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From races across the city against the clock and immersive exhibitions covering Vikings and Cleopatra to expeditions into the darkest depths of Peru, here are our recommendations for the best family-friendly immersive experiences in London this May half term ... London has never been short on family-friendly activities. From world-class museums and zoos to West End shows and tourist attractions that cater to all ages, there are hundreds of options for a day out with the family across the city. Amongst them are a handful of standout immersive and interactive experiences that allow families to either become part of the story or get involved to a degree not possible elsewhere. Below are our recommendations for the top immersive experiences running in London this half term that will both engage and entertain the whole family... The Paddington Bear Experience Photo: Alex Brenner An immersive walk-through show spread out over 26,000 sq ft in the heart of Central London, The Paddington Bear Experience invites guests to step inside the world of Michael Bond's classic stories for the first time as preparations for the Marmalade Day celebrations are underway at Windsor Gardens. Guests will get hands-on with a series of tasks throughout the experience as they meet a cast of characters from the much-loved book series, including Mrs. Brown. There's a lovingly recreated version of the Brown's family home, complete with the blossom tree mural at the foot of their staircase, and an excursion to Peru where you help create Marmalade, amongst other interactive moments. Photo opportunities with Paddington are available at the conclusion of the experience, as well as a chance to buy your own Marmalade sandwiches. The show is directed by Tom Maller, whose previous work includes some of London's biggest immersive shows of recent years (Peaky Blinders: The Rise, Doctor Who: Time Fracture, Secret Cinema's Blade Runner, Romeo + Juliet, and Casino Royale). Photos: Alex Brenner Help Paddington and the Brown Family prepare for a very special occasion: the Marmalade Day Festival. Just like Paddington, you’ll begin your adventure in the hustle and bustle of Paddington Station, where you’ll meet the friendly Station Master and hop aboard our full-sized train carriage – make sure you aren’t late! Journey through the sights and sounds of London, all the way to the Brown’s house at No. 32 Windsor Gardens. Step inside the Brown’s famous tree-adorned hallway and explore multiple rooms in their home, then venture beyond as you’re transported to the magical jungle of Peru – all to help Paddington prepare for the biggest party Windsor Gardens has ever seen! Finish by celebeating the Marmalade Day Festival at Windsor Gardens with Paddington and his friends where you’ll dance to vibrant calypso music, play fairground games and eat & drink festival treats – most importantly, you can try Paddington’s favourite Marmalade sandwich! 📍 Waterloo 💰 From £158.00 (Family of 4) 🧒 Suitable for all ages 🎟️ Book via paddingtonbearexperience.com Race Across The World: The Experience Image: Race Across The World - The Experience Race Across The World: The Experience, based on the hit BBC series, is the latest city-wide treasure hunt experiences from CityDays. While the TV series they're based on have competitors racing for 50-plus days across multiple countries with little more than a map, a GPS tracker, and several thousand pounds to pay for travel, lodging, and food, the two London-based races run anywhere from 2 to 4 hours and sees those taking part cover roughly 5km on foot through either the City of London, or the West End. Staples of the BBC series - including budget management and navigating without a map - have been carried over and make up the core experience, which feels like the closest adaptation of the TV series possible without requiring a passport or more than an afternoon of your time. The fast-paced format and sense of discovery built into Race Across The World: The Experience keep kids engaged throughout, and the focus placed on looking at the city differently means they're interacting with the streets and sights of London with a (hopefully) more considered view. Small details that you'd otherwise walk past without giving a second thought need to be studied, quiet backstreets and passageways that you never knew existed need to be explored, and with the clock ticking the entire time, there's a real sense of urgency throughout. Photo: Race Across The World: The Experience This high-stakes experience will offer players the chance to live out their Race Across the World dreams by navigating the streets of London, working as a team, outwitting their competitors, and unlocking hidden secrets of the city in an unforgettable race to the finish line! Just like in the show, Race Across The World: The Experience requires strategy, teamwork, and quick thinking, as players will be given a budget to manage as they race through the city. This budget can be spent on valuable clues to help navigate the next leg of the journey, giving players the freedom to decide how daring they want to be. It's a high-stakes race against the clock, where every decision counts and influences the race, but beware, each clue comes at a cost. 📍 Liverpool Street/West End 💰 From £130.00 (Family of 4) 🧒 Suitable for all ages 🎟️ Book via feverup.com Vikings: The Immersive Experience Photo: Vikings - The Immersive Experience Running out of Canada Water's Dock X, Vikings: The Immersive Experience gives visitors the chance to learn about the lives of the Viking world’s most formidable family: King Ragnar Lodbrok, the wise Queen Kraka (Aslaug), and their world-conquering sons - Ivar the Boneless, Bjorn Ironside, Hvitserk, and Sigurd Snake-in-the-eye. The adventure opens with a film sequence set in 793 AD, before plunging visitors into the Forest of Time, a sprawling in-world set where towering trees whisper the secrets of Viking life and beliefs. At the heart of the forest stands a full-scale recreation of Yggdrasil, the mythological World Tree, beneath which a virtual reality experience reveals Kraka's origins and her fateful first encounter with Ragnar. The experience's finale comes via a 30-minute 360-degree cinematic projection featuring cutting-edge video mapping, a sweeping musical score and a magnificent full-size Viking longship at the centre. From 25th to 29th May, families can enjoy even more hands-on Viking fun with Viking-themed temporary tattoos and traditional craft workshops using natural pigments and handmade brushes led by a Viking reenactor, alongside being able to explore interactive maps, handle replica artefacts and test their knot-tying skills. Until 17th May, you can save 20% on tickets to Vikings: The Immersive Experience through Fever. Photo: Vikings - The Immersive Experience Travel back in time to 9th-century Scandinavia at London’s Dock X, where the legend of Queen Kraka and King Ragnar Lodbrok comes alive! Wander through the Forest of Time, full of runes and hidden signs; listen to the call of the horn; marvel at the luminous World Tree and journey through misty portals into a 360° cinematic saga of love, war and destiny. Experience Viking life like never before - an epic tale of courage, prophecy, and legacy awaits. From stormy sea voyages to blazing skies, from ancient rituals to archaeological discoveries - this exhibition blends myth, fact and magic into an unforgettable experience. 📍 Canada Water 💰 From £88.00 (Family of 4) 🧒 Suitable for all ages 🎟️ Book via feverup.com Mundo Pixar Experience Photo: Luke Dyson Following appearances in Brazil, Mexico, Belgium and Spain, where it's welcomed over 3.2 million visitors, Mundo Pixar Experience has arrived in the UK. In this multi-sensory exhibition, fans of all ages have the chance to enter the universes of Pixar’s most iconic films. Visitors can shrink down to toy size in Andy’s Room from Toy Story, explore the Scare Floor from Monsters, Inc. with Mike and Sulley, race into Flo’s Café from Cars to meet Lightning McQueen, or soar through the skies with Carl Fredricksen from Up. They can also visit the Headquarters of Riley’s emotions from Inside Out 2, and journey from Coco's Land of the Living to the Land of the Dead. Beyond the immersive sets, guests can take part in a special Pixar Ball Treasure Hunt, searching for the famous yellow ball with a red star hidden throughout the exhibition - a playful nod to the beloved Easter egg that appears in many Pixar films. Photos: Luke Dyson Step into the vibrant world of Pixar like never before. Mundo Pixar Experience is a multi-sensory exhibition which offers fans of all ages a chance to enter the universes of Pixar’s most iconic films. Set in a purpose-built venue in Wembley Park, the exhibition will span more than 3,500 square metres, and will feature 14 Pixar universes, including over 25 sculptures, inviting guests to explore meticulously recreated environments from Toy Story, Monsters, Inc., Cars, Finding Nemo, Inside Out, Coco, Up, and many more fan favourites. Each space combines detailed set design, ambient music, and specially crafted scents to immerse visitors in Pixar’s most beloved stories. 📍 Wembley Park 💰 From £117.00 (Family of 4) 🧒 Suitable for all ages 🎟️ Book via mundopixar.com Cleopatra: The Experience Photo: Cleopatra - The Experience Featuring nine interactive galleries, Cleopatra: The Experience takes visitors on a captivating journey through Ancient Egypt as they uncover the secrets of Egypt’s last queen and explore her legacy, legend, love, lifestyle and beauty. Created by Madrid Artes Digitales (MAD) - the team behind hit experiences including Tutankhamun: The Immersive Exhibition, The Legend of the Titanic, and The Last Days of Pompeii - this is the latest of their productions to arrive in London. With 22 real Egyptian artefacts, MAD's signature cinematic projections, a state-of-the-art hologram, Virtual Reality, a free-roaming Metaverse, interactive installations and more, the experience brings one of history’s most fascinating figures vividly to life in one of London's most ambitious large-scale exhibitions. Both educational and exhilarating in equal measure, Cleopatra: The Experience has been designed with children, families, culture lovers, technology enthusiasts and history fans in mind, to take visitors on an unforgettable journey into the world of one of history’s most iconic rulers. Photo: Cleopatra - The Experience Cleopatra: The Experience invites you on an incredible journey through the life and reign of Egypt’s last great queen. Showcasing real artefacts and using state-of-the-art immersive technologies, Cleopatra’s world unfolds step by step, revealing the intelligence, ambition, legacy and love that shaped her rise as one of history’s most iconic female leaders. From political mastery to cultural influence, this exhibition explores why Cleopatra remains a symbol of power and fascination centuries later. With outstanding visitor reviews from its world premiere in Madrid, this immersive experience offers a fresh and unforgettable way to connect with ancient history. 📍 Immerse LDN 💰 From £94.00 (Family of 4) 🧒 Suitable for all ages 🎟️ Book via feverup.com Paradox Museum Photo: Paradox Museum Located just over the road from Harrods in Knightsbridge, Paradox Museum London invites families into a surreal playground of optical illusions and interactive rooms built to test their perceptions and spark creativity. With over 50 installations on offer, which have all been designed to blend science with imagination, it’s a tactile and highly-Instagrammable experience that's suitable for all ages and sure to delight kids. Some of the museum's most popular exhibits include Zero Gravity, which gives the illusion of floating in space, the Paradox Sofa, where guests legs and torso appear to be split in two, the Camouflage Room, and an upside-down version of a London Underground platform, in which it looks like guests are hanging from platform signs. Additionally, there's also a new Passport Safari Game, offering kids the chance to take part in a hands-on, scavenger-style adventure. Young explorers can follow the clues, complete the stamps, and solve playful puzzles as they navigate the museum’s most mind-bending rooms. The game will be available as an optional add-on for all visits throughout the summer. Photos: Paradox Museum The Paradox Museum is an innovative venue that combines the world of science, art and human perception. With over 50 amazing, paradox-inspired exhibits, Paradox Museum offers more mind-twisting, eye-tricking experiences than any other edutainment destination in the world! On this self-guided experience, you will learn everything about the exciting science behind paradoxes, have a ton of fun and take photos so spectacular that your friends will not believe they’re real. 📍 Knightsbridge 💰 From £86.00 (Family of 4) 🧒 Suitable for all ages 🎟️ Book via feverup.com Bubble Planet Photo: Bubble Planet Enjoyed by over four million visitors worldwide, Bubble Planet was designed to awaken curiosity and reconnect audiences with a sense of childlike wonder, and unfolds across a series of visually striking, multi-sensory environments. The experience features ten themed rooms, which guide guests through surreal landscapes that blur the boundaries between dream and reality, including the Bubble Ocean - a vast expanse of bubbles designed to evoke calm and serenity - and the Infinity Room, where mirrors and shifting lights create the illusion of endless space. Lasting anywhere from 60 to 90 minutes, it's a fun-filled experience that's also incredibly Instagrammable. Photos: Bubble Planet In this multi-sensory experience, visitors will travel through fantastical landscapes and into imaginary metaverses filled with unique optical illusions and photo opportunities. Upon entering this otherworldly planet, guests will be able to leave real-life at the door and embark on a journey that inspires them to reconnect with their emotions and bodily sensations, making astonishing discoveries along the way. The combination of colours, lasers, lights and bubbles, together with 360-degree projection technology and a unique virtual reality experience invites guests of all ages into a dream-like, escapist experience in the midst of the busy city. 📍 Wembley Park 💰 From £112.00 (Family of 4) 🧒 Suitable for all ages 🎟️ Book via feverup.com Banksy Limitless Photo: Banksy Limitless Banksy Limitless offering long-term enthusiasts, collectors, art fans, and the curious alike the chance to experience the provocative and thought-provoking world of the British artist in a unique and immersive environment. More than an exhibition, Banksy Limitless is a cultural encounter where the raw power of street art meets the prestige of a gallery setting. The exhibiton includes installations from Banksy's iconic 2015 Weston-Super-Mare 'Dismaland' pop-up bemusement park like Cinderella's Carriage, large scale sculptures, certified prints of significant work including Flower Thrower and Kissing Coppers, original pieces from the Walled Off Hotel project in Bethlehem, as well as specially created works such as Prankadilly Circus, and an immersive holographic installation exclusive to the London edition. As well as being one of the largest single collections of original Banksy work ever assembled in one place, the exhibition highlights some of the technical aspects of his creative process, including meticulously reproduced pieces using his signature stencil technique. A mural installation, crafted by a renowned creative team, authentically brings the essence of street art into an indoor setting. Banksy’s work often relies on the impact of a specific site, and great efforts have been made to reproduce this feeling in a gallery environment. Both a trailblazer and innovator in the art world, admired by fans across the globe and celebrated for his unique vision, Banksy has become a cultural icon whose works reflect the moral and social dilemmas of today’s world. Banksy Limitless brings this vision to life, offering visitors an unprecedented opportunity to step inside the world of the elusive artist, experiencing the scale, context, and impact of his creations in a way that echoes his street roots. 📍 Knightsbridge 💰 From £75.32 (Family of 4) 🧒 Suitable for all ages 🎟️ Book via feverup.com For more on London's best immersive shows (both family-friendly and not), check out our Current/Upcoming Listings page.

Photo: Phantom Peak Sitting in the shadow of the former Harmsworth Quays printworks in Canada Water is Phantom Peak, a new immersive experience from the people behind TimeRun and Sherlock: The Game Is Now. Blending elements of escape rooms, immersive theatre and text-based role-playing games, Phantom Peak is a different style of immersive event, and it stands on its own within the London immersive theatre scene. It's an experience that flips a lot of immersive theatre conventions on their head - from making your phone an essential element of the experience, to creating an environment in which the pace is entirely controlled by your own actions - not the world around you. If you're a fan of escape rooms, puzzles and trying to complete storylines and quests when at immersive events, Phantom Peak is a must-do experience. Photo: Phantom Peak We visited Phantom Peak on a weekday evening in August, just a few weeks after it first opened. Speaking to Nick Moran, one of the creators of the experience while there, he described the current state of Phantom Peak as being in the first stage of a multi-year plan that will see the town expand, the storylines change and develop, and the time period in which it's set progress and move forward. It will be an always-growing experience thatchanges over time, getting bigger and better. When you first set foot into the town of Phantom Peak, you're instructed by one of the townsfolk to log on to JonAssist, the experience's companion website on your mobile phone. JonAssist operates like a text-based guide to the town - you'll be referring to it a lot as the website takes you through story trails and tracks your progress as you complete each trail. We were told that there are too many trails to complete in one night, but a healthy amount for those motivated to explore the town and uncover as much as possible is between 5 and 6 trails in an evening. Using the website is essential to your experience, so make sure you've come with a fully charged phone! Photo: Phantom Peak As you first walk in and around the set for Phantom Peak, it's easy to be taken aback by the level of detail. Everything in the world feels like it has a storytelling purpose. From the Videomatic machines that play archive recordings of the town's history and lore when you enter specific four-digit codes, to the robotic doctor that can diagnose patients based on their symptoms, or the Jonagraph devices that allow you to communicate with those living outside the confines of Phantom Peak, every single piece of technology within the steampunk town is there to move the story trails forward. One of the first things we were prompted to do by the JonAssist was find the Town Noticeboard and try to find out which of the town residents is best to speak to about trying to get to the bottom of a recent scandal that occurred at the annual Fiesta of Friendliness party. The noticeboard was full of different posters and notices, nearly all of which had valuable information for anyone of the 16+ story trails currently on offer at Phantom Peak. Without giving away where this story trail goes, it quickly develops into a story of mistaken identities, and we spent the next half hour trying to get to the bottom of it, following every twist and turn along the way. Photo: Phantom Peak One of Phantom Peak's greatest strengths is just how deep the storytelling goes. Nothing feels thrown together or there just for decoration, and basically every element of the experience - from the character interactions, to the posters and signs, to newspaper cuttings on tables and desks around town all feed into the overall interconnected story of the town, which only gets more complex and engaging the more time you invest into it. Every resident we spoke to had their own views and opinions on the town's mysterious leader, Jonas (either positive or negative), other residents, or their own position in the town. The place feels like a real, albeit heightened version of a town with people going about their day-to-day lives. The most radical difference between Phantom Peak and every other immersive experience currently running is how the show handles big story moments. The moment in time we as guests experience at Phantom Peak isn't the most dramatic or exciting in the town's history; it's just an average day. In typical immersive shows, every character is going through their own personal storyline that unfolds over the course of the experience, whether you are there to witness it or not. Because of this, you could be at the bar or the toilet or just not in the right place at the right time and miss out on a key moment at a Punchdrunk or Secret Cinema show, and there's nothing you can do to stop that. Photo: Phantom Peak At Phantom Peak, that isn't possible because all the key moments only happen when you interact with either one of the robots in the town or talk to one of the residents about something specific. It's an incredibly refreshing thing to experience, as it removes the sense of FOMO that you otherwise get in other immersive experiences. It's impossible to miss key moments because you're the one creating and initiating them. It's storytelling on a personal level, and it makes your visit feel unique and intimate - as if you're the only one witnessing it. During our visit, we completed 8 of the story trails on offer. When you complete one, the resident who wraps up that story thanks you for your help by rewarding you with a small tarot-style card.. Each is numbered and serves as a great memento to remember the experience by. If you're a completionist, it's also a great motivator to keep doing the trails and hopefully collect all the cards across multiple visits. Speaking to the creative team behind Phantom Peak at the end of our visit, they laid out the future plans for the experience - with expansions to the set currently being developed (with hopes to have them completed by October), the experience will have different 'seasons' where the storylines all jump forward in time and the residents of the town progress with their lives. Residents who are running for Mayor in the current version of Phantom Peak may well win the election in the next season, for example, and new quests will be added along with more characters. This should give Phantom Peak an extra level of enjoyment for repeat visitors who can see what the residents of the town have gone on to do as time has passed. Phantom Peak is an amazing experience for those who are fans of immersive theatre. It's been designed to allow guests to have an intimate, personalised experience where they are in control of the narrative and allow for a huge amount of fun to be had exploring everything the town has to offer. With future expansions to the experience planned, Phantom Peak is only going to build and improve upon an incredibly impressive start. We can't wait to revisit and uncover more of the mysteries the town has to offer. ★★★★½ ----- Phantom Peak is located in Canada Water, London. Tickets are available through phantompeak.com with prices starting from £34 per person. Thank you to the team at Phantom Peak for inviting us to experience the show.

Bloodbath is an immersive horror experience located in a secret location in Bethnal Green. It's been produced by ScreamWorks - a brand new name on the immersive theatre scene, and one we suspect we'll hear a lot more of in the near future. If this show is anything to go by, and their future plans are as ambitious as this show is, they'll soon hold the crown for having the most intense immersive shows in the city. Bloodbath was an overwhelming, boundary-pushing, scary and intense experience, which goes far beyond anything else currently on offer in London. For some time, the capital has lacked any truly scary things to do (for theatre anyway...), so it's great to see that change with the arrival of Bloodbath. Prepare to have your personal space invaded, the limits of taste and decency pushed, and all of your possessions taken from you and literally thrown in a bin (but of course, you'll get everything back at the end!). The show's story is a relatively simple one - you've been invited to visit the home of a real-life serial killer, and over the course of an hour, you're piecing together the story of how he became who he is today and discovering what became of his numerous victims. We learn all this from chilling audio and video recordings, rummaging through the remains of his dilapidated home, and of course, hearing directly from the killer himself. Upon arrival at the secret East London location, you're greeted with Missing posters for his latest victim, Jenny McPhearson. Last seen mere metres from where you're standing, her whereabouts have been unknown to the authorities for several weeks. Jack, our host for the evening, is keen to avoid prying eyes - earlier in the day, we received an email from him with meeting instructions that made clear that he's trying to avoid 'those in positions of power' from getting in the way of his 'great plan'. After checking in and signing the waiver that grants the organisers permission to verbally abuse, touch, shock, force feed and restrain us, we have sheets thrown over our heads and are escorted inside. The reactions of those in the nearby petrol station forecourt are unknown to us, but it's no doubt quite the sight for passers-by. Unsurprisingly for an immersive horror show, the experience is linear and sees us moving from room to room over the course of the next hour. At first, it's a gentle easing into the story as we're free to explore several rooms of Jack's house without interruption - learning more about the family history and the current state of affairs for Jack, his brother Abel and their mother, Grace. Through the walls, we repeatedly hear loud banging and screaming - muffled voices and shrieks that leave us unsure if it's other guests genuinely fearing for their lives, or just the actors trying to scare the life out of them. Bloodbath is a show that seems to revel in taboo and voyeurism. With the whole world seemingly obsessed with true crime and real-life murders, the show feels like a natural progression of our collective fascination with the grizzly stories you can hear on any of the hundreds of true crime podcasts available online. The show is inviting us to see what being in one of those stories would be like, and at points makes us complicit in what's happening to those around us. Photo: ScreamWorks A sequence mid-way through the show allows the audience to engage directly with the idea of pain as entertainment, inviting us to directly inflict it upon a helpless woman behind a glass screen. There's an anonymity afforded to audience members by the white cloth masks they wear for large parts of the experience. It encourages us to be worse versions of ourselves when given the chance. The small cast of actors we meet throughout all manage to perfectly flip between being darkly comic and genuinely scary. Abel, whom we meet early on in the show, is a warm and welcoming psychopath who later turns into a terrifying Leatherface-esque figure, causing us to literally climb and crawl for our lives. Photo: Screamworks There are personal touches throughout the experience that made us truly feel like guests of a serial killer, rather than just a visitor to a show. These included photos of our party lifted from our social media accounts defaced and pinned to the walls, our names scrawled in blood on the bathroom mirror, and consistently being referred to by name, despite never having introduced ourselves. Nearly every one of the points raised in the waiver before we entered happened to our group. Your comfort level with these kinds of things is going to vary from group to group, but we feel it's worth noting that if your group is a mix of genders, the female guests may be on the receiving end of the most uncomfortable interactions - or at least that was our experience when we visited. Photo: Screamworks While this might all sound quite heavy, overall, Bloodbath is as much a psychological thriller as it is a traditional horror experience. It's not 60 minutes of jump scares and being grabbed, and you'll likely come out having had as many fun moments as scary. Our group all walked away saying we had an amazing time, and we'd definitely be back for whatever ScreamWorks have cooking up next. We would highly recommend reading the Consent page on the ScreamWorks website before booking, so you're able to get a better understanding of what you're letting yourself in for. You can, of course, revoke your consent for any of these things to happen to you at any time by using the safe word or action. Not for the faint of heart, Bloodbath is a killer night out for those looking to push themselves outside of their comfort zones. ★★★★¼ Bloodbath is located at a secret location in Bethnal Green, East London. The show is currently running until the end of May 2023. Tickets are available through screamworks.co.uk, with prices starting at £45 per person.

Torches in hand, we venture into Bethnal Green's most haunted house to experience the latest show from London's top immersive horror producers. Halloween is an apt time for an immersive theatre company that specialises in horror experiences to return with a new show. Following up the 8-month run of Bloodbath, which occupied their venue located below the arches of Bethnal Green, Screamworks are back with a show that offers big scares and a compelling story for those willing to dive in head first... Set within the abandoned home of the Luff family, who all died in 1937 in a bloody murder-suicide, visitors are invited by paranormal investigator Hector Phoenix to explore the family home and uncover the story of what caused their horrific deaths to occur. Screamworks previous show blurred the boundaries of what is the norm in immersive experiences, with actors force-feeding and tying up visitors, on top of at its climax attempting to undress those who have braved the show, it was an arresting experience for those who attended. The most confronting parts of Bloodbath saw visitors become complicit in the actions of a serial killer, and played with the ideas of voyeurism and torture being little more than entertainment for blood thirsty audiences. In our recent interview with Gary Stocker - the CEO of Screamworks - he shared how their commitment to creating the immersive experience may have put some visitors off by appearing too intense. Therefore it's no surprise that The Ghost Hunt's website seems to promise a show that's less intense than Bloodbath, with no physical contact between actors and visitors, and a storyline that's sold as more spooky than gory. On paper it may seem like a step away from the boundary-pushing experience that made their previous work so engaging, but in reality The Ghost Hunt is just as intense and terrifying an experience, with dozens of moments that had us jumping, screaming and recoiling in fear. Upon entry, each visitor is handed a torch - it's largely up to them to find their way through the space and discover what's hidden inside the various dimly lit rooms that make up the 45 minute long experience. Putting the responsibility onto visitors to find their own way helps ramp up the tension, and makes going around every corner a frightening prospect. You're free to explore at your own pace, which allows ample opportunity to pour over the clues scattered throughout if you're so inclined. A section midway through the show allowed us to sit around a makeshift ouija board as we quizzed one of the house's spirits on what had happened there nearly 100 years prior for as long as we liked. The shows cast of five, who can appear and disappear at a moments notice through a maze of secret doors and hidden entries keep you constantly on edge. One moment towards the end of the show saw Hector Phoenix, the paranormal investigator who tasked us with exploring the house in the first place, appear behind us in a moment of complete darkness. Elsewhere, Geoffrey Luff - with a knife sticking out his back as he's slowly dying of blood loss, cornered our group in one of the rooms as we were interrogated on what had become of his children. The key difference between Screamwork's productions and your run of the mill scare experience is the ambitious storytelling. The Ghost Hunt tells a cohesive story that is drip fed to guests across it's 45 minute duration. Through various newspaper articles and letters scattered across the shows 10 rooms, along with some set pieces that offer both scares and exposition, you leave the experience having learnt about the supposedly true history of the shows setting. Previously we claimed that Screamworks would soon to be the leading immersive horror creators in London. Based on the screams both from our group and the echo's of those elsewhere in the venue during our visit, they've delivered a show that confirms that theory, and we now feel they're hands down the top creators of immersive horror experiences in the city. While time is limited to experience this show before it closes on 31st October, future plans for the venue involve an escape room featuring live actors that will open in November. We'd recommend trying to get down there before this show closes as it's easily one of the best scare attractions on offer in London this Halloween season. ★★★★ Screamwork's The Ghost Hunt runs from 5th October to 31st October in Bethnal Green. Tickets are available to book here.

Image: Voidspace Voidspace Live, the UK’s biggest festival of grassroots interactive performance, games and playable art, returns to Theatre Deli near Liverpool Street next month following a sold-out 2025 edition. Taking over the venue across the 6th and 7th June 2026, the festival will feature over 50 shows, durationals, games and pieces of playable art from big names and fresh faces alike. For the 2026 edition of Voidspace Live, the festival will feature work from the likes of Yannick Trapman-O'Brien (Undersigned/The Telelibrary), Simon Kane (Shunt), John Robertson (The Dark Room) and Emily Carding (Tke Key of Dreams/Bridge Command). Voidspace Live 2025. Photo: James Lawson Founded in 2021, Voidspace platforms interactive arts that invite their audience to participate in some way, from interactive theatre, fiction and poetry, to performance art, arthouse games, audio-visual work and LARP. Voidspace Live 2026 sees the introduction of an 'Art Pass' ticket (priced at £15 per day) that allows access to the festival's durationals, games & playable art, alongside the Theatre Deli bar. Speaking on the line-up announcement, Voidspace's Katy Naylor said: It's been wonderful to see Voidspace Live grow year on year, and this year is going to be bigger and more lively than ever. We are proud that the Voidspace is continuing to cement its position as a space to experiment, take creative risks and try something new: over half of the shows this year will be debuting at Voidspace Live. We are also thrilled (and a little gobsmacked) at the range of incredible, well-established talents from around the globe who have chosen to take part. Exciting too is welcoming the unprecedented number of experimental games, durationals and mini experiences to the festival, and that - by introducing the lower cost Art Pass - we are making this work accessible to everyone, regardless of their budget. It's going to be wild, and we can't wait for you to join us on this adventure. The full show line-up for Voidspace Live 2026 is listed below. Tickets are on sale via this link. Voidspace Live 2025. Photo: James Lawson SATURDAY AND SUNDAY (Shows) Funeral Parlor for a Species by Yannick Trapman-O’Brien (6 participants) According to the 2019 IPBES Global Assessment, out of an estimated 8 million animal and plant species on Earth, up to 1 million are threatened with extinction, many within decades. Yes, the end is nigh for all sorts of miraculous creatures you’ve never seen without Sir David Attenborough’s narration accompanying. The Center for End of Species Care wants your input as we consult on the fate of one species at risk. What makes a good death? How might we design “end-of-species” care? As the world changes, what will we choose to save? Trainwreck! by TomYumSim (20 Participants) Attention passengers! Welcome aboard The Trainwreck Express – destination: unknown. In the highly probable event this train is hijacked by AI, you will be treated to emergency dance breaks, surprise exits and unsolicited karaoke from your fellow passengers. Exits may open where walls once stood. Please keep your limbs, secrets, and existential crises inside the Train(wreck) at all times. Trainwreck is a delirious, ever-mutating satire where you and your co-passengers attempt to steer towards a dream destination. Your choices fuel the engine – while AI fiddles with the map, the throttle, and possibly reality itself. Taking inspiration from Glasgow’s infamous “immersive” Willy Wonka knockoff and overhyped global fiasco ‘Fyre Festival’, this is immersive madness at full steam ahead. Trainwreck invites audiences to laugh out loud while questioning the big promises of hype marketing, and the hazardous intersection of AI and creativity. The Map & the Echo by Seth Kriebel (20 Participants) The Map and the Echo is a new edition in Seth Kriebel’s acclaimed series of interactive Exploration Games (including The Unbuilt Room and A House Repeated). Inspired by early text-adventure computer games, each performance is unique, shaped by your choices. Using simple instructions like ‘Go North’ or ‘Pick up the lamp’, work with your fellow explorers to overcome obstacles, navigating – and creating – an imagined world of secret maps and second chances. Timonopoly by Emily Carding (20 Participants) Come Fortune! Let’s play a game. It’s only money… Inspired by Timon of Athens, one of Shakespeare’s least known works, Timonopoly is a unique experience, a game, a show, an event. Play a game with Fortune and see how easily any of us can fall through the cracks of society… whoops! Brite Theater continues to push the immersive envelope, creating ever more daring audience-specific work and bold adaptations of classical material. The long-anticipated final instalment of the multi-award-winning Coward Conscience trilogy, following Richard III (a one-person show) and Hamlet (an experience), Timonopoly is fresh from a successful first run at Edinburgh Fringe. You Are Pagliacci: Sad Clown Simulator by John Robertson (20 Participants) From the creator of legendary gaming improv show The Dark Room (“Not To Be Missed” Guardian) here’s You Are Pagliacci: Sad Clown Simulator – a beautiful, funny, dark videogame comedy about a dying clown going to the doctor to tell his final joke. Work in progress, might be a first and last time deal! DREAM CAGE by King Lexie (1 Participant) For twenty minutes, in a dreamworld built for two, a performance unfolds. Not of spectacle, but of attention and curiosity. DREAM CAGE is a tender framework for an intimate encounter, treating the landscape of a dream as the most precious of materials. It is a one-to-one ritual that asks: What happens when the sound a dream makes is given a voice? An interaction with dreaming and the spaces in-between awaits. SATURDAY ONLY (Shows) What We Must by Aaron Oliver (20 Participants) Make your choice. Save your home. Are you ruthless enough to survive the post-apocalypse? With enthralling storytelling and a bone-chilling live soundtrack, What We Must will immerse you in a dark and desperate wasteland of your own creation. The clock is ticking, and working with your fellow survivors, you must decide just how much you’re willing to sacrifice to protect the people you love. We have to get home. Terrible choices lie in our path. We will do what we must. My Date With Pierce Brosnan by Alistair Aitcheson (30 Participants) It’s anarchic, it’s sexy and it’s totally unpredictable. It’s a clown romance controlled by you! Mademoiselle Cafetière is a lonely clown who meets the man of her dreams: Hollywood actor Pierce Brosnan. There’s just one catch. Pierce Brosnan is a talking dummy piloted by you, the audience. Scan a QR code with your phone and type what you want Pierce Brosnan to say. If you type it, he will say it – he has no filter! Play matchmaker or wreak havoc in the most bizarre love story ever to grace the stage! Kindly by Lyra Levin (6 Participants) Highly interactive and responsive, guests explore rage and the ride-or-die bonds that form between strangers in the liminal space of a woman’s bathroom at a club. Hostage by But Why? Theatre (6 participants) Dive into a high-stakes, intense world with Hostage, a groundbreaking 2-hour immersive experience designed to teach real-world hostage negotiation techniques that you can use for the rest of your life. Developed after three months of rigorous research, Hostage blends psychological principles with realistic scenarios, offering players the chance to become life-saving negotiators. Over the course of five critical phone calls, participants will be tasked with navigating intense conversations to try and save hostages. Each call challenges players to think on their feet, apply effective communication strategies, and make tough decisions under pressure. With a core focus on real-world applications, the skills honed through this immersive experience are designed to be transferable to everyday life, from handling workplace conflict to navigating personal relationships. We Are What's Inside The Black Box by Chloe Mashiter (20 Participants) We’re going to make a show. We don’t know what yet. But we’ll find out. It’ll be easy. After all, black box generative AIs do this all the time: input, ???, output. The only difference is this time, we’re the ??? part of it. We know enough to follow some of their familiar steps – we’ll recognise patterns and create language vectors and sometimes we’ll even do things for no other reason than we were told, maybe just once, they’re good things to do. A show that’s equal parts critique of generative AI, low-pressure creative space, and celebration of the people-ness of people. You Are The Lamb by Hakan Akgül and Joe Stepney (30 Participants) The omens are dire. Pestilence has struck these lands. You have been summoned to Court where, according to tradition, a new king will be chosen who will rule for the next 100 days. Will it be you? And, if so, are you willing to pay the price? You are the Lamb is a new interactive play which asks the audience how far they would be willing to go, and what they would sacrifice, to save themselves, or each other. Tate Accompli by Chronic Insanity (20 Participants) You’ve gotten the gang back together for one last heist, and the prize is a big one; the centre piece of the new exhibition at the Tate Modern. However, when you break into the gallery that evening, the clock strikes midnight and something changes in the air. It’s like you’ve crossed over into some other reality where up is down, left is right, and nothing will be the same again. Tate Accompli is the new TTRPG live show, from award winning theatre company Chronic Insanity, about what happens if you try and steal art from the public for private gain. Bear-Faced Liars by David Middleton (3 participants) Teddy bears are alive. They always have been. Humans just don’t know it. For lonely little Alex, Someday, Smush, and Farringdon are everything. That is, until Alex makes a new friend. Then comes the 'accident'. Then comes the ambulance. And then comes the tribunal. Beneath the cheerful songs and gingham tablecloths, the teddy bears’ picnic has always hidden something darker. One of them broke the Bear Code. One of them chose to act. The Bear Code, it turns out, has some very creative interpretations… The Bells of St. Clements by Beth Atkinson & Cross-Stitch Theatre (10 Participants) A letter from a woman that’s been dead for 20 years. A daughter desperate for answers. And the ghosts of the past that cannot go away. But is the last man dead? And why that rhyme? The Bells of St Clements is a murder mystery, inviting you to unravel secrets from all too long ago. Life Lessons by Mo Holkar (12 Participants) Drawing a live human model can sometimes reveal more about you than it does about the subject. You will play a group of students at a weekly life-drawing class, across a series of six lessons. The process of drawing will open up your characters – to themselves, and to each other – and they will share and bond. (You don’t have to be able to draw, or even to enjoy drawing, to take part. Drawing is just a mechanism for approaching the exploration of your character. What you draw will not be seen by anyone other than yourself.) Superlatives Live: An Interactive TTRPG by Suz Pontillo & Riley Gene (30 Participants) At a superpowered high school where popularity is power, four students will do anything to determine the outcome of student body election – and you decide who rises, who falls, and who gets ruined. In this live, audience-interactive TTRPG, alliances shift, secrets spill, and abilities spark in real time as your choices shape the story. Come ready to vote, betray, and watch it all burn. The Parliament of Birds Retold by Laura Sampson (40 Participants) In a blossoming garden just past the goddess of Love’s own temple, Nature presides over a congregation of birds on Valentine’s Day. Each longs for a soulmate, matched in ‘rank’ and ‘nature’. But the Eagle has three suitors, not one. Who to choose? The birds call a parliamentary debate to decide. Mayhem ensues … ​​THE PARLIAMENT OF BIRDS is an interactive retelling of Chaucer’s dream-vision satire on love, social hierarchy, and democratic decision-making. Audience, playing the Birds, will voice their arguments (by turns whimsical, absurd, and downright pointless), revealing unexpected friendships, inter-species rivalries, and serious hilarity along the way. Meet at the Galleon by Omen Star (20 Participants) “Swashbuckling adventure and cutthroat action awaits at the larp that ends before the ship sets sail!” Legends speak of an ancient ship crafted during the time of tyrants. The scourge of the sea would sail in the storms and strike from out of nowhere, its bloodthirsty crew descending upon unsuspecting ports and merchant vessels to make off with treasures and ransom. Over the years, the ship would carry many names, but the crew remained the same. All tied together by fate, misfortune and diabolical deals with the netherworld. The Cursed Ship would rest in hidden coves until it was ready to raid again. Storm clouds are gathering, and the time for raiding is nearly upon us. Gather your weapons and your earthly possessions, m’hearties! it is time for us to… MEET AT THE GALLEON! SUNDAY ONLY (Shows) JONAH NON GRATA by Simon Kane (40 Participants) An exciting Biblical adventure in which YOU are the hero, played by HIM! Inspired by the Book of Jonah–and probably God–award winning Shunt artist Simon Kane presents his hugely acclaimed, horrifyingly evergreen divine comedy about the extremist in all of us: Jonah Non Grata – an exciting biblical adventure in which YOU are the hero, played by HIM! Fun hymns! Tiny Stunts! Is it a church for a churchless faith? Is it a loud man getting things wrong? SEE the unmapped complexities of the human soul brought to stupid life! SEE a man on a plane! SEE something in the corner! Yours truly by Mia Foster and Ariana Aragon (20 Participants) When the heart calls, do you answer? Yours Truly narrates the negotiation of power, fantasy, and desire between a student and their teacher. Born from research around the ethics of participatory theatre, this show explores the ways we choose to care for one another. This is a love story, one that begins with meeting a stranger. Created and performed by Mia Foster and Ariana Aragon of UNCLE BARRY theatre company, Yours Truly is a new piece of work grown from research conducted in the Advanced Theatre Practice MFA programme at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. The Killing of 107e Leadenhall Street by Chloe Mashiter and Justin Wells (24 Participants) “A house isn’t just bricks and mortar. It’s boundary, division: an imposed and artificial order. The bricks and mortar here may be long gone, but the House is still here.” ALTER (Archival Libraries Tracking Extranatural Realities) is conducting research on the structure that used to stand here, and the House that remains. New junior researchers are always welcome: after all, it’s not advisable for anyone to stay within the House’s footprint for too long… A cosmic horror about being faced with things that are impossible to ever fully understand, and trying to kill something that never truly lived. The Nautical Trench by Hazel Dixon (6 Participants) One week ago, you were alerted to a submarine that had come under distress somewhere in the North Atlantic ocean. Systems on the submarine had failed and the nearest research station at Greenland had reported an abnormality detected near a tectonic fault line the vessel had been travelling near. Experts from all over the world were scrambled and you have been asked to be part of a new submarine crew to investigate. As your submarine approaches the last known location, you wonder what danger awaits you in the deep ocean. Leylines by Hazel Dixon (16 Participants) All mystical creatures know that when a new entity is going to be born, they must get to their nearest meeting of leylines to mark the occasion. This particular confluence in Greenwich, London has a lot of different creatures from different folklores meeting – they need to come together to restore balance in a fractured world, and to prepare for whatever new folk are about to be born. In this game, players take on the role of different mystical creatures like dragons, djinn and domovoi. Played in one act, characters will confront old tensions, solve strange problems and imagine the shape of the world to come. BrainStorm by Corinna Algranti & Aleksandra Klassen (20 participants) You are used to saying “I.” You probably believe there is a single voice behind it. But what if that voice is only the outcome of a writers’ room that can never agree on the ending? Welcome to Brain Storm, where everything is fictional, including you. Here, you are neurotransmitters. Dopamine wants risk, reward, more. Cortisol has already spotted three ways this ends badly. Oxytocin is convinced it’s a love story. Serotonin is trying to keep the peace. Together, you will interpret events, negotiate outcomes, and disagree with strangers who are also, somehow, you. Something will take shape. You won’t quite see it coming. Game Changers: The Game by Rob Kranjc Game-Changers: The Game is a live game show / participatory political theatre. Two teams embody opposing “discursive poles” (for example, Commonism vs Capitalism, Green Growth vs Degrowth) and fight over a board composed of contested alternative economy buzzwords and related real-world initiatives and ideas. Each move is a short, improvised pitch, critique, or tactic using prompt cards (Challenges and Interventions). It’s playful, sharp, and often funny, but it’s also a way to feel how ideologies compete and co-opt each other in real time. OTKAS by Thomas Jancis & Matt Fletcher (20 Participants) Otkas is a collaborative work by immersive performers Thomas Jancis and Matt Fletcher, the first of a planned tetralogy of pieces. Mixing practical experimentation and convoluted storytelling, two experts refuse to compromise in unpacking a heady brew of conceptual confabulation, with the urgent assistance of the audience. The result may be illuminating or baffling, earnest or flippant, sincere or ludicrous. Much will be taught, but will anything be learned? Ruin The Game by Florence Smith Nicholls (9 Participants) This is the first time a team of digital archaeologists have been allowed to explore the online multiplayer game Limerence since it was shut down at the end of 2032. Once searingly popular, the fantasy kingdom now stands empty, rotting at the seams. What caused Limerence to be taken offline so abruptly? Ruin The Game is a sci-fi keepsake larp. Players will record and interpret what they find in a field diary that they can take away as a keepsake of the larp experience, itself acting as a meta archaeological record. Still Cats by Karolina Soltys (15 Participants) This is a larp about pondering deep philosophical questions… or not. You could just think about the small red dot. After all, you’re a cat. Well, you might also be a human, but then you’ll be too busy herding cats in the name of capitalism to think about philosophy. The larp blends a lighthearted tone, where the cats seek answers to questions like “How to capture the little humans inside the TV?”, with the possibility of tapping into more serious topics like illness, bereavement, bullying or trust issues. The Playtrix by Atticus Zane (15 Participants) Come and explore a history and development of Solo LARP in shared space through appropriation of everyday objects, events and circumstances. Voidspace Live runs at Theatre Deli near Liverpool Street/Aldgate on the 6th and 7th June 2026. Tickets for each day are priced at £65.00 for General Admission and £35.00 for Concessions. Art Pass tickets are £15.00. To book and find out more info, visit voidspacezine.com

This Jubensha-inspired whodunit from the creators of Jury Games and The Perfect Crime will have you feeling like Poirot if you can hold your own as the accusations start to fly. Alibi: Dead Air, created by Dean Rodgers (The Crystal Maze Live Experience, Time Run, The Perfect Crime) and Tom Black (Crisis, What Crisis?, Bridge Command, Jury Games), is an immersive murder-mystery experience that has audiences working to solve the killing of Gloria Carpenter, a true crime podcaster who was hot on the heels of the infamous Malthus Killer.

 As part of Dead Air, each of the show's twelve audience members is assigned a character who has not only a full backstory but also numerous secrets and motivations they may want to conceal. While eleven of these characters are ultimately innocent and earnestly trying to catch Gloria's killer, one audience member is the murderer and must do their best to get away with it undetected.

 The show takes inspiration from Jubensha, a genre of role-playing games that combines live-action roleplay, social deduction, immersive performance and good old-fashioned sleuthing. First conceived in the late 2010's in China, Jubensha has gone on to see enormous success with tens of thousands of physical locations across China hosting games and millions of regular players. Here in the UK, Jubensha is still very much in its infancy, with only a handful of producers, including Chronic Insanity and Incog Ltd, currently creating original work. Photo: Kiki Tabizel As is typical in Jubensha games, the experience begins with players sitting down and reading over their playbook. Inside, there's background information on their character's history, a summary of their recent actions, a timeline of the final few hours leading up to Gloria's death and some secondary objectives. In terms of onboarding, it's all pretty concise and simple to get up to speed with, though guests are free to refer back to their playbook throughout the show if they need a refresher. The playbooks are all attached to lanyards, which players wear around their necks throughout, helping keep everyone's in-game identity visible during the experience. With everyone's backstories memorised, Mr Blue (portrayed by Luke Booys during our game), a representative from The Crow Club - a mysterious organisation that takes an academic interest in murder - lays out the ground rules for the investigation and asks everyone to introduce themselves to the group As is made clear in a pre-recorded video message from Gloria, made moments before she passed, everyone in the room has been invited there for the same reason - they're all part of the reason why she's been murdered. Amongst the varied line-up of potential suspects are Theo Turner, a rival podcaster; Wendy Wax, the wealthy widow of the Malthus Killer's first victim; and George Goldsmith, the podcast's recently-hired sound engineer. From the outset, the group are presented with several dozen pieces of evidence, ranging from receipts and emails through to text message conversations, Reddit threads and bags of physical evidence to comb through. Staying on top of everything is no small task and pretty overwhelming to begin with, especially when a large number of them tie directly into the show's characters, who may be reluctant to explain exactly what they mean. On the far side of the room is an evidence board offering up background information on three of the Malthus Killers' previous victims, alongside Gloria, which the group are encouraged to pin any pertinent pieces of information that connect them to, even if theories are later disproven with each new drop of evidence. Photo: Kiki Tabizel While all the evidence will help get each session's group closer to understanding what Gloria uncovered before her death, a large part of the experience revolves around players trying to suss out what others have been hiding from the group. Players are free to approach this game of social deduction in whatever way they see fit, either by keeping their cards close to their chests or airing their dirty laundry in public for all to hear before others can uncover it. Regardless of each individual's playstyle, sooner or later, everyone will likely find themselves on the receiving end of the group's focus, whether they're warranted or not. If you're an introverted person, this may well sound like a nightmare, but the tone always remains playful rather than adversarial, and there's a huge amount of fun to be had in trying to successfully defend yourself against an onslaught of accusations and improvising in the moment. There's also an immense satisfaction that comes from being able to produce a piece of evidence that casts someone's answers into doubt - something players may want to keep in the back of their minds if they're getting too much heat. During Dead Air's onboarding, it's made clear that no one is required to 'act' if they don't wish to, but leaning into it and embodying your character, flaws and all, will make Dead Air a far more enjoyable experience for all involved, especially when revelations surrounding false identities, secret love affairs and blackmail come to light, and can be played up to the extreme like it's an am-dram episode of Eastenders. Photo: Kiki Tabizel For the most part, the direction that the investigation takes is dictated by the group's choices, with leading theories as to who the prime suspect is shifting as the facts become clearer. At regular intervals, Mr Blue will ask everyone to gather together for a discussion on what's recently been uncovered, and new pieces of evidence - requested by Gloria before her death - are delivered, which will often throw a cat amongst the pigeons, ruling out suspicions for some but confirming them for others. During our playthrough, at least half a dozen names were put forward as potentially being the killer, each of which had compelling evidence to back it up. Of course, a murder mystery experience would feel incomplete without an eventual explanation of what really occurred, which comes at the end of the session after each member of the group delivers their verdict on whom they believe the killer to be. Regardless of how successful the collective has been in discerning fact from fiction, watching Mr Blue deliver a closing monologue that ties every strand together is hugely satisfying. All of the clues that were missed are revealed, the connections that were made are confirmed, and any secrets that remained hidden throughout are brought to light. Photo: Kiki Tabizel Painstakingly constructed, wonderfully detailed, and packed with enough twists and turns to keep even the most devoted true crime fan absorbed, Alibi: Dead Air delivers an interactive experience that puts those playing in control every step of the way. It's the perfect entry point for those looking to try out a Jubensha game before they explode in popularity, and a brilliant excuse to get all your friends together and accuse them of heinous crimes. Here's hoping there's plenty more Alibi games to come, because it's a concept that's to die for... ★★★★ [Tickets gifted in exchange for an honest review] Alibi: Dead Air runs at Theatre Deli near Aldgate East until 16th May 2026. Tickets are priced from £35.20. For more information and to book tickets, visit alibi.london For more reviews of immersive experiences like Alibi: Dead Air, check out our recent Reviews.

Alibi: Dead Air is an immersive murder-mystery experience inspired by Jubensha, a gaming format originating in China that has rapidly become one of the fastest-growing entertainment categories in the world. Blending social deduction, investigative gameplay and live theatre, Alibi places audiences at the centre of an unfolding investigation where no one can be trusted, as they investigate the murder of true crime podcaster Gloria Carpenter. The experience was recognised as one of No Proscenium's Best Shows of 2025 and later earned a nomination in the 2026 NoPro Audience Awards for best UK-based experience alongside Secret Cinema's Grease, The Key of Dreams and STOREHOUSE. We recently caught up with the creators of Alibi: Dead Air, Dean Rodgers and Tom Black, to discuss the origins of the show, why Jubensha could be the next big thing in interactive theatre, and how the show's player-driven mechanics create an experience that’s as cerebral as it is social. Photo: Kiki Tabizel Immersive Rumours: Hi Dean and Tom. Thanks for speaking with us today. To kick things off, do you mind introducing yourselves and telling us a bit about where people might know you from? Dean Rodgers: Sure thing. I’m Dean Rodgers, and I'm a creator of immersive experiences. I was a game designer on Time Run, which is regarded as one of the best escape rooms in the UK, but has now sadly closed. I was one of the founders and creative director of The Crystal Maze Live Experience, and I ran a production company called Rogue Productions for a little while, which made a lot of really great escape rooms, including The Perfect Crime. Most recently, I’ve been working in brand experiences, and I've now joined Secret Cinema to help develop their studio arm, Studio Secret Cinema, on the business development and strategy side. Tom Black: I’m Tom Black; I'm an actor as well as a creator, so people may have seen me if they're immersive theatre fans in things like Crooks 1926 and various Parabolic work, including For King and Country. As a creator, I've made Crisis, What Crisis? with Parabolic, and in lockdown, I put together Jury Games with Joe Ball, Edward Andrews and Ellie Russo, which was a Zoom-based immersive show that’s no longer on Zoom and is now running at Theatre Deli on a permanent basis. I’m currently the Chief Operating Officer at Bridge Command, which I’m pleased to say is getting bigger and more complicated all the time because we’re having a lot of fun there and bringing a lot of people into the immersive theatre world via a sci-fi, gamer route. Photo: Kiki Tabizel Immersive Rumours: Later this month, your Jubensha-like experience, Alibi: Dead Air, is returning to Theatre Deli. What can you tell us about the experience and the audience’s role within the show? Dean Rodgers: Alibi is a murder mystery experience where you play both suspects and detectives. Dead Air focuses around the death of Gloria Carpenter, a true crime podcaster who’s been following the case of this serial killer called the Malthus Killer. She’s murdered right at the moment of discovering who the killer is, so players are piecing through the evidence she’s gathered, and all of the characters are connected to Gloria or the killer’s murders in some way, and one of you is indeed the killer. Upon arrival, you're given a little booklet, which explains your character for the experience. I always like to say to people when I give out the booklets that no one is asking you to do any capital ‘A’ acting, but it contains your role within the experience and the things they know. Every character has secrets they're trying to keep, but also things they're trying to discover. You enter the evidence room, and there are bits of evidence strewn around the room. There’s pieces of paper and a lovely big murder board with strings connecting all the dots, as well as physical clues and audio clues. At that point, our wonderful performer, our detective, tells them there's been a murder, and they need to look around the evidence in the room to discover who the murderer is. Tom Black: The really exciting thing for me in Alibi is when the players realise that they’re not just there to solve the big crime that's happened, but also to discover things. They all have objectives to do, the other people in the room are trying to find out things about them, and it's all interwoven. Watching people work either together or against each other, and realising that they're going to need to make alliances and swap information with each other, is really fun. Dean Rodgers: The reality of it is, the vast majority of the evidence is in your fellow players. The game is primarily a social one. It's all about talking to other people, discovering what they know, and trying to figure out who is lying and piece together the answer to this mystery. It gives people a license to talk to strangers. That’s something that’s really fun and really unique about it. Immersive Rumours: For those who haven’t played one before, can you explain what Jubensha is and how it differs from murder mystery parties, which is probably the comparison most people unfamiliar with Jubensha would make? Tom Black: The caveat here is that neither of us have been to China and played them, not least because we don't speak Chinese, but Jubensha are typically long experiences that can run anywhere from six to eight hours long. On the surface, they sound like they’re very similar to murder mystery games you might play at a dinner party, and that’s both true and untrue. If you look at the history of them, they’re derived from the same sort of things, with their origin stemming from murder mystery games that came over from France, which later evolved into what Jubensha is now. Jubensha roughly translates to ‘scripted homicide’. Dean Rodgers: Which doesn’t really roll off the tongue. We need to find a good English name for the genre still… Tom Black: Within a lot of Jubensha games, you can introduce characters and get to know each other via scripted sections of the game, which is quite unusual in a Western context, as everyone is given an actual script to read. You usually have secrets of your own, you have something you’re all trying to work out, and you’re all interconnected in lots of ways. Imagine Poirot in the train carriage, and everyone is trying to work out what everyone's got to do with each other. Photo: Kiki Tabizel Immersive Rumours: What about Jubensha appeals to you both and makes you want to explore creating something in that genre? Tom Black: Personally, this idea of having a wider mystery, but also everyone having their own thing going on at the same time, is what really drew me to the form. To me, that’s an interesting frontier to be playing in. Outside of Alibi, I’ve previously made another Jubensha with the wonderful Incog Ltd - which is Hannah Raymond-Cox, Arlo Howard and Chloe Mashiter - called Spy of the Year. You buy it, it comes in a box, and it’s been designed to be played around a dining room table with a few props and people dressing up if they want to. What we’re doing with Alibi is something that’s much more like what you’d see in Jubensha cafes, mashing together Jubensha and immersive theatre. Dean Rodgers: What really attracted me to Jubensha specifically is that it's an incredibly active player-driven experience where people are really acting and playing and getting to decide how their experience plays out. That, for me, has always been the most exciting thing about immersive theatre. I think the way the immersive experience economy has gone in the last decade, and certainly since COVID, has been away from that and more towards scripted and guided experiences. That’s certainly what I've been doing in my other life at Secret Cinema, and we do that for a reason. It's really popular and really mainstream, but part of me wants to do something for the immersive hardcores who do really want to play. I’m old enough to remember the beginning of the escape room craze ten or fifteen years ago. For me, where Jubensha is right now feels like that tipping point we were at in 2013, 2014, just before escape rooms became huge. I can see a world in which there are Jubenshas, or whatever we end up calling them, everywhere in the UK and Europe. There’s something really exciting about being on the ground floor of that, having been on the ground floor of the escape room craze as well. Photo: Kiki Tabizel Immersive Rumours: Dead Air was previously staged at Theatre Deli last October for a week-long run. What was the response to that initial outing like? Dean Rodgers: We were really pleased with the audience response for the last run. We had a lot of people come to it who really didn't know what they were coming to and were just coming because they were our friends, but they came out of it saying, ‘I had the best time’, which was really heartwarming. Tom Black: I’ve made a few things in the past, and one of my friends, who’s seen a lot of them, came out of Dead Air and said, ‘That’s my favourite thing that you’ve done.’ As I mentioned earlier, with how Bridge Command is bringing in that new crowd in unusual ways and through unusual places for immersive theatre, I think this will also potentially do exactly that. Dean Rodgers: I think what's also really interesting about this is, and again, this is sort of similar to the earlier comments about escape rooms, but it's a very different kind of fun from other experiences. It's not very loud and spectacular in the same way something like Grease or Bridge Command might be, but it's very cerebral and calm and social. You feel like you're just having a lovely night chatting to people, but you’re also trying to solve something. On a trend side, I do think we'll see a rise in calmer experiences because not everyone wants to go to an escape room and run around. Some people are like ‘Actually, two hours drinking some cocktails and chatting to some people and trying to solve a mystery sounds really nice.’ Immersive Rumours: Did that initial October outing highlight any opportunities to enhance or fine-tune the experience before it returned? Tom Black: Yeah. With mysteries, they're not hard to test, but you need to test them a lot. There are certain questions you can’t answer until you give it to someone who is, of course, not involved in designing it because they will just think about it differently. I was happy with the ratio of shows where the audience got it right as a whole, or shows where the audience didn’t. It felt like 70:30, which is a pretty good place for it to be. In all the cases where the killer wasn’t identified, it was because the killer played very well and did some clever stuff. Dean Rodgers: On the changes we've made, there are bits of fine-tuning we've done, but we’ve also changed the length. We were running it as a 90-minute experience in October, and we’re trialling it this time at two hours because we just had a feeling it was a bit of a rush to get everyone to the answers in 90 minutes. In the spirit of testing, that extra 30 minutes might really change the experience.. we don't know. Photo: Kiki Tabizel Immersive Rumours: And have you had to tweak any of the core elements associated with Jubensha games to better fit a London audience? Dean Rodgers: Yeah. One of the key changes we've made is reworking the way you receive your information. In the original Chinese version of Jubensha, you get a booklet at the start of your experience, and you spend about an hour reading your booklet, which has everything you need to know in it. I’ve done enough experiences in London to tell you that there’s no way in a million years you’re getting a London audience to spend an hour reading before they play. No way. What we've done is taken learnings from the escape room world and given them a little booklet with just their core information in it. The vast majority of the information is hidden around the room, which gets people to move around, get in a corner and talk to one another, and have that not be weird. Photo: Kiki Tabizel Immersive Rumours: As you mentioned earlier, Tom, you’ve previously made Spy of the Year. Dean, you’ve also previously created a Jubensha experience, The Crow Club, which was at Voidspace Live last year, right? Dean Rodgers: Yeah. So, The Crow Club has since evolved into Alibi. It was our very early, work-in-progress version of this that I tested at Theatre Deli two years ago and then presented at Voidspace Live last June. Following that, Tom came on board, and we started transforming it into what is now Alibi. I think where Alibi is at now, in terms of its lifecycle... We’ve tested it, we’ve R&D’d it, and we’ve run it for a week, so now we’re doing this four-week run to see if it has legs to run for a long period of time. The case is now really polished and fun; we know people enjoy it and have fun with it in ways that we both expected, and surprise us as well, so the next step is seeing if it can stand up for four weeks or longer. Immersive Rumours: I feel like it’d complement Jury Games really well at Theatre Deli. Hopefully it finds an audience in the way Jury Games has, with it still running some six years on from first launching… Tom Black: I agree. I think they complement each other, and they’re also very different. As Dean said, the fact that everyone is a suspect and you have secrets you’re keeping from each other and there’s some more game-playing going on makes it a bit more freeform, but if you have fun at one, you’ll also enjoy the other. With Theatre Deli’s great model of having spaces that fit twelve people nicely, there’s potentially a lot of room for the future there. Immersive Rumours: In terms of replayability, could people play Dead Air more than once, or does it lean more towards only being experienced once? Tom Black: We had this one with the October run, right, Dean? We had a person come back... Basically, the answer is not massively, but if you weren’t the killer and you come back, playing it again as the killer would be a very different experience, and it wouldn’t matter that you knew the answer, as the killer is the one person who already knows the answer. That’s what we’d say. Dean Rodgers: Yeah. Dead Air is replayable in the sense that if someone wants to come back and be the killer, that’s something we encourage, but also the hope is that there’ll be many, many Alibi cases in the future. We wanted to really get Dead Air right before doing another case, but the hope will be that in a few years' time, there’ll be multiple different cases, so you can go ‘Sure, I’ve played Dead Air before, but what about this one or this one?’, and they’ll be different genres and different stories. Alibi: Dead Air runs at Theatre Deli near Aldgate East from 22nd April to 16th May 2026. Tickets are priced from £35.20. For more information and to book tickets, visit alibi.london

This interactive crime-solving experience delivers twists and turns, mountains of detailed evidence, and a complex narrative over the course of 90 minutes. Photo: Sam Bush Jury Games, created by Joe Ball, Tom Black, Ellie Russo and Edward Andrews, is an interactive crime-solving experience that invites audiences to take part in the remote trial of Harry Briggs, an investigative journalist accused of committing arson and murder. Originally conceived as an online experience during the 2020 lockdowns, in recent years the show has found a permanent home at Theatre Deli near Liverpool Street for in-person performances of up to 12 people per session, which can be booked as either private or public shows. In Jury Games' original experience, The Trial of Harry Briggs, the Justice Act of 2025 has recently been passed to try and help clear the backlog of cases caused by the pandemic. Temporary courtrooms, such as the one in Theatre Deli, have been set up across the country to cut through the red tape and allow the processing of cases without all the fuss of 'conventional' courtrooms. While these temporary courtrooms are described in the show's opening Ministry of Justice video as 'a streamlined and cost-effective process', they're also a good way of allowing jurors to have both their phones and drinks from the bar in the room throughout, without being held in contempt of court. Photo: Sam Bush For Harry, who was found at the scene acting erratically and covered in paraffin with a cut on his forehead, the odds are stacked against him in his trial. While he doesn't deny starting the fires that destroyed an office in New Malden, he claims to have had no idea that a cleaner, identified as Richard Holmes, was inside the building at the time. Now behind bars in HMP Wandsworth, he's awaiting the jury's verdict on whether to charge him with murder or manslaughter, and from first impressions, it could go either way. Throughout the 90-minute experience, jurors are presented with dozens of printed documents, numerous online blog posts, social media profiles, emails and bags of physical evidence. Staying on top of everything is no small task, with the group initially advised to split the workload amongst themselves and let the rest of the group know about any important findings. The courtroom's blank whiteboard wall is hastily filled with frantically scribbled information, potential connections are outlined, and a list of questions is drawn up for the accused, who will soon appear via video link for their first questioning from the jury. Photo: Sam Bush Harry Briggs (played wonderfully by Jack Flammiger) initially proves to be an unreliable witness. Speaking via video call on the room's TV monitor, they're cagey and evasive, unable to answer questions without contradicting either themselves or the evidence. It's clear that if the jury wants to make any headway in the case and discover the truth about the night in question, they need to get Harry onside in their follow-up calls. To do so, jurors must look beyond the evidence in the room and involve those outside the courtroom. Using their personal phones, jurors need to communicate via email and call with an anonymous outsider, who seems to know more than they're letting on, but in this first instance, only provides the information needed to help win Harry's trust. Photo: Sam Bush The breadth of evidence available for jurors to uncover throughout The Trial of Harry Briggs is pretty staggering. On top of the detailed printed documents and realistic physical evidence in the room with the jury, there's also a sizeable digital component to the experience, which can be accessed via the two laptops at the back of the room or through guests' phones via QR code. If the group aren't actively searching for personal details or companies' information on the Metropolitan Police database, there's a backup of Harry's password-protected phone that needs cracking, concealed private servers only accessible via IP addresses, and a string of emails and voicemails being left for jurors throughout the experience to keep them occupied. Throughout Jury Games, information believed to be true is cross-checked, theories are quickly disproven, and bombshell discoveries mean the jury's collective idea of what is true and what is false changes with every passing minute. For teams to succeed and get to the bottom of this complex, interconnected story before giving their final verdict at the end of the experience, teamwork and strong communication are key, and jurors need to be okay with others having differing opinions. A lot of a group's success may rest on who else they're paired up with during a public session, and there is a danger of the loudest voices drowning out those less willing to make their opinions known, much like in a real-life jury. The in-person Ministry of Justice co-ordinator, who oversees the jury in the courtroom, does an admirable job of getting everyone involved in the case and can offer gentle nudges in the right direction if jurors end up chasing their tails for too long. Photo: Sam Bush While the story that unfolds across Jury Games’ 90-minute run-time doesn’t comment on the built-in problems often inherent in real-life juries, such as biases, emotional decision making and legal speak going over jurors' heads, it does give participants a chance to step into the shoes of the hundreds of people called up for real jury duty across the country every day. Despite the case being fictional, there’s a weight attached to each accusation and thought when it’s going to change the trajectory of someone’s life, and the final deliberations over if and what crime to charge Harry with are surprisingly tense, as everyone tries to justify their own opinions. Meticulously crafted, incredibly detailed, and with enough twists and turns to satisfy even the most die-hard true crime fan, Jury Games delivers an interactive experience that puts the audience in control every step of the way. It's a frantic and information-packed 90 minutes that will leave you eager to keep unpacking the details of the case long after a verdict is delivered. With Jury Games, we'd be more than happy to take our seats and fulfil our civil duty all over again. ★★★★ Jury Games runs at Theatre Deli until 28th December 2025. Tickets are priced from £46.50 per person. For more info and to book tickets, visit jurygames.com For more reviews of immersive experiences like Jury Games, check out our recent Reviews.

Photo: Layered Reality Following the news of Layered Reality ceasing to operate last week, Elvis Evolution and Jeff Wayne’s The War of the Worlds: The Experience have both permanently closed their doors. Elvis Evolution, which opened at Immerse LDN last July to poor reviews and public controversy surrounding the absence of a holographic Elvis Presley, closed without warning on 23rd April 2026. Ticket holders were told via email that the show would close with immediate effect. It followed a reworking of the experience in late 2025, and a recent (albeit short-lived) marketing push to relaunch the experience and highlight its improvements. Photo: Layered Reality Initially, Jeff Wayne’s The War of the Worlds: The Experience appeared to continue operations, with Jeff Wayne Music Group looking to take over day-to-day operations. Staff and performer payroll was covered by Jeff Wayne following Layered Reality’s closure, but it was confirmed to staff on 29th April that the proposed continuation wasn’t viable, owing to ‘legal and insurance requirements’. It comes after The War of the Worlds: The Experience received a major update over the winter - reportedly costing upwards of £400,000 - which was set to include additional live-action scenes and updated VR sequences. Last September, Jeff Wayne's The War of the Worlds: The Experience was awarded a Guinness World Record for the longest theatrical run of a musical immersive theatre production. It opened in 2019 and ran for seven years. A statement from Jeff Wayne and The War of the Worlds team released on thewaroftheworlds.com and distributed by the show's PR team reads: It is with a very heavy heart that we have to let you know that Jeff Wayne’s The War of The Worlds: The Experience has been forced to close its doors at 56 Leadenhall Street, London, after seven incredible years. This is due to Ellipsis Entertainment, the company licensed to operate the Experience, having ceased trading. What makes this particularly painful is that the Experience had just undergone a £400,000 upgrade to the venue and production that we were due to announce imminently. We rebuilt both major VR sequences from scratch using Unreal Engine and next-generation headsets, added new scenes, introduced a track to The Red Weed Bar, reimagined the Royal Engineer scene, and for the first time Jeff Wayne appeared within the experience himself. This was not a production coasting on its success. This was a production investing ambitiously in its future. That investment deserved far better than this outcome. When we received the sudden and unexpected news that Ellipsis had ceased trading, Jeff Wayne Music Group moved immediately to intervene.We attended the venue, met with the production’s staff and performers, and shared our intention to take on the production ourselves and preserve the Experience going forward. We did everything in our power to keep the Experience running and to protect continuity for the production, the staff, and the audience. As part of those efforts, Jeff personally covered the Ellipsis staff and actor payroll of approximately 60 people during this period, determined to protect the livelihoods of the people who had given so much to this production while we worked to find a way forward. However, we were informed late last night that due to legal and insurance requirements, the venue could not continue operating under the current structure. As a result, we were left with no option but to close the production. Those with tickets to performances of The War of the Worlds: The Experience and Elvis Evolution will automatically receive refunds if booked via LW Tickets.

Photo: Nick Ray Chat Noir! is the latest immersive dining experience from The Lost Estate - the company behind festive mainstay The Great Christmas Feast, Paradise Under The Stars and the Peckham-based 58th Street. Running out of their unassuming West Kensington venue until 28th June, the show transports guests back to the infamous Montmartre club of the same name - which was the birthplace of modern cabaret and a notorious watering hole for Paris' fledgling bohemian artists and writers - for a hedonistic evening of art, absinthe and anarchy. The year is 1896, and for Rodolphe Salis, the impresario of Le Chat Noir, time is of the essence. The club's grand reopening following a short closure to electrify the venue has arrived, and although two of the show's three acts have been perfected, the finale is still unwritten. Due to Salis' ailing health, it’s his last chance to cement the club's place in the history books and secure his legacy once and for all. With a troupe of Paris' best performers scheduled to perform, the stage is set for greatness, provided that Salis can deliver an ending in time... Photo: Nick Ray Stepping inside The Lost Estate’s West Kensington home, guests are transported back to 1800s Montmartre almost instantly, thanks to a series of highly themed corridors which snake back on themselves through numerous twists and turns and provide a brief history of the club and its inhabitants. After passing through a huge cloth recreation of Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen's infamous poster for the club, which serves as a great photo opp, guests move through to the club’s main reception, where they’re handed a printed copy of the Le Chat Noir newspaper (the real-life club published a weekly magazine of the same name in its heyday) and are escorted to their table by one of Le Chat Noir’s cat-mask-wearing ‘pussycats’. Inside Le Chat Noir, there are four tiers of seating available, with tables of various sizes surrounding the club's central wooden stage. Those looking to push the boat out can spring for one of the plush velvet-lined VIP booths, which come with complimentary arrival drinks, an after-dinner digestif and canapes, while budget-conscious bohemians can opt for raised rail seats on the outer edges of the room or the stage-side seats that place you on the venue's main floor. Regardless of ticket type, an era-appropriate three-course haute cuisine menu is included, which is presented in between the show's three main acts by an attentive serving team. Photo: Nick Ray The club itself, which is adorned on all sides by framed paintings, vintage signage, huge French flags and draped fabric, is beautifully realised and instantly evokes the feeling of late-1800s Art Nouveau. The centre of the room is flanked by long ceiling-mounted panels adorned with flowing, intricate line work; tables are illuminated by either candles or coloured lamps, which give the space a warm glow; and tiny details - from cat engravings and collections of Venetian masks to lights in the shape of hand fans - are scattered throughout the space, making the space feel lived in and the result of countless small additions over the years. On stage, proceedings begin with the enigmatic Rodolphe Salis (Joe Morrow) welcoming the audience to Le Chat Noir. Setting the tone for what's to come, Salis remarks how his club is 'the only address in Paris where it's advised to arrive utterly pissed', before introducing the show's impressive line-up of artists - muse Yvette Guilbert (Issy Wroe Wright), dancer Cléo de Mérode (Coco Belle), mime Paul Legrand (Alexander Luttley) and magician Joseph Bautier (Neil Kelso). Photo: Hanson Leatherby The opening act of the show, dubbed 'Art', sees each of them perform in the round, flanked by the club's house band, Les Enfants Vagabondes (Guy Button, Peteris Sokolovskis, Alex Ullman, Will Fry and Áine McLoughlin). From the off, each act both subverts and exceeds expectations. Take Luttley's take on a classic clowning routine, which sees them transform a dress suspended from a coat hanger into a living, breathing lover. Rather than leaning into the tenderness of newfound romance, things go in a wildly different direction, with a bitter love triangle emerging that soon escalates to violence and betrayal. Matching Luttley's mesmerising performance is Issy Wroe Wright, who's excellent as Yvette Guilbert, and imbues the role with lashings of risqué humour, thanks to numerous crude hand gestures and some post-coital heavy breathing. Coco Belle's captivating dance routine also dazzles, and sees her oscillate between manic laughter and tears as she playfully toys with the crowd. Alongside Neil Kelso's impressive feat of mentalism, which involves numerous audience members picking tarot cards, postcards and paintbrushes at random before revealing a painting that matches all of those random choices, there are several moments in which Morrow's Salis interacts directly with the audience, including a room-wide call to action in which everyone is told to scream 'I WANT YOU!' as loud as possible to their companions and some light crowd work, where everything from patrons' professions to aftershave choices is commented upon. Concluding the first act is a sardonic musical number that condemns theatre critics, which, understandably, played particularly well on press night... Photo: Nick Ray During the first show's interval, there are playful one-on-one interactions on offer with some of the waitstaff, including Gigi, the self-described 'Absinthe fairy', who works their way around the room and quizzes guests on their personalities and preferences to determine the ideal selection from the Absinthe menu for the upcoming 'Green Hour'. While absinthe is available in a frappe or a regular glass with water and a sugar cube on the side, Chat Noir also offers up a 2-person fontaine, which slowly drips ice-cold water onto a sugar cube resting above each glass, releasing its botanicals and turning the drink cloudy. It's almost certainly over the top and takes up a fair amount of the available table space, but it's too good an offer to turn down and sets guests up for the show's enthralling second act, 'Absinthe', which sees Cléo de Mérode and Paul Legrande beautifully perform an abstract, green fairy-induced routine while Salis' narration echoes through the room. Photo: Joe and Charlotte So, how does Anarchy, the show's final, unwritten act, come together? Well, alongside an incredibly blue poem that builds and builds and a brief detour into medieval times where Salis is knighted with a baguette and then promptly beheaded, the bulk of the finale is devoted to a hastily put-together abridged version of Georges Bizet's 1875 opera, Carmen. Expect a choir of meowing, a burlesque routine, lots of audience participation, and, to round things off, the can-can. The show's final few moments see Salis deliver a rousing speech about the value of creating art before the troupe take their bows, but in keeping with the show's constant anti-establishment ethos, Salis walks away with his middle fingers raised to the audience. While it never quite reaches the potential of the act's name, landing closer to 'organised chaos' than 'anarchy', it's still an absolute riot from start to finish. Photo: Joe and Charlotte Chat Noir's three-course Menu Du Jour has been designed by The Lost Estate's executive chef, Ashley Clarke, and draws inspiration from haute cuisine. Upon arrival, there are cornichons, a generous helping of bread, and house pâté with brandy and vermouth already laid out on each table. Following the first act, Chat Noir's main course comes in the form of Coq au Vin with pomme purée, and rounding things off is a delicious Tarte au citron. The vegetarian options see the starter become a wild mushroom pâté, followed by a vegetable farce with truffled spinach and pommes duchesse, and for an additional charge, supplementary non-vegetarian dishes are also available, including snails with garlic butter, frog's legs, and a platter of French cheese or cured sausage. Alongside the fixed menu, there's an extensive drinks menu, which includes the previously mentioned absinthe, alongside all the usual staples such as champagne and wine and numerous enticing bourbon, gin and cognac-based cocktails. During our visit, we sampled a number of these, including the Corpse Reviver, which our server took special care to warn us was very strong. We're happy to confirm they weren't lying, and it lives up to the name... Photo: Hanson Leatherby While the price of entry for Chat Noir! is certainly high when compared to non-dining experiences (prices start at £129.85 per person for access to the show and the three-course meal), it's an experience that's truly second to none. The Lost Estate has long had a reputation for being the master of immersive dining experiences, and Chat Noir! proves that it's more justified. It's both a heartfelt love letter to the power of creating art and an intoxicating mix of great food, strong drinks, and incredible performances. You'll struggle to find a better night out in London this year. If Rodolphe Salis spent the final years of his life trying to secure his legacy and create a piece of work that would go down in history, it's easy to imagine that he'd be ecstatic at the idea of being immortalised in this way, some 130 years on from his death. Given the show's tongue-in-cheek denouncement of theatre critics, we'll assume he'd have paid little mind to our personal thoughts on it, but as for the show itself? Salis would be proud. ★★★★★ [Tickets gifted in exchange for an honest review] The Lost Estate's Chat Noir! runs at 9 Beaumont Avenue near West Kensington station until 28th June 2026. Tickets are priced from £129.85 per person and include a three-course meal. For more information and to book tickets, visit chatnoirlondon.com

Photo: Outernet London/Natural History Museum A special five-minute experience, presented by renowned storyteller Sir David Attenborough, is set to begin playing at Outernet London from Friday, 8th May, on Sir David’s 100th birthday. It has been uniquely created for Outernet, drawing from the Natural History Museum’s fifty-minute and first-ever immersive experience, Our Story with David Attenborough, which opened its doors in the Museum’s Jerwood Gallery in June 2025. Created in collaboration with Sir David, the award-winning production team at Open Planet Studios and the Natural History Museum, the spectacle combines scientifically accurate animation and enthralling real-world footage as Sir David explores the complex relationship between people and planet. Photo: Outernet London/Natural History Museum On the first opening of the experience at the Natural History Museum, Sir David said: In this immersive experience, we explore two stories – the 4-billion-year epic of the Earth, and our own, relatively brief chapter, the story of humankind. These two stories are not, at this moment, aligned – but they could be. My hope is that anyone visiting the Our Story experience will come to understand how important humanity is in writing the planet’s next chapter. Join Sir David as he documents the enthralling story of humanity and explores ways in which we can work with the Earth rather than against it, before presenting a possible vision of London in the very near future in which people and nature thrive both successfully and in tandem. The experience is accompanied by an original score by Tony Award- and Olivier Award-nominated composer Nick Powell. Adam Farrar, Director of Commercial and Visitor Experience at the Natural History Museum, said: Our Story with David Attenborough has been one of the Museum’s most successful experiences, having reached over 150,000 visitors from across the world already since it opened. The Museum’s mission is to create advocates for our planet and we and Open Planet Studios are keen to take the experience to as many people as possible. This special adaptation with Outernet in the beating heart of London promises an inspiring exploration into how we can coexist with both our city and our planet, guided by Sir David’s signature powerful storytelling. Photo: Outernet London/Natural History Museum Jonnie Hughes, Co-Founder and Director of Open Planet Studios, said: With Our Story, we set out to create something truly immersive – a unique storytelling experience that doesn’t just inform, but moves people. Every element was crafted to draw audiences closer to the natural world and their place within it. It’s fantastic to see this powerful story resonates with visitors at the Natural History Museum and to be bringing this special adaptation to more people across London in collaboration with Outernet. Philip O’Ferrall, CEO Outernet, said: The word icon is bandied around a lot, but Sir David Attenborough is the epitome of a true icon. His work over many decades and his incredible programmes opened up the natural world to so many of us. He’s also been at the forefront of calling for a way of living that doesn’t destroy our habitat and the habit of life across the planet. The Natural History Museum partnering with us for this very special installation at Outernet is a proud moment and is set to look incredible on our screens. Photo: Outernet London/Natural History Museum Free for visitors, the experience will be running at the Now Building at Outernet at regular intervals until 31st May. For those looking to experience more of Our Story with David Attenborough, the 50-minute immersive production is playing at the Natural History Museum until 30th August 2026. Museum members receive a 50% discount on tickets.

Photo: LUMINISCENCE Following a critically acclaimed run at Manchester Cathedral, LUMINISCENCE now comes to one of the capital's most atmospheric and architecturally striking landmarks, London's Westminster Cathedral, this summer. Blending 360° video mapping and stunning orchestral arrangements, performed by Lux Aeterna choir, this highly anticipated production transports audiences into a spellbinding fusion of light, sound and storytelling voiced by the legendary London-born actor Hugh Bonneville. Following celebrated runs across Europe and the USA, LUMINISCENCE continues its UK expansion in the heart of the capital, just moments from Victoria Station. Designed by John Francis Bentley and adorned with over a hundred varieties of marble, Westminster Cathedral is one of Britain's most architecturally significant buildings, and an extraordinary setting for an evening of music and lights. Its breathtaking interior becomes a living canvas, with sweeping projections moving across vast domes, intricate mosaics, and soaring columns, transforming one of the nation's most treasured landmarks into an immersive spectacle for audiences of all ages. Photo: LUMINISCENCE More than a visual spectacle, the show tells the story of London through time. Through a specially commissioned script by BAFTA and Olivier Award-winning writer Tim Whitnall, the experience traces the city's evolution from its historic foundations and modest beginnings to the dynamic, world-renowned capital it is today. This journey is underscored by stirring live performances from Lux Aeterna choir, drawing on some of the most cherished and recognisable classical composers - Beethoven, Verdi, Debussy, Vivaldi, Bach, and more, reimagined to celebrate the music and spirit that have shaped London's cultural identity. At the heart of this London residency is a unique moment created exclusively for the space, as LUMINISCENCE will digitally realise the cathedral’s mosaic-adorned domes that were never completed. During the cathedral’s construction, there were insufficient funds to complete the planned decorative interior, leaving the vast ceilings and upper columns bare for over 120 years. Photo: LUMINISCENCE Now, using advanced digital modelling and historical research, the architect’s original vision will be brought to life for the very first time. As the narrative unfolds, a symphony of light transforms the cathedral's architectural details into a breathtaking visual spectacle, revealing hidden beauty and reinterpreting the building in extraordinary ways. The resonance of live choral voices fills the space, enveloping audiences in a rich and deeply moving soundscape. Beyond the spectacle, the production also supports the preservation of this remarkable venue. A portion of every ticket contributes directly to the cathedral's upkeep, reflecting LUMINISCENCE's mission to share, celebrate, and protect historic monuments. In the months leading up to the show, a team of technicians meticulously 3D maps and models the entire interior, creating the foundation for an intricate projection system that brings the experience to life. Photo: Rich Maciver Audiences can choose between Gold and Silver ticket tiers, with options to suit a range of budgets. Gold tickets include premium seating and express entry, while standard tickets start from £32.50 (including a 10% booking fee), making the experience accessible to a wide audience. LUMINISCENCE will run at Westminster Cathedral from 1st July to 27th September 2026. Tickets are priced from £32.50 per person. For more information and to sign up for the early access booking waitlist, visit luminiscence.com