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Photo: R Space Productions Immersive Rumours: Hi Steph. Thanks for sitting down with us today. Do you mind introducing yourself and telling us a bit about R Space Productions? Steph Ricketts: Yes, I’m Steph and I'm the Managing Director and Founder of R Space Productions . Back when we started R Space in 2018, we just wanted to create a space for people to come and share things they we were working on, make things together and share their skill sets. I had a project name called ‘The Space’ for a while in my head. It’s grown loads in the last couple of years, but when we started, Staines (which was the main hub for most of us) didn’t have a lot of arts or creative areas outside of places we worked at the time, such as Thorpe Park. We'd wait every year for the Halloween season to come along, but we'd get the itch for it around February time, so it was about asking, 'What if we did it all year round? What if we got to do this full-time because we're the one’s creating it?’ The goal of doing these shows [with R Space] has always been to grow people's skill sets and create a space for people to come and be in the industry while learning from us at the same time IR: We're speaking today because DEATHCELL: Magenta is opening later this month, but I'd love to talk about the previous DEATHCELL show that took place back in 2018. How did the idea for that original show come about? Steph: I’d had the idea of creating a prison-themed experience for a while. I'd become weirdly fascinated with prisons, so every time I went away on holiday or travelling, I’d go see a prison to learn about history and culture. When I went to San Francisco, I went to see Alcotraz. Add in my love for graphic novels, comics, and anime, and that’s where the story started - I wanted to tell a story about a prison that wasn’t typical and more fictional. I had snippets of what the story could be at the time, but it wasn’t cohesive. I wrote a 30-page document explaining what DEATHCELL is and what it was like to be in there. There was lore and different paths characters were going to take that would impact their future. People hear me say this all the time, but I’m such a fan of the film Fight Club. What I love about that story is that things can be in front of you the whole time, and you don’t realise. It’s the same with the SAW franchise. As a player in Jigsaw’s games, if you had just listened to the rules without overthinking it, you could have walked out alive. I was heavily inspired by that. IR: For those who didn't attend the 2018 show, can you tell us a bit about what that experience involved? Steph: The best way to describe the show is that it was an introduction or pilot into this world. It showed guests what a day is like inside this prison through the eyes of one character branded ‘Yellow.’ We don’t know their real name because when you go into DEATHCELL, you’re branded with a colour, and your identity is removed from you. Within the world of DEATHCELL, individuals either handed themselves in or were forcibly taken in by masked henchmen known as ‘The Flys.’ This choice determined their journey. Those who resisted faced a harsher induction, such as electrocution, while those who surrendered were taken to the shower room for waterboarding. (Which is still rough!) So at the start, guests were split and experienced one of these paths as they entered. We had actors who were really happy to invest in those scenes and went for it. People came out saying that the waterboarding scene was one of the hardest to watch. After you’d been inducted (as guests) you would all witness a fight between two of the inmates in DEATHCELL named ‘players’. These characters weren't just banged up in a cell somewhere, they were fighting for their lives and earning coins, or credits as we call them, to keep themselves alive. We had stooges planted in the audience, who would get picked out to be part of this fight. We wanted to make the audience feel like they were living and breathing this world, and it could be them who gets picked out next, injecting fear into people. Audiences didn’t think they were part of it, but members of the team were planted as stooges but just in their normal clothes. Before you know it, they’re being beaten up and then on the floor. After that, they were dragged into their cells, which is where the escape room elements of the show came in, and people had to play different games to earn credits. Once you had these credits, they'd get to use them in a vending machine, which sounds completely random, but it just makes sense in this world. After that, they were dragged into their cells, which is where the escape room elements of the show came in, and people had to play different games to earn credits. Once you had these credits, they'd get to use them on a vending machine, which sounds completely random, but the items inside it - from weapons to packets of Magic Stars, USBs with data on them - they’d all help you in various ways. Without revealing too much, the most unexpected items often held the greatest value in escaping DEATHCELL. Some guests would casually snack on their picked bag of Magic Stars chocolate, unaware that their choice could impact their gameplay. Eventually, inside the Warden’s office, guests discovered the Warden’s connection to Yellow, unraveling more of their relationship before the experience ended in a chaotic chase sequence. It's been really fun going back and looking at that show, now knowing that we're going back to the very beginning of the story, with a world that has expanded massively beyond what this original did. DEATHCELL (2018) Photos: R Space Productions IR: That original show also set up the world of DEATHCELL and explained why those prisons exist right? Steph: Yeah. The reason these penitentiaries exist in this universe is to bring harmony to people. Imagine a world where there's lots of unrest, lots of divided communities. Within this world, a system is brought in called the ‘Harmony Act’ to ensure that people are behaving themselves and if someone upsets you, or you upset someone, you or them can nominate each other to be picked up and taken to these penitentiaries to be conditioned into behaving better within society. As time went on, they became more and more corrupt, and this one in particular became the most corrupt and is so run down that it isn't part of that system anymore. The Warden became obsessed with playing with the prisoners that came in, and therefore, it's branded as DEATHCELL. IR: I can't recall many other shows from around that time that combined immersive theatre, scare attractions and escape rooms into one experience. Would you describe the original DEATHCELL as unique for its time? Steph: I think it was bold. I can't say for sure we were the first to do it, but as far as I’m aware, we were one of the first to merge those three elements - immersive storytelling escape room experience and run-out scare attraction - and we've just built on it since then. Escape rooms were big at that point, I remember them coming out around 2015, especially horror scare rooms, and there were a lot of escape room elements starting to be experimented with in the scare world, but I feel like we were just really bold at mashing it all together and saying, ‘This could work. We’re just going to go for it.’ Now, I can't see us ever not doing that. It's great to see how quickly the horror and scare industry has expanded in the last six years. Back when I started scare acting 15 years ago, it was all very linear, on-shoulders experiences. I can't speak for what went on in America or in Europe, but definitely within the UK. Nowadays, people want a story; people want to be immersed as soon as they go in and want to feel like they're living and breathing it. Video: R Space Productions IR: Are there any stand-out experiences that you remember combining at least two of those three elements? Steph: Back in 2015, I went to see a show called Generation of Z: Apocalypse ; it was by a company from New Zealand. They’d done the Edinburgh Fringe with the show, and I think it was in Mile End when it was London, but that was the first show I went to that had immersive scares, and it broke the rule book to what I knew it to be. It inspired me to want to create theatre like that. I'd worked in scare attractions and was a bit desensitised, but I went into that show, and I was running through underground corridors away from zombies. Obviously, I’m a scare actor, so I know it's not real, but I was running away from it, and I really believed I was in that world for an hour and a half. You had to help someone make it to the operating theatre, distract a zombie, and rescue people. It just opened my eyes to the idea that scare could be so much more. That was a show that really inspired me, and it was one of the first ones I'd seen or experienced something outside of the usual linear attractions that I'd been so used to seeing and performing in. Photo: R Space Productions People want a story; people want to be immersed as soon as they go in and want to feel like they're living and breathing it. IR: DEATHCELL: Magenta, the prequel, is a couple of weeks away from opening, but at one point, you'd planned on opening a sequel to that original 2018 show, right? Steph: Yeah. Back in 2020, we were supposed to do, as we now call it DEATHCELL 2 as a project name. We were looking at a venue at the time, and then obviously COVID came about. We were maybe one or two weeks away from releasing tickets. We're very lucky that we didn't because obviously, the pandemic happened, and we were just about to sign onto a venue. We spent lockdown rewriting that experience. We spent hours on Zoom with various members of the team, just workshopping it, rewriting it, and Magenta soon had more of a part to play in that story. However, the world hasn't seen DEATHCELL 2 yet…and it’s still in the works. IR: Can you tell us a bit about the character of Magenta and how she fits into the wider DEATHCELL world? Steph: When we originally did the pilot, Magenta wasn't in that document or the concept I'd written. However, when we went to add in the escape room elements of the 2018 show, we were questioning, “Why are the games there? Who's been making them?” We came up with the idea of a character called Magenta. We didn't know what she looked like back then; we didn't know what her part in DEATHCELL was apart from that she's the person who creates these games. We didn't know where she necessarily sat in the story, but it gave us enough scope to go ‘Okay, she's the mastermind behind the games’. It gave us a concept to work with to make sure that the games and the theming in those rooms made sense, but it wasn't really communicated to the guests. From an audience point of view, you wouldn't know Magenta existed. Since 2020, we've developed Magenta further, and when we started to talk about this experience, we went ‘Well, if this is a prequel, why don't we tell the story of Magenta and DEATHCELL becoming DEATHCELL?' Photo: R Space Productions Everything needs to have a purpose, so we wouldn't put a jump scare in if there was no need to put a jump scare in. IR: How does your approach to creating these experiences change depending on the length? The 2018 show was 30 minutes, a typical Fright Nights experience is under 10 minutes, but DEATHCELL: Magenta is a full hour-long experience. Steph: When it comes to a lot of scare attractions I’ve worked in at Halloween events such as Fright Nights, you are in there for about 7 to 10 minutes, sometimes quicker depending on if you run out! You only have that limited time to tell an entire story. The theming, the scripts, the character work, the type of scares you have… they need to be snappy because if people don't get the story in those 7 minutes, they potentially come out saying ‘I don't know what I just saw’. You have to be very self-explanatory or utilise things like your marketing, queue lines and your pre-show characters to really tell that story. It’s got to pack a punch as you don't have time to delve into a backstory or characters. Equally, some people don’t necessarily want to hear a story, they just want to be scared, right? These attractions always require the same amount of background work, but guests might not get to see all of that. The types of performance you do is going to be different in fast-paced attractions because someone is going to be in a room for a couple of seconds, and then they're going to be into the next one. How you deliver that performance is very different from how we've got to do it in Magenta. We have the luxury of delving deeper into a story and deeper into the characters. In the world where you’ve got 60 minutes, you have more time to tell a story and delve into emotions a lot more, however, guests are going to be in the space for longer so you’ve got to add more details in to make sure that they aren’t looking around and noticing all the gaps in your experience. IR: Do you feel like you need to pack in loads of scares to match people's expectations if they're used to a Fright Nights style experience? Steph: We still have elements for people needing that scare factor. At the end of the day, that’s where we all started. Without saying too much, there are bits in the show that have that, but all of it is with purpose. I feel like everything needs to have a purpose, so we wouldn't put a jump scare in if there was no need to put a jump scare in. We’re quite good at having honest debates about that - does this character really need to be in there, and what does the guest take from it? For us, it’s all about the story, the world building and being immersed as soon as you go in, forgetting that you're in Hackney Wick and have come to watch a show. People are booking because they want to be immersed in the story. Photo: R Space Productions IR: You mentioned earlier that the 2018 DEATHCELL experience had multiple paths for people to go down. Is that the case with this new experience? Steph: This one is more guided. Guests will naturally have their own say in how their room experience goes because of the puzzles they are doing and how they go about them. But for this experience, the end goal is always the same because we want to lead people into the next chapter, which is DEATHCELL 2. With Magenta, we want guests to come along for the journey and not have different outcomes at this point because it’ll confuse the story later on. Your end goal is always the same, but your experience in each room and how various characters or things around you will react will depend on what you do.  DEATHCELL 2 will definitely have elements of multi-route. The guests will decide how the show is going to end without knowing it, and then we'll have, in theory, a couple of minutes to switch that on and deliver one of 3 or 4 different endings. Photo: R Space Productions IR: What were your earliest experiences with scare attractions, and how did you find yourself working in that world? Steph: I'm a big believer in fate. You might not understand it at the time, but three years later, you'll look back and understand why. In 2010, I finished studying Performing Arts at Bath Spa University. I was the only third year on my course who didn't get picked for a show - all of them had been picked to be main leads in West Side Story, at The Minack Theatre in Cornwall, and I was devastated. At that point, you feel like you've failed, right? You're like, ‘I'm the only person who's not been picked. What's wrong with me?’ So I felt quite defeated. I remember sitting in this empty house in Bath, and I said to myself, ‘I'm just going to try and make it, whatever make it means’. My family lived near Chessington World of Adventures, so I looked on the Merlin website, and they were doing scare auditions for Scream in the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussauds in London. I thought, ‘Oh, that's the dungeon thing I went to last year and quickly ran up the stairs from’. I was such a wuss back in the day, I'd been to the London Dungeons once before and screamed all the way round. Maybe a week later, I picked up The Stage newspaper, opened it up, and there was the same advert for [Madame Tussaud’s] Scream in there. I thought it was fate. The auditions were in Old Street, so I went to it and then didn't think I was going to get it. I finished the audition, waiting for the call out, and they called me back for the following day for what they call Scare School. I remember leaving thinking, ‘Oh, I actually did something; they want to see me’. I went through two or three days of Scare School, which is basically learning how to be a scare performer. Testing your agility, physical endurance, character work, how you can apply physical theatre to what you're doing, and I'm quite a physical performer - which actually shows in Magenta - you can see in her in her physicality and the way she moves around the space, she's quite creaturesque, or less human than others. I was offered the job to be a scare performer for four months, and I just found my thing. I was suddenly with people who were on the same wavelength as me; I was around so many creative people of different ages. I ended up being extended, and then as more scare actors came in, they’d start talking about other events such as Fright Nights at Thorpe Park and how they go and do it every year. The following year, I auditioned, and I was cast in The Asylum, which was one of their best-loved scare attractions. Over the next couple of years, I was a Show Captain at Thorpe Park for Fright Nights, so I got to look after the performers every Halloween, and it's just gone on from there. I’ve worked on attractions like Saw Alive and Cabin In The Woods, and I eventually became a Team Leader of Entertainment at Thorpe Park, which is where I met a lot of the R Space members. In 2019 as Entertainments Experience Manager, I got to write experiences like Trailers for Fright Nights, and got to work on other experiences such as Derren Brown’s Ghost Train and work globally on the Tussauds brand in 2022 and 2023. More recently, I became a Project Manager for large-scale events such as Fright Nights, Mardi Gras, Oktoberfest, and working with loads of different stakeholders in the industry. IR: Looking back on your career so far, R Space has been a constant for nearly half of it. I guess R Space wouldn't exist without you being in that world.. Steph: Yeah. I've gone from being an actor who fell into doing scare acting for four months to this becoming my entire life, and R Space has been a thread through that for the last seven years, but the jobs that I've done have 100% helped me to become the person I am in R Space. I think R Space has also allowed me to grow in other areas of work because I've been out there in the eld with less protection and structure, so I’ve had to go and the answers myself. I feel like I’ve been out and earned my stripes to make me a great all-rounder, but I still have lots to learn and I still enjoy dipping back into scare acting ever so often. At Fright Nights, I always try to go back in and do some scaring in the new attractions. As the industry grows and grows, I think there's more weight on the performers now. They've got seven minutes to get this whole story across, whereas beforehand, and not to discredit it, you could focus more on jump scares, and people would be scared and run out. That still works, but now people want a story; people want elaborate costumes. The stakes are higher now when you're scare performing because people expect more.   Photo: R Space Productions IR: You're set to be playing the titular Magenta in the upcoming show. What has it been like stepping into Magenta's shoes? It's quite a different kind of role from what you've typically done in scare attractions. Steph: Yeah. I haven't performed outside of scare performing for a really, really long time. I'd say that out of the entire project, that's the bit that scares me the most. All the bits that we need to sort in the next couple weeks, not so much. The performing aspect makes me go ‘Oh God, I haven't done this for a really long time.' I felt a bit self-conscious about doing it, but that's because the type of performance I've done recently has been very physical without any dialogue. When we were shaping this character on set, the team were amazing. Jimm, our Head of Creative and Production, has been our main lead in terms of the short film elements. He and the other performers around me really helped me feel at ease more when shooting. When we shot [the short film content] in August, that was probably one of the highlights of my year. I hadn't performed in a really long time, but I came away feeling like I'd challenged myself. I'm always thinking about how to play her or how to be her, but it's been a journey. I'm a great physical performer when it comes to scare acting, but Magenta isn't scare just acting. She's telling the story. IR: Finally, what do you hope people will take away from the experience? Steph: What I am most excited about is for people to be immersed as soon as they get there, see how big the story is, how much we have thought about everything, and how much work has gone into delivering it. We could have easily just done a short film, we could have just done an escape room, we could have just done a piece of theatre, but we decided to bash them all together. I want people to come away with it stuck in their minds. Either because of the story or how we’ve delivered the experience. DEATHCELL: Magenta will run from 21st February to 1st March 2025 at a secret location in Hackney Wick. Tickets are on sale now, starting from £30.00. For more info and to book, visit deathcell.co.uk A massive thank you to Steph and Liam from R Space for taking the time to sit down with us for this interview.

R Space Production's latest show invites guests to take part in a series of 'pained conundrums' against the clock in this immersive horror prequel. Photo: R Space Productions This review contains mild spoilers for the contents of DEATHCELL: Magenta. DEATHCELL: Magenta, the latest show from R Space Productions, is billed as part immersive theatre, part scare attraction and part escape room. A prequel to 2018's DEATHCELL experience, DEATHCELL: Magenta offers visitors the chance to better understand how the world of DEATHCELL came to be and how the show's titular character became the 'twisted-tinkerer' behind the rogue detention centres life-or-death challenges. Photo: R Space Productions In the original DEATHCELL, the character of Magenta existed in the shadows. The clues were there as to her existence, but she wasn't part of the show in a tangible way. In DEATHCELL: Magenta, the focus lands squarely at her feet, and she’s present through almost every second of the hour-long experience. The experience begins on a nondescript street on Fish Island, just south of Hackney Wick. Guests are first greeted by a pair of roaming actors in neon pink and yellow trucker hats named Greg and Pee-Wee. Both are huge movie buffs and engage visitors with zippy back-and-forths about their favourite films. They're eagerly awaiting a preview screening of a new horror movie, Magenta, which is playing at Rewind Rentals - a Blockbuster-esque video rental store that's somehow still operating despite the dominance of streaming services. Photo: R Space Productions After being ushered into Rewind Rentals, guests settle in to watch the Magenta short film, which is being projected onto the back wall of the room. It's got a distinct 80's B-movie vibe, with buckets of fake blood, gruesome deaths and a particularly uncomfortable scene involving barbed wire that felt like something out of SAW. Fans of the original DEATHCELL will enjoy the numerous references made to the 2018 show, but being familiar with that show certainly isn't a requirement to enjoy the experience. While the short film provides some much-needed world-building and adequately sets the scene for what's to come, the run time is far too long. Clocking in around 25 minutes, it takes up nearly half of the experience's overall duration and will likely leave guests eager to get through it so they can try out Magenta's 'pained conundrums' for themselves. After a clever reveal of the door through to the next room, guests are dropped into the world of the film, and the escape room portion of the experience begins. Photo: R Space Productions With Magenta (Steph Ricketts) looking into each room through a sheet of plexiglass, guests are tasked with solving her series of escalating puzzles against the clock. Accompanying guests in each of these rooms are a pair of 'Flys' - masked henchmen there at the behest of the Warden who oversees DEATHCELL, and has recruited the reluctant Magenta to do his bidding. Regular escape room visitors may make light work of the numerous puzzles that fill up the back half of the show, but for those with less experience, it may prove to be a frustrating time. With the Flys and Magenta watching on as guests franticly search through cupboards, shelves and drawers for items, try to decode numerical sequences and work out the combinations to various padlocks, their presence is both a blessing and a curse. If you're really struggling, the Flys will offer up wordless clues to point you in the right direction, but Magenta is more direct with their words and will call you out if you're doing a particularly bad job (At this point, you can probably work out how well we did solving these puzzles...). Any small victories you get are amplified knowing you've got an audience watching on, but it also makes the failures sting even more. In each group, one unlucky participant will find themselves separated from the rest of their team for a portion of the show, being locked away inside a small, dark space for several minutes to try and find a solution to one of the puzzles. Their escape is entirely dependent on strong teamwork, so communication is key if they want to see the light of day again. Photo: R Space Productions The strongest moments of DEATHCELL: Magenta's puzzle-solving sections come in the final act. Guests are told to put on boiler suits and crawl on their hands and knees through an extended pitch-black crawl space. Most of the show's scares are contained in this section, with multiple dark corners playing home to masked creatures that are more than happy to invade your personal space and drag you backwards by the ankles, leaving you scrambling for an escape. Luckily for them, the exit to this crawl space is locked and requires groups to potentially backtrack to find the solution. With little more than a glowstick to light the way, turning every corner is a daunting prospect that's not for the faint of heart. DEATHCELL: Magenta's final room also offers up an intense time-pressured test by way of a chained-up Fly holding the keys to freedom. With them wildly swinging an axe at anyone that gets close, it's a challenge to retrieve the necessary items from their person successfully, and it effectively ramps up the tension before you're able to make your final escape. The conclusion of the show sees Magenta emerge from behind the plexiglass for a face-to-face confrontation with DEATHCELL's Warden. One final reveal ties the ending of this show directly into 2018's show, and guests are free to leave, having played their part in securing the fate of countless future DEATHCELL prisoners. Photo: R Space Productions If you're looking for some out-of-season scares and a challenging escape room experience, DEATHCELL: Magenta goes a long way to scratching those itches. While it wasn't the scariest immersive experience we've ever attended, and the puzzles may rely on padlocks and numbers a bit too much, the show's combination of various theatrical elements creates an experience that's trying to innovate in a very crowded market. We'll be eagerly awaiting news on the next instalment in the DEATHCELL series, and in the meantime, will try and get a little better at puzzle solving... ★★★ DEATHCELL: Magenta runs from 21st February to 1st March 2025 in Hackney Wick. Tickets are priced from £30.00 for General Admission. For more info and to book, visit deathcell.co.uk

Following its run at Leeds Playhouse last summer, Melting Pot have announced that the critically acclaimed stage adaptation of the Paranormal Activity films will haunt the West End this winter when it transfers to The Ambassadors Theatre for a 12-week season. A new story inspired by the worldwide horror phenomenon, Paranormal Activity, a new story live on stage, is directed by immersive theatre pioneer and Punchdrunk’s Founder and Artistic Director, Felix Barrett and written by playwright Levi Holloway, whose theatrical thriller Grey House chilled Broadway audiences, will begin performances on Friday 5 December, 2025. Paranormal Activity reimagines the modern ghost story with an unsettling intimacy only theatre can provide. Immersing audiences in an atmosphere of creeping dread, unseen forces, and psychological tension, Levi Holloway’s script offers a bold reinterpretation of the original, blending domestic horror with mind-bending theatricality. Felix Barrett, known for breaking boundaries between audience and performer, brings his signature visionary style to the production. With innovative staging and chilling soundscapes, Paranormal Activity invites audiences to witness the inexplicable up close—and feel the fear in real time. Praised for its inventive storytelling and terrifying atmosphere, the West End transfer promises to amplify the experience even further, making it a must-see event for thrill-seekers and theatre lovers alike. Paranormal Activity will undertake a North American tour this autumn, visiting the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre; Center Theatre Group, Ahmanson Theatre, Los Angeles; Shakespeare Theatre Company, Washington DC and American Conservatory Theatre, San Francisco, ahead of opening in London this December. Felix Barrett Photo: Stephen Dobbie Director Felix Barrett says of the West End transfer: I’m so thrilled that Paranormal will have a chance to ensnare and unnerve audiences in London later this year! From seeing the advertising campaign of the film twenty years ago, where you watched cinema audiences leap out of their chairs in horror, I have long wondered how you could recreate that visceral reaction in a theatre setting. How do you bring one of the most frightening films to life? How do you break the inherent safety that a plush West End theatre offers? It’s been an incredible challenge, and we cannot wait to see how London audiences respond! Playwright Levi Holloway continues: Collaborating with Felix Barrett to create an actual nightmare has been nothing short of a dream. Relishing in a shared language of dread, we’ve conspired to create something impossible, mixing the familiar with the uncanny, heart with horror. London audiences have a nose for honesty on stage and little patience for anything else. They’ll find it here, right alongside all the mischief we’ve made to trouble their sleep. Levi Holloway Felix Barrett is the founder and Artistic Director of Punchdrunk. He has conceived all of Punchdrunk’s shows, including Viola's Room, which has just opened at The Shed in New York, The Burnt City, The Drowned Man: A Hollywood Fable, The Borough (Aldeburgh Music), The Crash Of The Elysium (MIF and 2012 Cultural Olympiad), The Duchess Of Malfi (English National Opera), It Felt Like A Kiss (a collaboration with Adam Curtis, Damon Albarn for Manchester International Festival), The Masque Of The Red Death, Faust and The Firebird Ball. Felix also directed the company’s award-winning Sleep No More. First experienced by audiences in London in 2003, it has since travelled to Boston, New York, where it ran for 14 years, Shanghai, where it has become the longest running show in the city's history, and will open in Seoul in Summer 2025. Felix is a graduate and Honorary Doctorate in Drama of the University of Exeter and was appointed an MBE in the 2016 Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to theatre. Levi Holloway is a Chicago-based artist. As a playwright, world premieres include Pinocchio at Chicago Children’s Theatre, Haven Place, Grey House and most recently, Turret at A Red Orchid Theatre, with which he is an ensemble member. His play Grey House ran on Broadway in 2023. Levi is the co-founder of Neverbird Project, a youth-based Deaf and hearing theatre company. He spent a decade devising theatre with the Sign/Voice theatre program at Chicago’s Bell Elementary, one of the country’s oldest and most prolific Deaf and hearing integrated schools, founded in 1917. The creative team also includes Fly Davis as Set and Costume Designer, Illusions by Chris Fisher, Anna Watson as Lighting Designer, Gareth Fry as Sound Designer, Video Design by Luke Halls and Casting Direction by Stuart Burt CDG and Ginny Schiller CDG. Paranormal Activity will run at The Ambassadors Theatre from 5th December 2025 to 28th February 2026. Tickets are priced from £25.00 and can be booked via paranormalonstage.com

For one-night only next month, the world of Donnie Darko will be recreated for an interactive, tech-enhanced party beneath Waterloo Station as part of Donnie Darko's Halloween House Party. Image: Cinaethsia Productions The event is being produced by Cinaesthesia Productions , who are currently developing a three-hour immersive experience based on the film set to open in London in 2025. The event will give visitors their first chance to step into the tangent universe alongside Donnie and Frank the Rabbit. The event description for Donnie Darko's Halloween House Party is below.... Greeted at the door by Donnie Darko himself, guests will step through a facade modelled after the Darko's residence. Inside, actors, live music, film screenings, themed bars, and tech-enhanced visuals come together to create an immersive, dream-like experience that mirrors the film’s eerie tangent universe. The night will feature surprise character appearances, interactive moments, and references to key scenes from the movie, pulling you deeper into Donnie’s surreal world, all under the unsettling influence of Frank the Rabbit. Upon entering through a facade inspired by the Darko house, partygoers will find themselves in a surreal, mind-bending world featuring interactive moments and references to key scenes from the film. Expect live performances, 80s-inspired tunes, and themed treats as the Darko universe comes to life like never before. Image: Cinaethesia Productions More about Cinaesthesia Productions... Cinæsthesia Productions is a boundary-pushing immersive theatre company nestled within the cultural tapestry of London, UK. Their international team of imaginative pioneers creates innovative productions that blur reality and fantasy. Through innovative technology, storytelling, and craftsmanship, they transport audiences into extraordinary narratives. With diverse backgrounds and unwavering passion, they craft unforgettable, multisensory journeys that engage and inspire. Going beyond traditional production, weaving captivating wonders and inventing breath-taking worlds. Prepare for an immersive journey that defies reality and transcends time and space. Their mastery of technology brings holographic landscapes and interactive characters to life, merging reality and imagination. Find out more about Donnie Darko's Halloween House Party, check out the event's website here . Donnie Darko's Halloween House Party runs in Waterloo for one-night only on 1st November 2024. Tickets are priced at £21.50 and can be purchased via feverup.com

Image: SWAMP Five years after its initial launch, Isklander , the award-winning online mystery trilogy that captivated over 100,000 players worldwide, is making a highly anticipated return for a limited six-week run. Created by immersive company SWAMP (formerly Swamp Motel), Isklander is a gripping, multi-layered trilogy made up of Plymouth Point, The Mermaid’s Tongue, and The Kindling Hour, that takes place entirely online and blurs the divide between fiction and reality. Players must unravel a conspiracy involving secret societies, corporate corruption, and ancient artefacts—all while interacting with live performers who respond to their choices in real-time. The game’s immersive storytelling and innovative format quickly gained international recognition, leading to a TV adaptation deal with Gaumont - the studio behind Netflix's Lupin and Narcos, and Sky Atlantic's Tin Star. Now, in celebration of its five-year anniversary, Isklander is back, giving both returning fans and first-time players the chance to experience the mystery that started it all. Since its debut in 2020, Isklander has been lauded for its unique format, blending gaming, film, live performance, and interactive storytelling. Unlike traditional online games, Isklander requires no downloads or special software—players navigate a dynamic online world, receiving live video calls and uncovering hidden secrets as they race against the clock. All three shows received widespread acclaim, with The Guardian  describing Plymouth Point, the first instalment in the trilogy as 'inventive, gorgeously designed and technically dazzling'. The Stage described Isklander as 'a whirlwind of engaging storytelling... an innovative, hugely enjoyable embrace of digital possibilities'. Priced at £35 per part, per group (up to six players), teams can dive back into the investigation, following a trail of clues across real and fictional websites, hacking into secret files, and making high-stakes decisions as they interact with live characters. The official descriptions for each part of the Isklander trilogy are as follows: Part 1: Plymouth Point As new members of the Plymouth Point Resident’s Watch, your team must track down a missing woman, Ivy. Corporate espionage, occult horrors, and shadowy cabals stand in your way. Search the internet, crack codes, and uncover the truth before it’s too late. Part 2: The Mermaids Tongue Following Plymouth Point, your team must track down an ancient artefact—the Mermaid’s Tongue. A source of great power, it could spell disaster in the wrong hands. Uncover a murky underworld of high society and the forces hiding in plain sight. Part 3: The Kindling Hour After Plymouth Point and The Mermaid’s Tongue, the Isklander trilogy reaches its thrilling conclusion. Infiltrate a powerful organisation, unravel secrets, and evade capture. Trust no one. Find their weakness… before they find you. Beyond Isklander, Swamp has continued to push the boundaries of immersive entertainment with critically acclaimed productions such as The Drop, Saint Jude and Velvet Pines alongside projects for some of the largest global brands, including Netflix, Amazon Prime and Warner Brothers. All three shows in the Isklander trilogy are priced at £35 per group (up to six people). The trilogy, which takes place entirely online, is running until 26th April 2025. Tickets can be booked via isklander.com

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.