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This entertaining but flawed interactive adaptation of Netflix's smash-hit series arrives in London, giving visitors the chance to step into the world of Squid Game. Photo: Squid Game: The Experience (London) Squid Game: The Experience, which has recently opened at Immerse LDN below the ExCel Centre, is the latest interactive experience based on a pre-existing IP to land in London. Following successful launches in New York, Sydney, Seoul and Madrid, this 60-minute-long experience sees visitors competing in a series of games - directly lifted and adapted from the Netflix series - for points and the approval of the masked Front Man. Nowadays, London has no shortage of experiences that offer competitive socialising. With the long-running Crystal Maze experience in Piccadilly Circus, the recent Taskmaster Live Experience in Canada Water, and the upcoming Traitors Live Experience in Covent Garden, every corner of the city has activities that pit friends against each other in a highly themed environment. Given the steep competition and high expectations that come with adapting one of Netflix's most successful series into an interactive show, Squid Game: The Experience unfortunately falls short of distinguishing itself from the city's many other competitive offerings. In the experience, groups of between 20 and 40 compete against each other in tests of memory, agility, and reactions. The experience begins in the waiting area, where each player is given a numbered bib and NFC-tagged wristband. Players are photographed upon entry to have their face displayed alongside their scores, and groups are ushered into a recreation of the Dormitory, which is lined with bunk beds and has a pink masked guard guarding the door. There's an in-world introductory talk from a suited games master, making clear that violence of any kind isn't allowed, before the larger group is split into two groups of around 20 players (the Blue and Red teams) and thrown into the games. Photo: Squid Game: The Experience (London) First up is Memory Steps, which is taken from the glass bridge game in Season 1 of the show. With a strip of 12 see-through floor panels ahead of each player, they're given two seconds to memorise the pattern as each panel lights up either red or green. Every player's pattern differs, so there's no safety in copying other players' steps and no room for error. It's here that the problems with Squid Game: The Experience start to become apparent. The show's scoring system, which consists of each player individually tapping their wristband on one of three plinths, is painfully slow to sort, despite every group having a dedicated host with a tablet who ideally would be able to score each contestant after their attempt. Logging scores takes nearly as long as the game, and for those who went first, it's a long wait before they can do anything besides wait for the other competitors to finish. Moving into the next space, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the game competitors are about to play is Dalgona, given the show's interior matches the children's playground theme from that game in the show, but it's in fact Marbles – another challenge from Season 1. In small groups, each player takes turns trying to land a marble in the shape in the centre of a table to claim the other marbles in play. There's some friendly rivalry between the contestants in each group in this game, which is partly down to everyone naturally sticking with their party, and the difficulty level of this challenge means that, again, there's little room for error. Following this second game, the scores on the leaderboard are totalled up after another long wait to tap wristbands, and the leaders of the competition start to become clear. Those who won their game are awarded upwards of 10 points, while most other players receive points in the lower single digits, making the gulf between successful players and those falling behind pretty vast after just two games. Photo: Squid Game: The Experience (London) Thankfully for the players at the top end of the leaderboard, their lead is secure as the next game is scored as a group and sees the Blue and Red teams going head-to-head in Rope Game. Divided by a glass window, each contestant on both teams has 5 seconds to pull a suspended rope as hard and fast as they can in an attempt to move a marker along a track overhead. Despite encouragement to boo those behind the glass and cheer on fellow competitors as everyone works towards a common goal, it's hard to ignore that each player's contribution to this game never exceeds 5 seconds and is largely made up of (you guessed it..) queuing to have their attempt, followed by more queuing to receive their points. Photo: Squid Game: The Experience (London) The best-known and most iconic game from the Netflix series, Red Light Green Light, follows, with both the Red and Blue teams reunited to compete again as individuals. The rules to this one are pretty simple - only move when the room's lighting turns green, and remain stationary when it's red. On hand to oversee the players in this game is a masked pink guard (why they're not in every room of the experience, we're not sure..), who will point out players who wobble, move or fall during the red light sections of the game. With the player count back up to 40, there are quite a few competitors caught out and forced to restart. In a departure from the TV show's depiction of this game, though weirdly, in keeping with the series' mobile game adaptation, there are a number of obstacles scattered throughout the playing field that players can hide and reposition behind, out of view from the guards and the towering Young-Hee doll. While there are a couple of minutes on the clock to make it from one side to the other successfully, players are likely to be completely unaware of how much time is remaining, as the screens showing the ticking clock are at the back of the room and immediately out of players' sightlines once the game begins. Those hoping to time their movements to Young-Hee's song quickly have to adopt another strategy, as it's completely absent from the game portion of this room, and with their head also not swivelling with each lighting change, several elements from the show's version of this game are missing. Despite this, it's far and away the most engaging and tense challenge in Squid Game: The Experience, with a number of false starts catching players out and people trapped up in each other's personal space for extended periods, waiting for the next green light. Photo: Squid Game: The Experience (London) The experience concludes with the final game, Round and Round, which is the only game adapted from Season 2 of the show. With no doors for players to run through while the clock runs down, players need to instead run to one of the Dalgona symbols on the floor when the corresponding symbol appears on screen. It's a pretty brutal game for those looking to make it all the way, with the vast majority of players knocked out in the first round. Those who make it through are quickly whittled down until there's only one player left, who then goes head-to-head with the game's overall points winner in a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors. In a last-minute reveal, the Front Man, who has only appeared on-screen in each room, enters and presents the winning player with a choice: keep the prize for themselves or divide it amongst all the players. The prize, if it's divided amongst everyone? A discount in the gift shop. Video: Squid Game: The Experience London While Squid Game: The Experience fulfils the promise of immersing visitors in the show's world, and there's a fun novelty to playing the games so many of us are familiar with, it lacks the intensity and polish of the source material. The slow processing of each player's scores ruins any momentum gained from playing the games, and operational issues, including extended delays going into each room, means far too much of the experience is spent waiting around for things to happen. With just two finalists from a pool of 40 players, early setbacks can also feel irreversible. You could argue this makes sense within the show's world - given most of the players would be long dead by the time the final game comes around if competing in the games for real - but the stakes and jeopardy associated with trying to do well are diminished when most players realise they have no chance of making it to the finale. Photo: Squid Game: The Experience (London) For die-hard fans of the series, the chance to step into recreations of the show's games and get photos while taking part will make Squid Game: The Experience an enjoyable visit, even if the gameplay and operations make the experience a bit of a damp squib (game) compared to many other competitive socialising experiences on offer across the city. ★★★ Squid Game: The Experience runs at Immerse LDN until 4th January 2026. Tickets are priced from £35.00 per person. For more info and to book tickets, visit feverup.com From 17th July 2025, winners of Squid Game: The Experience will receive priority consideration for casting of the next season of Squid Game: The Challenge. Find out more here . For more reviews of immersive experiences like Squid Game: The Experience, check out our recent Reviews .

This immersive exploration of Elvis's life not only lacks the scale and ambition of previous Layered Reality experiences but tells us nothing new about the King of Rock and Roll. Photo: Luke Dyson Elvis Evolution, which has just launched at Immerse LDN, is the latest show from immersive producers Layered Reality. In this promenade experience, guests take on the role of last-minute audience members recruited from Bob's Burbank Diner to attend the 1968 taping of Elvis' NBC Special, which marked his return to the stage after a seven-year break, and relive his childhood and rise to fame through numerous flashbacks. Layered Reality is best known for Jeff Wayne's The War of the Worlds: The Immersive Experience , which is now London's longest-running immersive show, having first opened in 2019. The company built its reputation by fusing practical effects, holograms, projections and VR with elaborate, detailed immersive sets and large casts of live actors. This approach to immersive work continued with The Gunpowder Plot, which opened near the Tower of London in 2022, and shared many elements with The War of the Worlds, including extended VR sequences, dozens of detailed environments and actor-driven interactions with small groups of guests. With Elvis Evolution, Layered Reality has set aside the VR headsets and much of the foundations laid in these previous projects, instead opting for an experience with a much larger audience size and significantly reduced immersive elements. It's a disappointing shift in the wrong direction for a company known for pushing the boundaries of tech-heavy immersive experiences, and the result is a show that feels less interactive, less engaging and ultimately less impressive than its predecessors. Photo: Luke Dyson Structurally, the show is a pretty radical departure from the formula that served Layered Reality so well in the past. Rather than the 15 to 20 detailed environments previously presented in Layered Reality experiences, Elvis Evolution contains just eight spaces, three of which are bars, and one is a plain white-walled corridor. Most of the experience unfolds in three spaces: an NBC Studios staff break room, a train carriage, and the sound stage where Elvis's 1968 Special was recorded. In each, the audience of 100+ remains stationary, with little to do but watch on as the story unfolds in front of them. There's also minimal interaction with the cast and no opportunity to influence or enter the story. Occasional pre-programmed rumble from beneath the audience's seats, or gust of wind and smoke in the first half of the show provide some sensory immersion, but the show feels far closer to a traditional piece of theatre than an immersive experience - especially during the scenes in the train carraige, which has the audience sat down, watching the cast perform a whistle-stop, sanitised summary of Elvis's rise to fame against a backdrop of slicky-produced video content for 40+ minutes. Photo: Luke Dyson The story within Elvis Evolution is primarily told through the perspective of Sam Bell, Elvis's childhood friend from Tupelo, Mississippi. While the pair were close in their younger years, they lost contact when the Presley family moved to Memphis. Audiences first meet Sam in the NBC staff break room, where he tries to talk his way into Elvis's dressing room and is turned away. Licking his wounds, he delivers a pretty lengthy monologue about their shared childhood in Mississippi and the role music played in their youth. Later in the show, scenes show Sam hearing one of Elvis's songs for the first time on the radio, and in the show's second half, he has a conversation about Elvis in an LA bar with a stranger. The two never saw each other again in the twenty years between Elvis leaving Mississippi and 1968, when the show is primarily set, and while his perspective is certainly a unique one, it doesn't tell us anything about the version of Elvis that millions around the world love. Because of this, the narrative of Elvis Evolution feels oddly removed from the man himself and offers little meaningful insight into his life. There's no real-life stand-in for Elvis in the experience, and he's only seen through pre-existing archival footage and carefully shot recreations in which the actor's face is never shown. While the cast frequently talks about  Elvis, he's treated by every character in the show as a mythical rock star who should be adored from afar, and not as a real person with a rich and complex history that's ripe for exploration. Alongside the show's version of Sam Bell, Elvis Evolution features a trio of talented cast members playing supporting roles, including NBC production staff,   preachers, recording studio execs and crazed fans. They all do a phenomenal job at wearing so many hats throughout the two-hour experience, and rarely have a moment's rest, but the rapid turnover of characters makes it hard for the audience to connect to any single character besides Sam, whose only connection to Elvis lies in the past, not the present. Photo: Luke Dyson Much of the excitement surrounding Elvis Evolution when it was first announced in January 2024 hinged on the promise of an 'AI hologram' version of Elvis, with the initial press coverage of the show (including ours ) highlighting this element of the experience. While it may have been unrealistic for audiences to expect Elvis Evolution to be of the same scale as ABBA Voyage, which delivers a full 90-minute-long hologram concert, the show was said to feature a 'jaw-dropping concert experience where a life-sized digital Elvis will perform iconic moments in musical history on a UK stage for the first time'. There's nothing of the sort within Elvis Evolution, with the only performances we see from Elvis instead being played on screens during the NBC studio scene, which follows the interval. A talented trio of musicians perform live alongside the footage, but none of them are Elvis - the person people have come to see. Most of the footage featured in this portion of the show, besides a montage of famous faces commenting on Elvis's influence on their careers, is freely available on YouTube without the AI-enhanced upscaling that's left the show's version of 1968 Elvis looking like a moving Madame Tussauds waxwork with overly smooth skin. Photo: Luke Dyson While it's never been confirmed, the show's third and final delay ahead of opening, which was attributed to an 'outside vendor going into administration', is likely referencing VFX company The Mill, which closed suddenly in February of this year, and was previously confirmed to be involved in the creation of visuals for the show. Regardless of whether or not their sudden closure prevented the inclusion of the holographic Elvis, its absence is keenly felt all the same. If it had come to fruition, this holographic version of Elvis would have turned the show's finale into something far more exciting, allowed Layered Reality to hold onto its reputation as a company that puts cutting-edge technology at the forefront of its experiences, and met the expectations of the countless lifelong Elvis fans who no doubt rushed to pick up tickets as soon as they went on sale. As it stands, Elvis Evolution offers little in the way of immersion, tells us nothing new about the show's titular character, and lacks the energy and spectacle one would expect from a show about one of the world's best-known performers. ★★★ Elvis Evolution runs at Immerse LDN, ExCel Centre until 28th December 2025. Tickets are priced from £68.00 per person. For more info and to book tickets, visit elvisevolution.com For more reviews of immersive experiences like Elvis Evolution, check out our recent Reviews .

Photo: Lyra Levin Undersigned - a deeply personal, interactive psychological thriller for an audience of one - is making its international debut this summer with stops in London and at the Edinburgh Fringe. The show, which has been created by Yannick Trapman-O'Brien , has enjoyed sell-out performances across the United States, and earlier this year was part of Overlook Film Festival's immersive programme alongside 2024's darling of the London immersive scene, The Manikins: a work in progress by Deadweight Theatre. Our friends over at No Proscenium  have previously described Undersigned as " thrilling in every sense of the word", and six months on from their appointment, Todd Martens from the Los Angeles Times commented, " ..there are moments I’ll catch myself thinking about the show and the choice I was presented with". Ahead of Undersigned arriving in the UK, we caught up with Yannick Trapman-O'Brien to find out a bit more about the experience... Immersive Rumours: Hi Yannick! Thanks for speaking with us today. Do you mind introducing yourself and giving us a bit of background on your work up until now? Yannick Trapman-O'Brien: Happy to! I’m a performer and theatermaker based in Philadelphia, and most interested in the things we share and exchange with strangers. I’ve jumped around a lot, working in creative research and performative exchanges, public art and history, circus and immersive nightlife, but in the past five years I’ve built a practice of making responsive, intimate theatre pieces for small audiences - most often only one person at a time. That shift in my practice started for me with The Telelibrary - an early pandemic-era experiment in telephone theatre that participants really seized and poured themselves into until it blossomed into something much stranger and more powerful than I ever expected. Five years and 2100 calls later, it’s still operating, and still teaching me new things about co-authoring with audiences, rethinking scale for performance, and making better and better invitations for anyone who stumbles in as my audience of one. Photo: Lyra Levin IR: Undersigned is coming to Europe for the first time this summer with shows in London, Amsterdam and at the Edinburgh Fringe. What can you tell us about the show and the role of the audience within it? YTO: Often, when I say that I make work for an audience of one, and someone understandably asks, “But what does that mean?” I explain it this way: I’ve written a show about you. You’ll be the only one there, and no one else will see it. And everything in the show is written except for anything about you — but that’s fine, because you’re the expert on anything about you, so when you get there, you can share whatever you choose, and we’ll finish it together. The show is a place to have a new conversation with yourself; to speak frankly to yourself about what it is you value, and to cement that truth through action. To that end, there’s not much about the show itself I can tell you, as we make a policy of not discussing the contents of the show at all. In part, this is to provide meaningful privacy for guests, who may well take the chance to discuss things that don’t live anywhere outside of their own head. But it’s also because we want our participants to own as much of the story that emerges as possible. Every guest makes their own calculation of how blindly they are willing to step in, and obviously we’re not opposed to offering some context - I wouldn’t be speaking to you if I was! It’s a very personal experience, it’s 45-55 minutes long, there will be a blindfold, an invocation, and a pointed discussion. But the invitation is for every participant to wonder what might emerge if they didn’t look to anyone else to confirm what their experience might or “should” be, and instead trusted that their own authentic response to the premise, as they encounter it, is something meaningful and worth discovering. IR: Where did the idea for Undersigned first come from? YTO: Undersigned began as a private commission way back in 2019. I got a phone call out of the blue from someone who had heard about my work and was looking to commission a piece of immersive horror. And my immediate instinct was to decline - maybe even to run away, which isn’t a practical choice on a phone call but it serves as a testament to how ill equipped I felt for the genre as someone who has watched a few episodes of Spongebob Squarepants through my fingers, rapt in terror at totally harmless levels of peril. But the client was persistent and offered me enormous flexibility, and I pitched the beginnings of an odd idea, and we went with it. The event came, and I did like 12 shows in one night, and I was totally bowled over by what those 12 random partygoers made with their time. I felt an enormous curiosity, and an enormous burden of care that I honestly didn’t have enough tools for at the time. I spent a few years looking for resources, talking to other artists and therapists and sex workers and all manner of people who hold heavy things and practice care and aftercare. At the same time, I logged more and more hours with The Telelibrary, and I found my own growing set of tools and practices. And so in 2022, I brought the piece back down from the shelf and started putting into practice all the questions and ideas I had about making safe places to be dangerous, and offering discomfort as a form of care.  Photo: Lyra Levin IR: In the years since it was created, has Undersigned changed and developed based on the way audiences have approached the show? YTO: One of the great gifts of doing these low-throughput shows is the luxury of having something small, adaptable and sustainable enough to hold it year over year, and to gradually let hundreds of people pour through over time. As dorky as it sounds, I think about a school field trip as a child where I was brought to a cave and they told us how a stalagmite forms gradually from the steady repetition of just little drops of water, and I feel a touch of that same awe. For Undersigned, there’s an element of that accumulation; some mark of the generosity of every participant lingers, and comes to hold the next participant. And there’s a way that all the hands running over the surface make some parts of the experience smooth and worn over time - guests have really shown me what the piece is about, where they are inclined to linger, and how to stay out of their way. But I also think there’s a sharpening that happens too; there’s a fine point at the center of the question we present, and we’re always using the lessons from each guest to shift and adjust and ensure that edge stays keen, and that we can hold it steady enough for someone to press as far against it as they dare. IR: Do you find people go into Undersigned with some trepidation about not having a safety net of other participants around them, or do they instead find that to be freeing? YTO: I have to imagine participants sometimes feel nervous to be the only one there, and I know there is some subset of audiences for whom that’s just a dealbreaker. I’ve met people who say, “It would be my nightmare to be the only one there.” But I think that when those participants actually try it, they may find the experience isn’t at all what they imagined - which is maybe informed by the image of an empty theatre and you all lonely in the middle. The truth is we all spend time alone in our own heads, and I think for most of us it’s quite a crowded room. As facilitators, our job is to help that experience be as freeing as you suggested, and to guide someone away from the concern that they need to “do” anything or make something happen. The show is a chance to just respond organically, and to notice how your responses may be freer or stranger or different as you settle into the fact that there is no one there but you. Photo: Lyra Levin IR: Finally, what advice would you give to those looking to attend on how to best prepare themselves beforehand? YTO: Well, for starters, I would say that there’s nothing anyone has to do in preparation for this beyond grabbing themselves an appointment time and showing up at the right time and place. I’m really proud of the work we’ve done building the ramp into and out of this experience, and as someone who has frequently found myself only checking the confirmation email for an event while already on the train to get there, I’m always grateful for experiences that understand how expensive it can be to have to give energy and brainspace to something before it starts.  But for those who enjoy looking forward with anticipation, or for those who are inclined to plan and prep (somehow also me, on the train heading to the event I haven’t read about with a backpack full of things I might need), there are a few things you can do to give yourself more space for whatever experience emerges. We give you the choice to bring an offering to use in the process, and it can be a great gift to spend a little time in the days preceding noticing what small objects in your life seem to have some kind of heat or charge to them, and choosing one that feels like it’s at a tipping point. And since I’m always in favor of people holding themselves with more care, I’d say to do so you could arrive early, so that when you’re inevitably later than planned, you’re still not rushing yourself. Better still, if possible I’d even recommend you save yourself some time for after the experience that you can spend alone; maybe there’s somewhere in the area you’d like to grab a solo meal afterwards, or a shop you’ve been meaning to pop into, or even just a nice walk you can talk through a nearby park, or to a tube station a little further away than is efficient. Some participants find that the time spent in their own company at Undersigned leaves them hungry for more - and some participants find that having plans after gives one a very functional alibi should one decide to keep their time at Undersigned as their own little secret.   Undersigned will run at an unannounced location near London Bridge from 24th July to 26th July 2025, and at Underbelly Cowgate from 31st July to 12th August as part of Edinburgh Fringe 2025. The show asks for a Down Payment of £80.00 for London performances and £13.50 for Edinburgh performances. To join the waitlist for London appointments, visit yannickto.com/undersigned , and for Edinburgh appointments, visit underbellyedinburgh.co.uk

We grapple with what we want out of life in this true once-in-a-lifetime experience by Yannick Trapman-O'Brien. Photo: Lyra Levin If you could have anything in the world, without restrictions, what would you want? What would you give up to have it? These are the questions at the centre of Yannick Trapman-O'Brien's cult hit Undersigned, which makes its long-awaited international debut this summer with dates in London, Edinburgh and Amsterdam. Described as a 'deeply personal and introspective psychological thriller' for an audience of one, Undersigned invites those who attend to look inwards and selfishly declare what they want from life, safe in the knowledge that everything discussed during their appointment won't ever leave the room. Attendees sit blindfolded, across the table from Trapman-O'Brien, for nearly the entire show as they hammer out the details of a Faustian pact, weighing up what they desire with what they're willing to lose and how to balance the scales between the two. With each participant never allowed to return after their appointment, it's a truly once-in-a-lifetime experience and one of the most emotionally affecting pieces of work we've ever been a part of. We're not going to give away any of the key moments from Undersigned in this review. In part, to not influence the actions of anyone lucky enough to attend, but also because our experience was so confronting and raw that it revealed things about ourselves that we'd never thought about before, let alone verbalised. For us, taking part in Undersigned was an emotionally charged and cathartic experience that moved us to tears, and the show's impact is still being felt days later. Photo: Lyra Levin The one-on-one has long been a highly sought-after experience for immersive theatre fans. Whether it be within the sprawling worlds created by Punchdrunk, where people will elbow each other out of the way if it means increasing their odds of being the chosen one, or in works like Deadweight Theatre's The Manikins: a work in progress  and Candle House Collective's phone-based Lennox Mutual, being a performer's sole focus offers both intimacy and exclusivity but also comes at a cost: intensity. With nowhere to hide, and the focus placed squarely on a single participant, there's often a self-imposed pressure to 'perform'. Many people (ourselves included) can end up responding in ways they think the performer wants them to, rather than with complete honesty. Within Undersigned, this notion is addressed head-on. During the onboarding, it's agreed that the attendee must speak honestly. Throughout the show, Trapman-O'Brien digs down into each response to expose the kernel of truth at the centre, even if the attendee's initial response to a question doesn't quite meet that agreement, until their true feelings are made clear. Photo: Lyra Levin Trapman-O'Brien weaves attendees' offhand comments and fleeting ideas back into the conversation in a disarmingly natural way, helping close the gap between what's said and what's really being felt. From the outset, it's clear that the other voice in the room could verbally run rings around you if they so wished. Truthfulness and vulnerability are the only real tools available. Anyone recoiling at the idea of being pushed into uncomfortable topics will find solace in the show's safeguarding. While subjects including sex, money, power and pleasure are all on the table, care is taken to avoid genuine discomfort. Participants can veto topics before or during the appointment. While it's meant to be an emotionally raw and revealing experience, it never tries to deliberately cause participants true discomfort. There's also great care taken to ensure ample space is given to decompress when all things are said and done as part of an offboarding process, which is handled with a level of care far greater than is typically present in immersive work. Photo: Lyra Levin In a potentially risky financial move for a small-scale production, a not-insignificant portion of each participant's ticket price is presented to them in an envelope at the end of their appointment. They're free to leave with it if the show didn't meet their expectations, but for those who feel it delivered more than they bargained for, there's the option to give more. There's no pressure or pitch, only trust that each person will respond in a way that feels right to them in the moment. Ticketing for Undersigned also breaks with convention. While a few appointments are made publicly available when the show springs up in a new city, a large number of them are set aside for those who have either been on the show's long waiting list or have been put forward by a previous participant, who received a business card with a QR code at the end of their appointment to pass on. It positions the show as something rare and valuable, meant to be shared only with those who would appreciate the opportunity and benefit from it. It's fair to say that Undersigned demands a lot from those who take part, but only because it offers just as much in return. At its core, it's a piece about choices. You're not asked to play a role or be anything you're not; all that's required is honesty and openness. Those willing to give it are rewarded with the chance to indulge in selfishness without judgement and learn more about themselves than they bargained for. With little more than a blindfold, a candle and a notepad, Yannick Trapman-O'Brien has created a phenomenal piece of immersive theatre. Emotionally devastating, profoundly intimate and potentially life-changing, Undersigned is unlike anything else we've ever attended and has fundamentally changed how we see ourselves. ★★★★★ Undersigned ran at COLAB Tower in London Bridge from 24th to 26th July 2025. It will be at the Edinburgh Fringe's Underbelly Cowgate from 31st July to 12th August 2025. Tickets for dates at the Edinburgh Fringe are priced from £13.50 and can be booked via underbellyedinburgh.co.uk You can join the publist waitlist for future appointments via yannickto.com/undersigned For more reviews of experiences like Yannick Trapman-O'Brien's Undersigned, check out our recent Reviews

Image: Minimum Labyrinth For over a decade, Robert Kingham and Rich Cochrane's Minimum Labyrinth have been hosting walking tours through London that explore the capital's rich history and lesser-known corners. With previous tours having delved into the past of areas including Drury Lane and Bloomsbury, the pair have built up a loyal following of fans, a regular cast of collaborators, and have previously worked with the likes of the Museum of London to shed light on the forgotten corners of the city. Their latest experience, Doin' The Lambeth Walk (Oi!), turns its attention, unsurprisingly, to Lambeth. It's their most ambitious production to date, featuring a cast of four performers, and it's as much a walking tour as it is a piece of utterly surreal promenade theatre. Over three hours, the tour covers several kilometres of tunnels, parks, estates and alleyways, as well as two pub stops for those who've both worked up a thirst and need time to process everything that unfolds. Photo: Immersive Rumours We're sworn to secrecy concerning a lot of the specifics in Doin' The Lambeth Walk, and wouldn't want to detract from the joy of discovering exactly what the tour involves for those who attend, but it's fair to say that it's a far richer experience than the dry, fact-heavy style of walking tour common elsewhere in the city, and is unlike anything else we've ever done. As expected, there are heaps of interesting titbits about the history of Lambeth throughout, including nods to Charlie Chaplin and Admiral William Blythe, whose pasts are both tied to the area. There's also numerous detours that explore everything from the 'dead railway' that ferried bodies between Waterloo and Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey to the cholera epidemic that plagued the area and killed nearly 2,000 people between 1848 and 1849. The focus shifts constantly between both the buildings and the geographical features of Lambeth, and the people who made the area what it is, showing us how the two have impacted each other, and how, ultimately, a place is made by those who inhabit it. On top of this, though, are the performative elements of Doin' The Lambeth Walk, which have been designed in a way that means those who attend are never quite sure what's going to happen next. There's a wonderfully bizarre overarching story woven into the walk's narrative that has nothing to do with the area's history, but frames every interaction the group has with the sights and sounds of Lambeth and before long, those who attend have seemingly stepped through the looking glass, unable to return to reality. With the streets of London also acting as the stage for this tour-cum-theatre experience, passers-by often look on, unsure of what they're witnessing, and the ever-present risk of the tour colliding with reality creates some wild interactions with the general public that heighten the show's surreal feeling. Photos: Immersive Rumours With some hilarious moments woven into the tour's script courtesy of Robert Kingham and Alice Merivale, who lead the experience, and with a host of characters played by Howard Horner and Will Henry popping up en route, every twist and turn on the tour's route holds the potential for another unexpected encounter. By the walk's conclusion, we've grown quite comfortable stepping out of time with the rest of the city, and after returning to reality, we had a new appreciation for those who have made the city what it is. Oi! ★★★★ Doin' The Lambeth Walk takes place across Central London on selected dates in September 2025. Tickets are priced from £37.50 and can be purchased via minimumlabyrinth.org

This immersive pop-up experience gives guests the chance to become Dexter's Dark Passenger and relive key moments from his life. Photo: Harvey Williams-Fairley To coincide with the release of Dexter: Resurrection on Paramount+ this week, Dexter: The Experience  has opened in London for a four-day run at 83 Rivington Street in Shoreditch. The promenade immersive experience invites visitors to become the physical manifestation of serial killer Dexter's Dark Passenger and step into the shoes of the TV series' titular character as they relive several key moments from Dexter's past. Tickets to the experience were available free of charge (though limited) through Fever, with a walk-up queue available outside the venue for those who missed out. While Dexter: The Experience is by no means the first immersive pop-up experience to open in London alongside the debut of a new TV series, it stands alongside The Boys Get The V  and IT Chapter 2 at The Vaults  as one of the strongest examples of this kind of event that we've seen in recent years. Featuring faithful recreations of some of the show's most well-known moments and places, a tone that matches the source material perfectly, and some unexpected moments along the way, it's a hugely satisfying experience for fans of the show and massively exceeded our expectations for a free-to-attend experience. Photo: Harvey Williams-Fairley Dexter: The Experience begins in a small plastic-lined room with an introductory video recapping key events of the TV series, acting as both a refresher for long-time fans and some much-needed context for those who have never seen the show. With a voiceover from Michael C. Hall, which has been recorded especially for the experience, the disembodied voice of Dexter explains that guests are there to act as his 'Dark Passenger' and are coming along for a ride through his memories. As the voiceover concludes, Dexter's foster father, Harry Morgan, enters the room dressed in a full police uniform. Speaking directly to the group with sustained eye contact and a serious expression, he refers to each audience member individually as 'Dexter' (a practice that occurs repeatedly throughout the experience). In an extended monologue, Harry discusses the darkness he saw in Dexter as a child and recounts the code he created that would allow his adopted son's bloodthirsty urges to be satisfied without harming innocent people. Much like in the show, Michael C. Hall's voiceover occasionally interjects to provide a window into Dexter's mind, which by the end of the scene is focused less on Harry and more on locating Harrison (a plot point that'll be explored in the upcoming series). Moving into a dimly lit, blood-splattered shipping container, guests then get to experience the defining moment of Dexter's childhood – when his mother was killed with a chainsaw in front of him and his brother Brian. It's a tense few minutes as the sound of screams and the chainsaw motor reverberate around the container's metal walls in near darkness before Harry bursts in to save the twins and escort people to safety. Photo: Harvey Williams-Fairley Jumping forward in time, guests then enter the Forensics Analysis office at Miami Metro Police Department and are greeted by CSI Chief Tanya Martin, who features in the 1990s-set prequel series, Dexter: Original Sin. The timelines of scenes featured in the experience get purposefully muddled here, as guests have entered a memory from the Season 2 episode 'There's Something About Harry', despite Tanya not being present in either that season or any of the other 90+ episodes in the original series. This is explained away by some tongue-in-cheek voiceover from Hall, who claims, 'That's how memory works, I guess. When your life flashes before your eyes, things get a bit...' before being cut off by Tanya. Guests are told that earlier in the day, a wooden box containing fifty blood slides from The Bay Harbour Butcher was found in a Miami International Airport car park. While the blood slides belong to Dexter, his colleague, Sgt James Doakes, is being framed after recently figuring out the truth about Dexter, and the audience needs to cover their tracks and ensure Doakes is firmly tied to the recent discovery. Photo: Harvey Williams-Fairley In a race against the clock, the blood slides need to be inserted into an analyser to load the associated DNA match on a central computer. That information then needs to be transferred onto whiteboards around the room. There's frantic sprinting across the room while screams of blood types, health conditions and toxicology information are shared. While there doesn't appear to be a way to fail at these puzzles, those in our group gave it their all regardless, which may be down to Tanya encouraging both teams of 'rookies' to keep working as fast as possible. While it's hard to take it in while sprinting around the room, there's an impressive attention to detail given to everything in the space. There's piles of Playboy magazines left by Masuka, an expired ID badge showing a younger, Original Sin-era Dexter, a blood centrifuge and an evidence board with red string linking multiple people and places, amongst other smaller details, such as a post-it note reminding Masuka to tell Batista 'the joke about the horse and the nun' on a computer monitor and other in-world notes from more of the series unseen characters. Photo: Harvey Williams-Fairley In the next space, the group is tasked with piecing together a mannequin on a mortuary table from two huge bins filled with dozens of body parts. This puzzle, which has been set by The Ice Truck Killer (Dexter's brother Brian), is set within the back of a refrigerated truck and requires more attention to detail than initially appears. While all of the mannequin pieces would no doubt fit together, the challenge lies in successfully locating the body parts with numbered symbols engraved on them. There's a strong reveal at the end of this puzzle that ties it back to the events we experienced earlier in the shipping container, further cementing the fact that Dexter and Brian are two sides of the same coin, forever linked by their shared traumatic past. Photo: Harvey Williams-Fairley Of course, it wouldn't be a pop-up immersive experience without some photo opportunities. In Dexter: The Experience, they come in the way of a full-scale recreation of the blood-filled bathtub that Dexter's wife, Rita, is found in from Season 4 and the infamous plastic-lined kill rooms that Dexter sets up countless times throughout the series. Hidden amongst these scenes are numerous rewarding easter eggs for those who examine the spaces closely enough, including a phone that plays Rita's final voicemail to Dexter and a collection of obituary clippings put together by Nurse Mary (who featured in Season 1 of the original series and Dexter: Original Sin). Photos: Harvey Williams-Fairley The final scene of Dexter: The Experience has guests enter a situation unfamiliar to even the most die-hard fan, as it offers a glimpse into Dexter's future and a peek into what's to come in Dexter: Resurrection. Set in the hallway of a New York hotel, which Dexter has tracked Harrison to, guests are tasked with working out the code to open a locked door. Throughout the space, there are UV-based clues, which all appear in succession after the previous clue is found. While the previous puzzles in Dexter: The Experience required teams to work in smaller groups, this final challenge has everyone working together. There's some light lateral thinking involved, with each clue delivered in the form of a riddle, but much like how Dexter can escape any precarious situation largely unscathed, guests will likely succeed regardless of how well they solve these riddles. Photo: Harvey Williams-Fairley While it's perhaps unfair to judge a free-to-attend pop-up experience against the countless other shows on offer within London's immersive scene, Dexter: The Experience still holds up pretty well in comparison. With detailed sets full of easter eggs, it's clear that great care has been taken to faithfully recreate scenes and environments from the original series to a degree even the biggest superfan wouldn't find fault with. The 45-minute-long experience moves at a brisk pace with little downtime, and tonally it matches the original series wonderfully. While there's not a huge amount of freedom offered to guests inside the experience, the puzzles presented were all varied and offered ample opportunity to step into the shoes of the show's titular character with no real-life killing required. Running for a limited time, Dexter: The Experience more than earns its place among London’s strongest IP-driven immersive events. It also demonstrates that, given the right conditions, even free-ticket pop-ups can deliver something with real atmosphere, attention to detail, and a satisfying narrative, rather than feeling like a forgettable promotional event. It’s a killer way to spend an hour, and we’d gladly return as Dexter’s Dark Passenger if the opportunity arose. ★★★★ Dexter: The Experience runs at 83 Rivington Street in Shoreditch until 13th July 2025. Tickets are sold out, but there is a standby queue available for those without pre-booked tickets. For more information on Dexter: The Experience, visit dextertheexperience.co.uk For more reviews of immersive shows like Dexter: The Experience, check out our recent Reviews .

Image: Paramount+ To celebrate the launch of the new Paramount+ series Dexter: Resurrection, Paramount+ invites fans to step inside the mind of TV's most iconic antihero with Dexter: The Experience, powered by Fever - an unmissable new immersive event coming to London this July. The exclusive, limited-run experience will plunge visitors into Dexter Morgan’s twisted world, from his first kill to his dark rebirth in Dexter: Resurrection. Due to popular demand, which saw all available tickets sell out in 20 minutes on 24th June, an additional release of free tickets to Dexter: The Experience will be released on 1st July at midday via Fever. Those looking to secure tickets should sign up for the waitlist via dextertheexperience.co.uk . The event will have a standby line for those without tickets, but expect long waits. Taken on a journey through a labyrinth of rooms, fans will become dark passengers guided by an exclusive voiceover from Michael C Hall as Dexter Morgan himself. With each new room, the mind bends further, encouraging fans to think, react and follow his code while navigating interactive challenges that blur reality with memory. Fans will experience a fictional slice of life as Dexter, exploring his earliest memory to his first kill and every grisly milestone after that. By solving gruesome puzzles, mind-bending riddles, and gore-filled games, passengers will hope to make it out by cracking Dexter’s code. Pulling from series themes such as analysing blood spatter at Miami Metro Forensics, piecing together evidence, and escaping the Empire Hotel from the upcoming series, passengers will find themselves immersed in the dark and twisted world of the notorious antihero. Once the day’s investigating is done, it’s time to wind down with a bloody Mojito at Cuban Bar. Crack the code, and as a reward for surviving Dexter’s mind, dark passengers will be treated to an exclusive sneak peek of the upcoming Paramount+ series Dexter: Resurrection, which debuts on Paramount+ on 11th July. Dexter: The Experience will run from 10th to 13th July at 83 Rivington Street in Shoreditch. To be in with a chance of securing a free ticket, register at dextertheexperience.co.uk before the ticket release on 1st July at 12pm via Fever.

This two-day Soho pop-up delivers scares, chills and cocktails as part of a promotional event for Universal Pictures and Blumhouse Productions. Our review of Blumhouse Blackout... Photo: Cerebrum Blumhouse Blackout, a two-day immersive pop-up experience from Universal Pictures and Blumhouse Productions, took over a building on Bateman Street in Soho last weekend, inviting visitors into the world of M3GAN, The Purge and The Black Phone ahead of Halloween. Tickets to the event were free of charge - though limited - with a walk-up queue available outside the venue for those who missed out. Entering in groups of up to 8 at a time, visitors were first invited to sit in a shabbily decorated living room as two characters in Purge masks ominously walked around silently. With the door to the outside world slammed shut, they leapt into life and instructed guests to move through to the next room for an introductory briefing. Being directed by someone wielding an axe added to the haste with which everyone moved... Photos: Cerebrum The centrepiece of the experience was a 15-minute section with visitors lying on mattresses in a recreation of the basement in The Black Phone. Wearing noise-cancelling headphones throughout, an audio experience created by DARKFIELD - a company well-known for using 360 ° binaural audio to immerse visitors - played out in total darkness, with the only sources of light being the occasional pyrotechnics, dim lighting cues and actor interactions timed alongside the audio. Photo: Cerebrum These brief moments out of darkness certainly ramped up the tension and had some well-timed jump scares, especially when the lights would briefly flick on to find one of the cast inches from your face, but the sections in the pitch black were the most effective, as your imagination would fill in the visuals. Despite being pre-recorded, hearing others around you trying to escape, only to subsequently be captured and dragged away screaming, made the instructions in the opening moments to stay on your mattress at all times to remain safe even more impactful. The climax of the audio experience was an ASMR-like whisper into your ear that sent shivers down your spine, both from the delivery and the sound of saliva moving around their lips and mouth as they spoke. Photo: Cerebrum The second half of the experience took place in a Blumhouse-themed bar at the rear of the venue. At one end, M3GAN was there to greet visitors in a children's playroom. Performed by Annabel Brook, who also played Young Eleven in 2019/2020's Secret Cinema Presents Stranger Things, their robotic invitation to dance led to some of the experience's most entertaining moments, as guests recreated the viral dance moves that helped make the original film such a success. Elsewhere, an invitation to 'play a game' had guests searching the walls of the bar area with a UV flashlight in search of letters, which, when rearranged, made up a code phrase that would result in receiving a complimentary Blumhouse T-Shirt. In addition, complimentary themed cocktails based on popular Blumhouse films were also available. The same bartenders who made those drinks soon shifted gear when the Purge Countdown playing on a TV in the bar hit zero, with them donning masks, smashing bottles and telling us to leave just as quickly as we’d entered. Again, you’re expected to do as told when a masked stranger is holding a weapon… Photo: Immersive Rumours As far as immersive pop-up events go, Blumhouse Blackout was far from the most elaborate to hit London in recent years. It was certainly nowhere near the scale of events such as It Chapter Two experience at The Vaults, and The Boys Get The V by Swamp , but it was nonetheless an engaging and enjoyable experience, especially given the free ticket price. No doubt due to logistical reasons, the event only ran across two days, despite selling out in just a few hours. With Halloween just days away after the doors to Blumhouse Blackout closed, it feels like a missed opportunity not to have the experience run for longer so more people could experience it. Photo: Immersive Rumours ★★★★ Blumhouse Blackout ran at 15 Bateman Street on the 25th and 26th October 2024. For more reviews of immersive experiences like Blumhouse Blackout, click here .

Photo: Squid Game: The Experience Following confirmation that Netflix's smash-hit reality competition, Squid Game: The Challenge , has been renewed for a third season and is now casting, it's been announced that London-based players of Squid Game: The Experience at Immerse LDN can gain an advantage over other applicants to the upcoming season of Netflix's biggest unscripted series. Beginning 17th July, winners of the in-person immersive experience will receive priority consideration for casting, though it does not guarantee a place in the show. Players at the experience will also be able to apply through on-site QR codes and social media links. Photo: Squid Game: The Experience Squid Game: The Experience, which opened in London earlier this year, invites players to take in five challenges inspired by the television series’ nail-biting games, including Red Light, Green Light, Glass Bridge, Tug of War and Marbles over 60 nail-biting minutes. The experience is currently booking until 4th January 2026. While the final season of Squid Game has now aired on Netflix, Season 2 of Squid Game: The Challenge is set to premiere on 4th November 2025. The show puts 456 players through a gauntlet of high-stakes games, intense strategy, and psychological tests, all for the life-changing prize of $4.56 million. The first season saw tens of thousands apply, but only one walked away victorious. Photo: Squid Game: The Experience Squid Game: The Experience runs at Immerse LDN until 4th January 2026. Tickets are priced from £35.00 per person. For more info and to book tickets, visit feverup.com

Photo: UNCLE BARRY Immersive Rumours: Hi Ariana and Mia! Thanks for speaking with us today. To kick things off, do you mind telling us a bit about your work as UNCLE BARRY and how you came to start making immersive/interactive theatre? Ariana Aragon:  Hey! Our theatre company, UNCLE BARRY, is made up of Mia and me at its core. We started the company because we share a common interest in experimenting with theatrical form and making interactive work rooted in hope. Right now, we’re getting ready to take our first show, Uncle Barry’s Birthday Party , to Edinburgh. We can’t wait. It’s a birthday party where guests arrive to celebrate Uncle Barry, who seems to have a different relationship with everyone in the room. He’s a mythical man. Pretty magic. The show is absurd, playful, and has a lot of heart. Since it’s rooted in improv and collective storytelling, there’s a great deal of unpredictability based on the people in the room that night. The guests, combined with Barry and the co-creative party setting, really make the show what it is. We listen to the moment at hand and people in the room, and each time it’s a different ride! In a couple of weeks, UNCLE BARRY is also hosting a creative retreat-meets-immersive theatre getaway weekend in Portugal called Edge of Eden. We’re also in the midst of devising our next show, a movement-based interactive production in a dance den, with our friends and collaborators Morgan and Flora, titled PLEASE. Mia Foster:  Whilst the company UNCLE BARRY is the home for all our shared projects and work as individuals, we're always collaborating with other people and artists across our projects. We’re lucky that for Uncle Barry’s Birthday Party, for example, once we had the concept for the piece and applied for Side/Step, we started working with a group of seven brilliant performers. The UNCLE BARRY family extends beyond us, but it’s the company name under which Ariana and I officially work. IR: How did you both first meet? Ariana:  We started making theatre together after meeting on our Master's course. We both study at Royal Central School for Speech and Drama on Advanced Theatre Practice . I used to work in tech, and decided to do a full career shift at the age of 31 because I was ready to put more of my energy into creative work. I’d been throwing these increasingly elaborate themed and theatrical events, and wanted to see how I could do this theatrical play thing more officially… and I found theatre-making and the Advanced Theatre Practice course. Mia : I had 100 different jobs after my undergrad, and have always loved writing, but before starting the course, I was working in marketing and living in Shropshire. I hadn’t had anything to do with theatre for years, but managed to find my way back to it through writing, acting workshops, and luck. I came onto the Advanced Theatre Practice not really knowing what to expect, but feeling I was in the right place. I first met Ariana at the tube station. She was the first person to describe what immersive theatre was to me. I used to interview strangers and write about it, and so interactive and immersive theatre sparked something in me. We were having great conversations about people interacting with one another and the amazing interactions we had both had in our personal lives that led to so many great adventures, and our fear that there were less of these moments happening day to day because maybe people were afraid of speaking to strangers or spending more time either working at home or on screens. So we initially bonded over our interest in that. Photo: UNCLE BARRY IR: Your debut show, Uncle Barry’s Birthday Party, has recently been at Voidspace Live and debuted at Side/Step Festival earlier in the year. How did it first come about? Ariana:  I remember we had a long conversation on my couch about what we were sensing among our generation and even younger, of people being less willing to take risks to interact because so much of life is now moderated through convenience and digitally through a phone. That was a driving motivation for us. How can we approach theatre with this lens of facilitating play and risk-taking with strangers? We were chewing on this for about a month when Deadweight’s Side/Step Festival was being promoted to our cohort. While holding our seed - and honestly, a lot of this was over Zoom, ironically - we concepted Uncle Barry's Birthday Party. I was back in Florida for a few weeks, so while in random Florida coffee shops with really kitschy sharks in the background, on Zoom with Mia, we were talking about ‘What is this show actually going to be? We need a frame to anchor this interactive form we’re curious about.’ Mia:  We described it in the application to Side/Step as a series of escalating invitations. We knew that the space for the festival was a restaurant, and we knew we wanted to make an immersive piece of theatre, so it was really the combination of those two things that led us to a birthday party. And then Uncle Barry came and saved us all. Ariana:  Initially, Side/Step were like ‘Hey, we love it, but we need more. What is this thing?’ so we really were building the plane as we were flying it. Mia: As soon as we had a title and we knew the space, we immediately got performers in a room, and that's when, as a group, we dived into devising around this form and sketch that we were initially interested in. Ariana: Once we formed the initial concept, Domi and Jack from Side/Step were very generous with their time and expertise as we were developing the show. They asked great questions and helped with dramaturgy and directing, all while being supportive of our unconventional form. Mia:  Yeah, they were great and very generous. And then Katy came to the show at Side/Step and offered for us to perform at Voidspace Live , which was so exciting. Photo: James Lawson IR: For those that haven't been to Uncle Barry's Birthday Party, the structure of it is essentially everyone gets together in a room and the question posed to most of the audience is, ‘How do you know Uncle Barry?’, with the audience connecting through their answers to that question and creating a shared mythology. What’s your hope for people's takeaway from the show? Mia:  Lynne [Kendrick], our teacher, said recently, ‘Rather than asking the question ‘What is this about?’ instead ask ‘What does it do?’. That weirdly gave me confidence in the fact that we had started with this interesting experience, form and structure, and so much of the experience of Uncle Barry's Birthday Party is in the process of creating, and not only creating yourself, but also co-creating. Something beautiful that happens in Uncle Barry’s Birthday Party is this collision of narratives and collision of ideas and opinions. Everyone's got their own narrative, and everyone has their own perspective of things, and yet we're all here together. I think Uncle Barry's Birthday Party is a space where we can explore that idea through the realm of play, but there's a lack of pressure to know the answer because there's no right or wrong Uncle Barry. And to do that at a celebration of life, a birthday party, is hopefully something that contributes to the experience for audiences and means something to them. Ariana:   We’ve both been more focused as creators on the stories that come from responding to the moment at hand and people in the room, rather than imposing our stories onto the audience. It’s about trusting the audience in a way, and trusting the stories that come from their experience and process of actually participating in the world. From the start, we were so focused on the experience that we almost didn't have enough threads. We didn't even have that initial question of ‘How do you know Uncle Barry?’ when we first created it. When audience members would come, we would say, ‘Oh, hi! Do you know Uncle Barry? It was a closed question, and they'd turn around and say, ‘No,’ or we'd ask, ‘Hi! How did you hear about the party?’ We wanted people to participate, but it took the two events at Side/Step for us to realise that we needed an open-ended question to create the kind of collective, imaginative experience for the audience. Mia: There’s also something about it being in a birthday party setting, which means, hopefully, they don't feel that they have to make this massive leap into the world beyond having RSVP'd/bought a ticket and being asked, ‘How do you know Uncle Barry?’. That was important to us because we wanted to create an environment where people can participate as much or as little as they like, and the experience still works. Some people arrive and have a full character party persona, but most people have been to a birthday party, so even if they don't want to perform to the same extent, they can just be themselves, and that's enough. Our favourite feedback has been from people saying they never usually speak to this many strangers because they’d be too nervous, or that they don’t usually like this sort of thing, but found the show really fun. That feels special. Photo: James Lawson IR: For a company like yourselves, how important is it to have festivals like Voidspace Live and Side/Step to get this show in front of audiences and have the chance to work out what the show really is? Mia:  Firstly, the show would never have happened if we hadn't had Side/Step to apply for. We never would have learned these things if we hadn't had Voidspace Live to go on to. The show doesn't work unless we're performing in front of an audience because we can only ever half rehearse. Because of the experimental side of the questions that come from playing in participatory theatre, Uncle Barry is ever evolving… From these festivals, we’re learning so much about how to build a story and structure in which so much of the magic comes from audience interaction. There’s no way it would be possible without seeing the show up on its feet. There are things you find happening in a show you could never have imagined in a rehearsal. Especially when it comes to immersive stuff. It wouldn't exist without either Side/Step or Voidspace. Ariana:  Having the chance to perform the show repeatedly is teaching us the balance of driving the performance versus allowing it to unfold from the audience. The audience has a lot of power in the ending. I think without having more exposure to the possibilities, we can be too controlling or too passive. Even just these four shows have given us a lot more wisdom to be more discerning in how we approach each audience interaction. Mia:  The core mechanic of it is this kind of co-creation, which is the heart of the show. Unless we're with an audience, we never know the capacity, the potential, or the possibilities that can happen in those moments. IR: You've got a lot more opportunities to explore these ideas next month, when the show goes to the Edinburgh Fringe. How are you feeling going into that? Do you think it's going to be a very different show by the end of that Fringe run? Ariana:  I'm feeling good. Mia:  I'm so excited. Ariana:  I think what's really nice about the show so far is that we've done a lot of the groundwork. We're going to rehearse more beforehand to strengthen our performance and make some adjustments from Voidspace, but the core of the show is there. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if it's a different show at the end. That's something we've talked about too - how do we want to make changes during the run, what does decision making look like? We want to be responsive, and we want to learn from Fringe, but we also want to hold the core. Mia:  Because so much of the show is about the creation of narratives, it's an exciting and risky game that we're playing, doing nine shows back to back around Uncle Barry. It's going to be important for us, I think, at the end of each night to dispel the Barry of that evening before going into the next day. The beauty of the show is that it's the people in the room, in the moment, that decide who Uncle Barry is and what this party means. If we, by accident, as everyone does, start building narratives around what's happening and events at the Fringe, we are going to start building a narrative that is more set than we would like, going into each show fresh with new audiences. It's going to be an exciting challenge for our core mechanic and our ability as performers to wipe the slate clean so that we’re able to be completely open-minded and open-hearted when all these incredible, inventive, exciting, new ideas about Uncle Barry and why we're all here come flooding in. Photo: James Lawson IR: In the performances you’ve done so far, what’s been the best response you’ve had to the question of ‘How do you know Uncle Barry?’ Ariana: I won’t use the kidney one, but that is actually one of my favourites... [NB: IR said Uncle Barry donated a kidney to them when they attended the show] IR: Thank you… Ariana:  I really loved the last show when someone said they chopped wood for Uncle Barry. What an interesting window… What happens when you chop wood for someone for so long? What happens when someone teaches you to chop wood? I think that was very fun. Mia:  One night we had a plumber for Uncle Barry, and the following night, Barry was someone's plumber. On both nights, they plugged their business numbers. They gave out the plumbing number for Uncle Barry, and they broadcast their plumbing company. I enjoyed the serendipity of that. Ariana:  I want to start logging the Barry’s. I am genuinely entertained during the entire show as we’re performing it from these stories people come up with. Mia: Someone met Barry when they were coming out of a supermarket. Their bags split, and all their fruit and shopping fell out, and Barry was the person to come and help. IR: It’s like a romcom meet-cute! Mia:  Yeah, it's such a meet-cute that they'd then come to the birthday party! I like it when people say things like ‘Oh, he's a friend of a friend’ because then I wonder, ‘Well, what the hell are you doing here? He must have had such an impact on you for you to have come all this way.’ That's always a fun line to go down. My friend Sam claimed he studied Long English with Barry at university. We said ‘What is Long English?’ and he said he had no idea. I liked the guy who was going on cruises with Barry. Apparently, Barry was one for taking the ladies back to the cabin. Someone made clocks with Barry. Something mysterious happened with Barry and my friend Fran on a fishing trip… We had Barry’s therapist - that was a good one. IR: It’s hard to pin down exactly who Barry is… Mia:  Yeah. You know… when we were making it, the question of ‘Who is Uncle Barry?’ was constantly going through our minds. Throughout our day, we would be sending photos of things going ‘That's so Uncle Barry'. You'd see someone and you'd say, ‘I've just met someone who's so Uncle Barry’, or you'd see a line in a book and say, ‘This is so Uncle Barry’. We realised that actually, Uncle Barry is an energy or an essence that’s not up for us to define and tell other people. Listening to what was happening throughout the process and noticing that, yeah, Uncle Barry is different for everyone, and yet there’s this energy that everyone knows when they feel it. Everyone makes up their own Uncle Barry; we just have to listen. Uncle Barry’s Birthday Party is at the Edinburgh Fringe between 9th and 17th August 2025 at Muse at Braw Venues @ Hill Street (Venue 41). Tickets are priced from £14.00 and can be booked via edfringe.com

Champagne, acrobatics, and cabaret combine to make a riotous and sexy night out in semi-immersive show Sabrage, which recently premiered at Lafayette in King's Cross. Photo: Johan Persson Sabrage, the latest show from Australian producers Strut & Fret and Southwark-based Menier Chocolate Factory, has opened its doors at Lafayette in King's Cross. Taking over a space that up until now has primarily been a music venue, it's a champagne-soaked evening of acrobatics, cabaret, comedy, singing and lip-syncing that treats its audience like extensions of the show's eight-strong cast. Within Sabrage, champagne is a running theme. The show gets its name from the ceremonial technique of slicing off the top of a champagne bottle with a sabre - an act that fittingly opens the show - and presumably, there are crates of the stuff positioned backstage, given how much is sprayed, downed and decanted throughout the evening. Photo: Johan Persson Across two hours, the show offers guests the chance to witness some wonderfully choreographed numbers from both the ensemble and the likes of Skye Ladell, whose suggestive solo performance to 'Go F**k Yourself' by Two Feet has them silhouetted against a red backdrop. There are excellent musical performances from Rechelle Mansour peppered throughout and anxiety-inducing feats of acrobatics, including foot juggling from the incredibly skilled Emma Phillips, who balances and spins four parasols followed by a large wooden table on the soles of her feet. Christian Nimri's sharp rollerskating routine transitions into an impressively high-speed aerial hoop sequence, while acrobatic duo Kimberley Bargenquast and Flynn Miller close out the show's final act with a duo straps performance that sees them hang onto and off each other as they rapidly spin above the audience. It's moments like these in which the intimacy provided by Lafayette's size comes into its own. With so little distance between the performers and the crowd, the skill and expertise on display from the entire cast can be taken in and appreciated all the more. Photo: Roy J Baron While Sabrage isn't billed as an immersive experience, it's structure and design lends itself to being semi-immersive, and there are plenty of moments in which the cast and the audience interact. The performers can often be seen under a spotlight leaning over Lafayette's balcony above the crowd, hanging off ladders and ledges amongst the tables, or sitting in the laps of audience members with next to no notice. In between the main acts, the hosting duo of Remi Martin (the person, not the Cognac) and Spencer Novich offer up numerous moments of explicit humour and take great joy in roping in the audience as they weave around the space. There are grapes thrown from the venue's balcony into the mouths of audience members and the cast down below, some cringe-inducing impressions coaxed out of the audience by the duo, and during a show-stopping rendition of ' Non, je ne regrette rien ' from a naked Martin, who uses his.. instrument... as an instrument behind a waist-high French flag, an audience member is called upon for help picking up and handing over microphones and lotions outside of Martin's limited grasp. Photo: Johan Persson There are also a couple of big set-piece moments in Sabrage that directly involve the crowd. An on-stage pillow fight quickly spills out into the stalls, with plumes of feathers flying everywhere as performers and audience wage cushioned war against each other, and later in the show Martin and Bargenquast , champagne bottles in hand, hang off the end of a rotating pole that spins over the crowd as bubbles fill the room. Audience member's empty champagne flutes are topped up by the pair from directly overhead, and in a moment that feels ripped from the opening of Babylon, one guest has champagne poured directly into their mouth from 10 feet in the air before Bargenquast spins away to top up more glasses. Immersive elements aside, Sabrage is a wonderful show that'll likely leave you smiling ear to ear. With some great adult humour, provocative moments and impressive feats of acrobatics on display, it ticks all the boxes for a great night out. For those looking to scratch that immersive itch with a new piece of work, there are also plenty of fun interactions for both individuals and the wider audience to engage with that feel tailor-made to ensure everyone leaves happy. Raise a glass! ★★★★ ½ Photos: Johan Persson/Matt Crockett Sabrage runs at Lafayette in King's Cross from 13th August 2025 to 8th February 2026. Tickets are priced from £25.00 per person. For more info and to book tickets, visit fever.up

From races across the city against the clock and open-world towns obsessed with platypuses to expeditions into the darkest depths of Peru, here are our recommendations for the best family-friendly immersive experiences in London this summer holiday... 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 five immersive experiences running in London this summer 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 £116.00 (Family of 4) 🧒 Suitable for all ages 🎟️ Book via paddingtonbearexperience.com Phantom Peak - The Burning Blimp Festival Photo: Alistair Veryard Regular readers of Immersive Rumours will know how much we love Phantom Peak. Combining elements of escape rooms and immersive theatre, the show is a one-of-a-kind open-world experience that feels a lot like stepping into a real-life video game. Each new season of the show has 10+ story trails to work through, with each one taking anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes to complete. As part of each trail, guests interact with both the town's many residents and numerous pieces of interactive tech scattered across the town to try and get to the bottom of what's going on. This season there's trails that parodying everything from Scooby-Doo to The Muppets and Furbies, on top of some huge developments in the show's overarching storyline, which focuses on a power struggle between the town's former Mayor and current leader, Jonas. On top of the main story trails, there's plenty of other things going on to occupy your time, including Platyhooks (hook a duck but with platypuses), numerous carnival games, a puzzle hunt and the Miramaze, which is complete with a bungee cord assault course and ballpit. Every session of Phantom Peak is open to all ages, and the show's cast is great at interacting with younger guests. It's an ideal real-world substitute for a day of playing video games at home. and is the standout experience in London's immersive theatre scene. Photos: Alistair Veryard Phantom Peak is a fully immersive, open world experience - a living, breathing town where mystery lurks around every corner. Think of it as part escape room, part immersive theatre, part real-life videogame. You’ll meet mysterious strangers, uncover secret plots of rebellion, and find out what exactly happened to the old Mayor (coincidental accident, or cold-blimped murder?!) During your visit to the town, you'll meet the inhabitants of Phantom Peak; some diehard loyalists to JONACO, some less enthusiastically so. Such is the price of PROGRESS! Through interacting with them, you'll discover hidden secrets and clues that will help you to navigate the world!​​ Full of secretive quests and quirky characters, you experience the world through a custom-made made web-app (no downloads necessary!) that guides your adventure through man-made canals and a vast, split-level old town. 📍 Canada Water 💰 From £115.00 (Family of 4) 🧒 Suitable for all ages 🎟️ Book via phantompeak.com Jurassic World: The Experience Photo: Universal Studios/Amblin Entertainment Returning to London after previously being at ExCel London in 2023, Jurassic World: The Experience gives visitors the chance to step into a recreation of the world-famous dinosaur park and come face to face with some of the franchises best-known creatures. Spread across two floors of NEON at Battersea Power Station, this walkthrough experience - which lasts between 45 and 55 minutes - is packed full of outstanding animatronics, offers endless photo opportunities, and lets visitors get up close and personal with a number of dinosaurs from across the Jurassic World series, including Blue (Jurassic World) and Bumpy (Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous). Jurassic World: The Experience is one of the few attractions where guests actually expect things to go wrong, and true to form, the Park Rangers have a lot to worry about in the second half of the experience when some of the parks biggest carnivores, including the iconic Tyrannosaurus Rex, break free from their enclosures. Those with very young children might find these scenes are too intense for them, but for bigger kids and adults, it offers a thrilling encounter that feels like stepping directly into the movie, and is on par with the climactic moments of film's various theme park attractions in terms of spectacle and awe. Photos: Universal Studios/Amblin Entertainment Jurassic World: The Experience, which returns to London due to phenomenal demand, will be the first of many live entertainment experiences to be staged at the new attraction. Visitors will walk amongst pre-historic giants and get up close and personal with countless different species across two floors of curated Jurassic World immersive environments within this new venue. Fans of the franchise and audiences of all ages will be immersed in scenes inspired by the beloved films including walking beneath a towering Brachiosaurus, exploring the lab of genetic development, coming face to face with Velociraptor Blue, and even get a rare up-close look at the most vicious dinosaur of them all, the Tyrannosaurus rex. Guests will also be able to interact with baby dinosaurs, discover and engage with actual fossilised dinosaur bones. 📍 Battersea Power Station 💰 From £147.50 (Family of 4) 🧒 Suitable for all ages (though it has intense moments) 🎟️ 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. For the summer, Paradox Museum is getting a Tropical Paradise makeover, which will see the museum be transformed into a summer haven, complete with themed exhibits, neon decorations, exotic plants and birds, colourful summer updates to key rooms like the Infinite Cosmos and Park Room, new photo moments in a beach-themed entrance and a 3D optical illusion swimming pool in the main event area. On top of all this, 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 £80.00 (Family of 4) 🧒 Suitable for all ages 🎟️ Book via feverup.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 experience from CityDays . While the TV series this experience is based on has 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, this new London-based race runs anywhere from 2 to 4 hours and sees those taking part cover roughly 5km on foot through Central London. 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 keeps kids engaged throughout, and the focus placed on looking at the city in a different way 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. Players will be scored based on their time and how much budget they have left, with their final score ranked on a live leaderboard throughout the day and week.  📍 Liverpool Street 💰 From £130.00 (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.