Search Results

. ★★★★ [Tickets gifted in exchange for an honest review] David Bowie: You're Not Alone will run at Lightroom

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

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 .

Hannah Jagoe reports back on the final three performances of Nuno Moreira's 'A Morte do Corvo', which just concluded its run at Lisbon's Hospital Militar da Estrela. Photo: A Morte do Corvo A Morte do Corvo , Lisbon’s grand necromantic immersive show, died last month after an impressive three-year run. The cause of death in this case was entirely natural: after several extensions, the production finally announced that the end was nigh. It was this bleak prognosis that finally inspired me to make the trip to Lisbon and see the show for the first time by attending its final three performances. Why was its passing worth attention? Because A Morte do Corvo was not simply a successful large-scale production, something increasingly rare these days when even established companies struggle to break even, but part of the emergence of a Portuguese immersive theatre scene that traces its beginnings to Nuno Moreira’s previous show, E Morreram Felizes Para Sempre (2015). The show’s clear Punchdrunk lineage was evident in its structure: masked audience members moved through the space following character loops like ghosts, only occasionally being acknowledged in public interactions or one-to-ones. Like Punchdrunk’s work, the story was largely dialogue-free and instead conveyed through movement, hidden documents, and set details. Photo: A Morte do Corvo Where Punchdrunk might employ extravagant acrobatic dance numbers, A Morte do Corvo relied instead on simpler, more stylised movement. That gave the show a darker, more grounded quality, though it also meant the production lacked some of the wild crescendos and raw spectacle of Punchdrunk at its best. The Portuguese character of the story was most evident in its plot, which revolved mainly around a fictional rivalry between Edgar Allan Poe and Fernando Pessoa, one of Portugal’s most important literary figures. In the show, the two were members of the mysterious necromantic cult, the Order of the Raven. Driven by jealousy, Poe bribes, blackmails, and deceives the other characters into betraying and abandoning Pessoa, leading to his death. If the story were a chess match, all the pieces were being moved by Poe around a largely oblivious Pessoa. This imbalance may have detracted from the tension, but not from the tragedy or the force of the performances. Henrique Gomes brought a mad, sinister intensity to Poe, while Celso Pedro played an almost otherworldly Pessoa. Photo: A Morte do Corvo The old Hospital Militar da Estrela was as much a character in the show as any of its performers. Glossy red corridors flickered with torchlight. Stunning marble bannisters and imposing iron gates dominated the space. While some connecting spaces remained fairly liminal, other areas of the set felt richly lived-in and purposeful. Highlights for me were the Green Fairy, a beautifully constructed speakeasy full of 1920s opulence, and the winding, tree-lined forest. Character rooms were filled with details for fans to discover, from chess pieces hidden throughout the space to arcane documents and clues. The lighting design was also particularly remarkable: invisible flocks of ravens were effectively conjured as candelabras flickered and jerked to the sound of their cries. Photo: A Morte do Corvo The show was particularly insightful on the voyeuristic nature of immersive theatre. To see some of the more explicit scenes, audience members had to slide into a narrow gap and huddle around slits cut into fabric-covered walls, peering into a horse box. An unsuspecting audience member was then pulled into this scene and trapped with a gyrating, sinister conspirator, suddenly transformed from voyeur into spectacle. Other line-blurring public interactions were especially novel and bold. Pessoa spooning an audience member in bed while whispering poetry to them was intense and poignant. By contrast, the private one-to-ones were more variable, ranging from the stunningly designed and executed encounter with Poe to interactions that felt like vague busywork, included more to appease completionists than to offer real insight into the inner lives of the characters. Still, those weaker moments did little to diminish the overall mood and ambition of this show. Photo: A Morte do Corvo A Morte do Corvo, as we knew it, may now be dead, but the final three shows attracted devoted mourners from many different countries across Europe, and perhaps most importantly, the production left behind a new generation of Portuguese immersive theatre fans, many of whom excitedly told me this was their first brush with immersive theatre. The show is survived, in part, by House of Neverless , a new company involving many of the original creatives and continuing to create work out of the same space. This has left me hopeful that some strange new show might soon have us flocking back to Portugal. ★★★★ Words: Hannah Jagoe A Morte do Corvo ran at Hospital Militar da Estrela in Lisbon. The show closed on 28th March 2026. For more information about the show, visit amortedocorvo.com

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.

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

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

We recap our picks for 2025's best immersive shows as part of our Year In Review series. #5  - Bacchanalia anticipated shows of the year, with the show's initial runs at Crypt in Bethnal Green garnering rave reviews numerous world-class performers, and, of course, additional one-on-one interactions for a lucky few. #4  - Phantom Peak (The League of Adventure) Canada Water, January to December 2025 Photo: Alistair Veryard Phantom Peak's ongoing narrative continued to outshine nearly every other immersive show out there in 2025 with

. ★★★★ Final race time: 02:40:09 [Tickets gifted in exchange for an honest review] Race Across The World Tickets are priced from £25.00 per person and can be booked via feverup.com For more reviews of immersive experiences like Race Across The World: The Experience (West End), check out our recent Reviews .