Incorporating the genres of both ‘fantasy’ and ‘horror’, The Gunpowder Plot: The Immersive Experience, is an interactive event that blends Virtual Reality, live theatre, and a lot of walking, as you wind your way around the vaults of the Tower of London.
Set in 1605, you, together with the rest of your group, are drawn into the story of the gunpowder plot. You meet characters based on the real-life conspirators and those who stopped them. The premise is that you and the small group you find yourselves with may be able to change history by either helping or hindering Guy Fawkes and his gang.
Your group is ushered into “The Tower” only to see a very nice man being taken away to be killed for the sole crime of being a Catholic. You are then asked to assist other Catholics in blowing up parliament. In the next scene, you’re then asked to work as undercover spies for the crown, within the band of conspirators, and to report any information found to Lady Cecil, an agent for the King. Which side will your group choose?
Having established that you need to infiltrate the group planning their treasonous act, you are led on what amounts to a rollercoaster, as you encounter the first of three scenes utilising Virtual Reality technology. In the first scene you assist a rogue priest to escape the Tower on an elaborate pulley system – think Disney’s animated version of Robin Hood escaping from Nottingham Castle. Quite remarkably, this is based on a real-life incident. It’s also somewhat disorienting, and the various warnings about motion sickness really apply here.
As with all the VR scenes, the background in this first cut scene is genuinely mesmerising – seventeenth century London has been lovingly recreated, and it looks incredible. We could have spent hours just enjoying the views in this and the second VR scene, quite outside of any plot concerns.
Following the rope ride, there’s more wandering through the vaults under the Tower, but unlike other immersive experiences, such as those offered by Punchdrunk (Doctor Who – the Crash of the Elysium), there’s no opportunity for the audience to wander off the defined story path, or to engage with the actors in unscripted conversations. The path here is pre-determined, and, barring one choice made at the interval, the experience will be the same for everyone. Even that one choice will, realistically, make little difference to what follows immediately after the interval, as the story builds to its inevitable conclusion.
The actors, despite the restraints of their scripts, are all excellent. They manage the difficult task of making a cohesive group out of the audience, and ensuring that everyone gets a turn at holding something. The initial introduction to the world, which included an explanation of how the VR headsets worked, and what to do if they didn’t, was also expertly handled by another actor who had the difficult job of attempting to immerse our group of sixteen people into the story.
Whilst the sets were cunningly designed to include clever projections and other technology, there was a fair amount of standing around in what amounted to empty spaces, waiting for the whole group to be in the right place whilst the actors were waiting for the signal that the next room was ready.
This is the danger of building an experience with multiple groups at different points in the experience concurrently – there’s always a group both ahead of you, and behind you, and at times the experience felt a little like being on a conveyor belt. This became most obvious at the interval, where the group in front of ours was still in ‘The Duck and Drake’ when our group reached that milestone.
Just before we got to that point however, was the second VR scene, which features the absolute star-draw of this experience, Tom Felton (Harry Potter; Rise of the Planet of the Apes), who plays the conspirators’ leader, Guy Fawkes. Felton is excellent, playing the role with fervour, as he leads you across the Thames at night-time, with London Bridge as the backdrop. He does a fantastic job of inspiring the audience to want to assist his cause, and we wish it had been possible to see more of him. The character comes back, played by one of a roster of actors in a subsequent scene – his face is mostly covered by a mask, outlaw style, which is how they get away with the fact that Felton himself isn’t really here at all.
Having reached the end of the journey, you are rewarded by a third VR scene where the King gives thanks for your assistance – even if, as our group did, you chose to side with the plotters. It’s at this point that the previously meticulously researched history falls apart, with incongruous Union Flags, implausible blitz behaviour, and impossibly situated fireworks, as we are briefly told the subsequent history of the ‘celebration’ of Bonfire Night. There were also some glitches in the VR in this scene, experienced by more than one member of this group. This scene does however attempt to maintain the balance that the whole experience has been striving for, trying to make the audience understand how desperate the situation was for Catholics of the time, who just wanted freedom to live their lives according to their own beliefs.
Overall, this is a fun experience, but there are better examples of immersive events available in London right now. It is a diverting way to pass an hour and forty-five minutes, you do learn some real history, and the detail in the background of the first two VR scenes is truly phenomenal. There is some mild, but, especially in one scene, frequent, use of bad language, which we feel makes the age guidance of 12+ accurate on this occasion.
The Gunpowder Plot: The Immersive Experience, is booking until at least early 2023, and it really doesn’t have to be Bonfire Night for you to derive enjoyment from this. Experiences start every ten minutes, from early in the day, until the evening, depending on the day of the week. Further details and booking information here: https://gunpowderimmersive.com/
