ImmerseLDN

First announced aeons ago and presumably costing a bob or two to create, this Elvis Presley-based immersive show is a slick affair, heartfelt in its admiration for The King. It’s by Layered Reality, who have had notable immersive successes with the ongoing adaptation of The War of the Worlds and the Tower of London-based The Gunpowder Plot. It’s also somewhat structurally eccentric, comes with a difficult-to-defend ticket price, and – when I visited anyway – clearly suffered from its audience not being crystal clear about what it involved from the off. The hook is Elvis’s legendary 1968 comeback TV special, wherein the man who changed music forever in the ‘50s successfully blew off the schmaltzy MOR cobwebs that had engulfed his ‘60s career and showed the world that old fire again. What does an Elvis superfan make of the King’s new London immersive experience? But there’s quite a bit of other stuff before that. For the first half it’s essentially straight up theatre. We’re cast as audience members for the comeback special, who have been rounded up at the last minute after Elvis’s infamous manager Tom Parker failed to distribute any tickets himself (this really happened). A nervous Elvis hasn’t played live in seven years and is refusing to leave his dressing room (this also happened). And Elvis’s BFF from childhood Sam Bell has randomly turned up and offered to help talk his old pal out of his room.  This did not happen, although Bell was a real figure. But his arrival...

It seems fairly apparent that a relatively large number of people have watched Netflix’s South Korean gameshow satire Squid Game and thought ‘I'd love to play that’. Presumably some of these people are simply of the belief that they would win while everyone else died. The majority, one would hope, take the view that it would be fun but you’d want to eliminate the ‘almost everyone dies’ aspect. Inevitably the second party is catered for better than the first – London has already had a VR Squid Game, and now here’s an official immersive experience.  Taking in five games in 60 minutes – so rather breezier than the show – Squid Game: The Experience will feature non-lethal recreations of iconic challenges from the show, including the glass bridge, marbles, and – of course – Red Light, Green Light (featuring that horrifying doll thing).  Hopefully it’ll all be a good laugh and the lack of actual danger won’t leave you feeling like you’re just playing some random children’s games. On that note, kids of all ages are welcome to participate, though depending on how good a parent you are they may be bewildered as to the exact context.

There is literally nothing else on this planet as bombastic as a volcanic eruption. And yet somehow, this immersive exhibition dedicated to the destruction of the Roman town of Pompeii by the fury of Mount Vesuvius does endeavour to be ‘a bit much’.  The Last Days of Pompeii: The Immersive Exhibition is the third show to hit London this year from the Spanish company Madrid Artes Digitales (aka MAD), who also made The Legend of the Titanic (which I didn’t see) and Tutankhamun (which I did). The first thing you notice here is the thunderously loud and doomy soundtrack, which permeates every room. Later on you’ll discover that it’s the accompanying music to an immersive film that forms the centrepiece of the show.  But you won’t get to it for at least half an hour, and there’s something very silly about the nominally sober first area – an introduction to the Roman town of Pompeii and its pre-eruption history – being soundtracked by apocalyptic strings and eruption noises. Similarly, the second room contains casts of inhabitants of Pompeii in their final poses before they were entombed in ash. I’m not saying we need to be massive respectful to 2,000-year old dead Romans, but the figures are actually very moving – and would be even more so if you could turn off the overwrought score. undoubtedly pretty sick if you’re 10, which is surely the point While the rooms at the start are intended to be sensible, this all flies out of the window by the time we start with the immersive...