Bridge Command, 2024
Photo: Alex Brenner
Photo: Alex Brenner

Immersive theatre in London

Step into immersive theatre worlds with our guide to the best and most boldly interactive London shows

Andrzej Lukowski
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What is immersive theatre? A glib buzzword? A specific description of a specific type of theatre? A thrase thqat has become so diluted that it’s lost all meaning? Whether you call it immersive, interactive or site-specific, London is bursting with plays and experiences which welcome you into a real-life adventure that you can wander around and play the hero in.

I’m Andrzej Łukowski, Time Out’s theatre editor, and let me tell you I have run the immersive gamut, from a show where I had to take my clothes off in a darkened shipping container, to successfully bagging tickets to the six-hour Punchdrunk odyssey there were only ever a couple of hundred tickets released, to quite a lot of theatre productions where the set goes into the audience a bit and apparently that counts as immersive.

There is a lot of immersive work in London, some of which is definitely theatre, some of which definitely isn’t, some of which is borderline, some of which is but doesn’t want to say it is because some some people are just horrified of the word ‘theatre’. 

This page has been around for a while now and gone through various schools of thought, but the one we’ve settled on for now is that the main list compiles every major show in London that could reasonably be described as ‘immersive theatre’, while the bottom list compiles a few of our favouite immersive shows thet you probably wouldn’t describe as theatre though it is, naturally a blurry line.

Whatever the case you can mostly only really decide what most of these shows are if you go and do them… prepare to immerse yourself.

The best new London theatre shows to book for right now.

Immersive theatre shows

  • Immersive
  • Hackney

Choosing the right location is half the struggle for an immersive theatre show. And the stunning art deco Hackney Town Hall is a magnificent and period-appropriate backdrop to Adam Taub’s adaptation of Orwell’s immortal totalitarian satire ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’.

  • Immersive
  • Elephant & Castle
  • 3 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended

Even if you have literally never wanted to be part of the crew of a spaceship you’ll probably have a fun time at Parabolic Theatre’s Bridge Command, an immersive theatre show slash team-bonding exercise slash LARPer paradise that sees you and your fellow contestants take command of the, uh, bridge of a spaceship and undertake a variety of missions that run the gamut from diplomacy to warfare.

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  • Immersive
  • West Kensington

There are many things to enjoy about immersive theatre company The Lost Estate’s dinner theatre Dickens adaptation The Great Christmas FeastThere’s also quite a bit to fault…

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  • Musicals
  • Tower Bridge
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended

It’s been a year since Nicholas Hytner’s impossibly rousing production of ‘Guys and Dolls’ opened at the Bridge Theatre and made standing up for a three-hour show London’s hottest ticket since the sixteenth century. Now, after 12 months of stomping through Arlene Phillips’s deft choreography across constantly raising and lowering platforms, roughly half of the cast are moving on to pastures new (maybe to just counter the nightly feeling of seasickness) while the rest have found it impossible to drag themselves away from London’s most acclaimed classic stage musical in years.

Shipping out are Daniel Mays, who is replaced as the swaggeringly camp Nathan Detroit by Owain Arthur, and Marisha Wallace, who is replaced by Timmika Ramsay as the sensational Miss Adelaide (with Wallace immediately popping up as a ‘Celebrity Big Brother’ contestant). Jonathan Andrew Hume is also a new addition as cheery gambler Nicely-Nicely Johnson, as Cedric Neal bids his farewell. When it comes to core cast, George Ioannides remains in place as the suave Sky Masterson, and Celinde Schoenmaker continues to operatically trill her way through the role of the unsinkable Sarah Brown.

Mays was the biggest name, and while the Bangor-born Arthur might not be as instantly recognisable – he’s probably best known for taking over the lead in another Hytner-directed show, ‘One Man, Two Guvnors} – he’s deeply at ease in Detroit’s shoes. Perhaps that’s due to having already filled in for Mays for three months last year, but he brings a comic, Oliver Hardy-esque slapstick energy to the role and fires off one-liners with rakish ease. 

But it’s Timmika Ramsay’s sparkling turn as nightclub singer Miss Adelaide – and the future Mrs Nathan Detroit – who is the real revelation of the new cast. It’s impossible to look anywhere but at Ramsay when she’s in the pit, not least during her tantalising rendition of ‘A Bushel & A Peck’, a leather daddy by way of Beyonce’s new country direction showstopper, or in the midst of her pink marabou-trimmed take on ‘Adelaide’s Lament’. Ramsay is the very definition of a star. 

‘Guys and Dolls’ might have lost some big names, but it’s quickly making new ones. 

by Leonie Cooper

Below is the original ‘Guys and Dolls’ review from March 2023.

‘Guys and Dolls’ is a musical with such a towering reputation – by all accounts Richard Eyre’s ecstatically received 1982 revival all but saved the National Theatre – that I slightly struggled to see what all the fuss was about the last time it came to town, in a played-for-laughs 2015 revival. Yes, it was entertaining. I’m just not sure if it felt remarkable in the way the history books describe.

Well, now I get it. Nicolas Hytner’s Bridge production is a staggering achievement, a more or less flawless take on traditional terms that’s turned into something transcendent by the staging, from Hytner and designer Bunny Christie. If the duo’s excellent ‘immersive’ Shakespeare productions of ‘Julius Caesar’ and ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ were the dry runs, then ‘Guy and Dolls’ is their method perfected. 

After decades of treating the great musicals of the twentieth century as museum pieces, there’s a growing recognition in Western theatre that these classics will fall behind if not subject to some reinvention. Generally that means darker, more leftfield takes: witness the current West End productions of ‘Cabaret’ and ‘Oklahoma!’.

Unless you’re going to struggle to stand for two-and-a-half hours, Hytner and Christie’s version of Frank Loesser’s 1950 classic is not a difficult or challenging one. Instead, it uses a stunningly choreographed and – crucially – incredibly fun series of rising and falling platforms to stage the show right in the middle of a standing audience that’s deftly manoeuvred around by ushers dressed as NYC cops. It brings you incredibly close to the action: if you’re inclined to stand at the front you’ll usually be within a few inches of some performer or other. It’s a lot more exciting than sitting, the difference between standing or sitting at a gig. And it should be stressed that it’s only the stalls that have been taken out: there’s plenty of seating, and there you’re still getting an incredibly intimate experience that avoids the odd dodgy sight line that’s inevitable if you’re on the floor.

To be clear, it’s the same general idea as the two Shakespeare plays, but much bolder, busier and more dynamic, with an inevitable frisson gained from the proximity to world-class singing and dancing. 

With the staging duly drooled over, let’s talk about ‘Guys and Dolls’ itself. Loessner’s musical – with book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows – is an immaculately structured comedy bursting with deathless one-liners and wonderful characters that follows an assortment of lovelorn New York City lowlifes at the seedy height of Prohibition.

The biggest name here is probably Daniel Mays, who seamlessly translates his natural geezer-isms into the New York equivalent, thoroughly loveable as shambolic Nathan Detroit, a small-time crook desperately trying to stage an illegal game of craps for the local wiseguys. There’s a small fortune to be made: but he needs $1,000 to pay off the venue, and he is not the sort of guy who has $1,000. His biggest problem, though, is what to do about his longsuffering fiance Miss Adelaide (Marisha Wallace), who has been hitched to him for 14 long years.

US performer Wallace is absolutely sensational: she’s got the lung power and nuance to totally own standards like ‘A Bushel and a Peck’ and ‘Sue Me’. But more to the point, she’s got the acting chops to really do something with the character. Adelaide is traditionally played as an OTT light relief ditz, but here Wallace channels tremendous empathy into her: here, she’s a woman who would seem to put up with Nathan not because she’s an idiot, but because she actually loves him. Even her wild lies to her mother – who thinks they’re married with five kids – feel like a desperate attempt to give bumbling Nathan space to sort himself out. Wallace gives the role a palpable dignity and presence: still fun, but much more soulful than usual.

If Nathan and Adelaide are the beating heart of Hytner’s production, then the romance between Andrew Richardson’s suave career gambler Sky Masterton and Celinde Schoenmaker’s missionary Sergeant Sarah Brown feels appreciably shakier. That’s probably the point. Sky does, after all, only ask her out on a date (to Havana!) as a bet with Nathan.

She’s funny, strong, but ultimately fragile, unsure of who she is as Sky makes her seriously question her devotion to saving New York’s sinners.

He’s interesting: yes, he has some great one-liners, but the lisp-voiced Richardson – in a great stage debut – plays him with a slightly mournful vulnerability. When the pair go to a bar in Havana and Sky dances with another woman… well here it’s a gay bar, and it’s not a woman Sky dances with. A bit of fun, for sure, but the inference is surely that Sky is struggling with his identity as much as Sarah is with hers; come the end their romance feels sincere, but fragile. Which is good: romcoms shouldn’t have to end in total resolution.

Choreography legend Arlene Phillips turns 80 this year, and is better known these days as a slightly cheesy telly figure. But her tight, pneumatic routines (co-choreographed with James Cousins) feel fresh as a daisy – the performing spaces are tiny, so there’s not a lot of fancy stuff (the entertaining brawl in the gay bar is an obvious exception), but such sequences as there are, crackle with energy.

The staging is so innately exuberant that the production can get away with reining the show’s hammier tendencies. As well as Wallace’s more empathetic Miss Adelaide, Cedric Neal’s affable take on gangster Nicely-Nicely Johnson is much less light relief than tends to be the way. His big gospel-style showstopper ‘Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat’ is still bags of fun. But in casting a Black actor – and a relatively restrained one at that – it sidesteps the usual ‘joke’ that a schlubby white guy has incongruously pulled a big churchy number out of the bag. As it turns out, it’s still fun.

It’s strongly cast all over, but a special shout out to the ushers: they’re doing a pretty weird job (I’m not sure if ‘ushers’ is even the right term) but they herd us around with good-natured precision: if they were less well drilled and tolerant of our occasional slowness on the uptake of where to go, it just wouldn’t work.

I appreciate I’ve been a bit giddy here, and yes, I have in fact seen other shows with interactive sets before. But what Hytner and Christie have done so brilliantly is seamlessly integrate this stuff into mainstream musical entertainment. Not every show is going to benefit from staging along these lines. But as the era of the proscenium arch draws to a close, it feels like most directors of musicals could learn something from this.

‘Guys and Dolls’ ends in a big dance party, the cast congaing through our midst, posing gamely for selfies, and just generally letting off a bit of steam for five minutes. It’s a moment of pure joy, the last and best of a non-stop night of them.

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  • Comedy
  • Bloomsbury
Faulty Towers the Dining Experience
Faulty Towers the Dining Experience

Despite being an unofficial tribute to John Cleese’s legendary ’70s sitcom, this interactive dinner show captures the show’s spirit surprisingly well.

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  • Immersive
  • Greenwich Peninsula
  • 3 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended

For the price of a ticket to ‘Mamma Mia! The Party’, an immersive Abba-themed dinner experience set in a ropey taverna on an idyllic Greek island, you could fly out to an actual idyllic Greek island and probably find a ropey taverna playing Abba songs…

  • Immersive
  • South Bank
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended

This lavish new central London immersive experience makes no bones about fact it’s a live extension of the world of the two (soon to be three) StudioCanal movies, but the gentle globe-hopping adventure you experience in it is purely delightful.

Other immersive shows we rate

  • Things to do
  • Exhibitions
  • King’s Cross

What is it? Sister to the Bridge Theatre in London Bridge but a very different prospect, the Lightroom capitalises on the current craze for projection-based work by creating what is effectively a projection-based art gallery.

Why go? Its gargantuan exhibition-slash-documentaries are ravishing one offs and well worth a look above the usual Immersive Van Gogh-style nonsense. In its rep at time of writing is Tom Hanks’s spectacular space doumentary Moonwalkers, and Vogue exhibition Inventing the Runway.

  • Immersive
  • Tottenham Court Road

What is it? Yes, really: it’s a gigantic Monopoly board, allowing you and a group of fellow players to live out your dreams of rampant landlordism in the flesh. 

Why go? Although it’s based on Monopoly, it’s more like particpating in a live gameshow with a monopoly theme. And it’s a slick, enjoyable and good-humoured one that runs throughout the day - perfectly suited to family teams.

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  • Immersive
  • Canada Water

What is it? This ‘fully immersive Western town open-world adventure’ basically sees you free to roam around a 30,000 square foot steampunk-influenced Wild West town, interact with its inhabitants, get involved in its mysteries and sample the food and drink at its various watering holes.

Why go? Closer to a fictionalised version of one of those living museums than a theatre show, Phantom Peak is a grand storytelling experiment with a relaxed pace and plenty of rewatch value.

  • Attractions
  • Arcades and amusements
  • Stratford

What is it? The Eclipso Centre is a virtual reality ‘hub’ at Westfield Stratford City, which plays host to two 45-minute virtual reality experiences: ‘Horizon of Khufu’, in which you journey to Ancient Egypt, and ‘Life Chronicles’, a voyage through the history of life on planet Earth.

Why go? There are a number of VR gaming options in London at the moment – these two headset-based experiences are a bit more passive but for sheer depth of immersion they’re pretty mind-blowing.

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