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standing, denies any nefarious goings-on, but in the next breath, a prophecy echoes throughout the prison, speaking standard, it's hard not to fall under Hexmoor's spell. ★★★★ [Tickets gifted in exchange for an honest review Tickets are priced from £53.95 per person and can be booked via hexmoor.co.uk For more reviews of immersive experiences like Hexmoor: Wizarding Prison, check out our recent Reviews .

For more reviews of immersive experiences like Squid Game: The Experience, check out our recent Reviews

. ★★★½ [Tickets gifted in exchange for an honest review] The Last Days of Pompeii: The Immersive Exhibition For more coverage and reviews of experiences like The Last Days of Pompeii: The Immersive Exhibition, check out our recent Reviews .

Hush Collective's ethereal performances offer up an alternative way to engage with live music for a blindfolded audience in the dark. Photo: Ian Olsson Seeing live music in London is an experience often made up of small annoyances. Your sightline of the stage will be interrupted by phones being raised into the air. People will constantly squeeze past you, trying to find their friends or get to the bar. The music may be drowned out by people talking nearby. It's a dice roll every time you go to a gig, and the behaviour of the audience around you can have a big impact, ultimately distracting you from what's on stage and pulling you out of the experience. We accept all of this to connect with music in a live environment. There is, however, an alternative where none of that are an issue... In The Dark by Hush Collective is a tightly controlled 'immersive' experience that's been designed to ensure there are no barriers or distractions between the audience and what's most important - the music. Performed in dimly-lit venues, with the audience wearing sleep masks throughout, anything that could pull you out of the experience has been removed, and everything else - from what you're going to hear to who exactly is performing - remains a secret until the performance. Photo: Ian Olsson During our visit, a collection of 11 tracks was performed by the 26-person-strong Hush Collective, who roam the venue barefoot during the performance at St. Bartholomew the Great near Farringdon . Bookended by Sigur Rós' Festival, every song performed had an ethereal, other-worldly feeling. Lesser-known songs from the likes of Colplay and Mumford and Sons sit alongside hauntingly beautiful renditions of songs by Mree, Garth Stevenson and Ane Brun to create the kind of soundscape fitting for within the walls of the 900-year-old building. Over the course of the 60-minute performance, it gently moves you into a zen-like meditative state, with no external stimuli besides the music to hold your attention. With no central stage for the members of Hush Collective to be situated on, the performance takes place with the musicians and vocalists spread around the venue, creating an analogue 360° listening experience. Depending on where in the room you're sitting, you'll likely pick up on different details, with some voices and instruments standing out from the rest as they all echo through the space. The sound of certain instrumentals will become louder as the performers approach you, then recede into the background as they pass by. Everyone's experience of the performance will differ, purely based on where they're seated. Photo: Ian Olsson Being blindfolded for the duration allows your other senses to become heightened. Those seated on the aisles likely picked up on the movement of air as the performers walked up and down, the rustling of coats and squeak of chairs was more pronounced, and the familiar smell of the building became more noticeable as the evening progressed. We're capable of picking up on all of these things in our day-to-day lives, but how often are we allowed to sit and notice them without distraction? It's an eerily beautiful and emotional experience for those who attend. In The Dark is unlike any performance we've ever attended, and if it encourages people to focus on the music when at gigs in the future without distracting those around them, it'll have changed live music for the better. We'll certainly be keeping our phones in our pockets going forward... Photos: Ian Olsson ★★★★ In The Dark is playing at St Bartholomew the Great near Farringdon and Trinity Buoy Wharf near Canning Town on various dates across March 2025. Tickets are priced from £35. To find out more visit in-the-dark.com

For more info and to book tickets, visit feverup.com For more reviews of immersive experiences like Race Across The World: The Experience, check out our recent Reviews .

and evolution of story quests under the artistic direction of Paul Flannery, who has also worked on Phantom Peak and LaplandUK. symbols that have appeared amongst the trees, and a crumbling wall named Baulderon comes to life and speaks per adult (children 14 and under are free entry) and can be purchased via loxwoodjoust.co.uk For more reviews of immersive experiences like The Loxwood Joust, check out our recent Reviews

For more info and to book tickets, visit thekeyofdreams.co.uk For more reviews of immersive experiences like The Key of Dreams, check out our recent Reviews .

With years of experience improvising with guests as Halloway in Phantom Peak , it’s no surprise that also shine through as a particular highlight, with large crowds forming around Marvin in the hope of speaking that's worth jumping on board a stranger's ship for. ★★★½ [Tickets gifted in exchange for an honest review For more information and to book tickets, visit hitchhikerslive.com For more reviews of immersive experiences like The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Live, check out our recent Reviews .

Our review of Viola's Room... received a complimentary ticket to this show and as such, are disclosing this information before  our review

Saint Jude is the latest immersive experience from Swamp Motel - a company that seems to constantly be pushing themselves to create truly original and engaging pieces of immersive theatre, both in the real world or online. Through the COVID-19 lockdowns, they developed Isklander - a trilogy of excellent Zoom based escape experiences that had audiences hacking into social media and email accounts in search of a missing woman against the clock. Once on the other side of the UK's numerous lockdowns and restrictions, they opened The Drop, an escape experience that had audiences enter the criminal underworld trying to locate a long-lost book inside an unassuming office block in Aldgate. It was a show that constantly pulled the rug out from under its audience, leaving those playing to never truly know where the escape-room experience ended and the real world began. With expectations high, they return now with Saint Jude - a show created in collaboration with CharismaAI, that is vastly different to their previous shows. While it may not stick the landing in the same way some of their other work has, it's a unique and engaging hour of entertainment. The premise of the show finds audience members arrive at Saint Jude, a private company that describes itself as a 'world first organisation that allows you to communicate with people trapped in lifelong, irreversible comas'. We're there for our trial shift as Guidestars - those who are paired to the mind of a random comatose patient, somewhere in the UK, and we're trying to form a strong enough connection to help them wake up. It's no surprise that the story we enter into has more to it than first meets the eye. During our briefing from Stefan, the Saint Jude staff member tasked with explaining the technology and advising us on how to best connect to our patients, he presents with a smile almost as false as his sincerity. Photo: Alexander Nicolaou Once settled into our desks, with headphones on and a million instructions flying through our heads, we begin to talk to our patient. Powered entirely by AI - with a slightly robotic sounding voice, we start to learn more about our patients past and are slowly asked to reveal more about ourselves all in the name of forming a connection - classic small talk topics such as our star sign, or our favourite movie. The technology on display is genuinely impressive, if at times a little restrictive. If you can suspend your disbelief it does feel like a proper conversation, albeit with someone who will occasionally ignore the personal details you've just shared to continue talking about themselves. It's not that surprising given you're always working towards a series of story beats, which your AI companion will keep hitting regardless of what you say. The journey, however, is thrilling and slowly escalates over an hour. Towards the climax, the story breaks free from your headphones and requires real-world action from yourself - an interaction with others that we navigated successfully thanks to some social engineering. Ultimately it's a small moment that feels a lot larger due to the pressure put on you by the AI voice in your ears egging you on. Swamp Motel has again delivered an experience that's totally different to anything else out there, and their ability to constantly reinvent or subvert the expectations of what an immersive experience can be is incredibly exciting, even if this show fell a little flat compared to their previous work. ★★★ ½ Saint Jude is located at 100 Petty France, London. Tickets are available through saintjude.ai , prices start at £20 per person.

We reviewed ARCADE earlier in the year during their Shoreditch Town Hall takeover. Read an extract below, with our full review linked underneath.

industry, including UNCLE BARRY, Phantom Peak, Voidspace, Sleepwalk, and Bridge Command to find out Peak. My favourite part of Phantom Peak is “payroll” - a game that comes around every 4 weeks, with a flourish Danny Romeo, Experience Director and Experience Designer at Phantom Peak , Founding Director of Ludens Danny Romeo, Experience Director and Experience Designer at Phantom Peak , Founding Director of Ludens