traitors: Live Experience, check out our recent Reviews.