Remember Remember the fifth of November goes the bonfire night rhyme, but as we prepare to throw our stuffed Guys on the flames, who are we burning and why?
Set in atmospheric vaults beside the Tower of London, Gunpowder Plot Immersive is part theatre, part escape room, and part timely history lesson that propels participants into the dangerous, double crossing world of Jacobean England.
After a briefing in a map room, we're led in groups of 15 through dark corridors to 1605. We're inside the Tower, experiencing first hand how Catholics are persecuted under Protestant King James; banned from practicing their religion, their priests hunted and killed.
We're fellow dissidents, cell mates with the tortured William before being sprung - down more winding corridors - by the charismatic Thomas, who calls us bastards and turns out to be a spy for the Crown.
He and the powerful Lady Cecil have got wind of a Catholic plot, and want us to turn double agents to help foil it. We're taught Jacobean code and sent on a terrific VR ride on a rope across the river with a captured Priest to infiltrate the conspirators.
As the 90-minute experience progresses we are crammed into a priest's hole while Royalists ransack a safe house, virtually rowed under London Bridge by Tom Felton's empassioned Guy Fawkes, hatch plans in the Duck and Drake with a double agent, and get locked in a cage beneath the Houses of Parliament with barrels of gunpowder.
Through vivid visuals, we are shown the effect a 1km wide explosion would have on the crowded streets around Parliament. Can persecution ever justify terrorism and the loss of innocent lives? Although the set up asks us to decide which side we're on, in reality we're never given agency to change the outcome of the experience.
There are two exhilirating VR sequences but while the third is least impressive (what about Fawkes' gruesome executon?) it shows King James ordering an annual celebration to mark the plot failure and firework nights down the years. All is explained in this rollicking adventure, and since it runs year round, is not confined to bonfire night antics.
Heartily recommended.
The Gunpowder Plot Immersive runs Thursday to Sunday at Tower Hill Vaults. https://gunpowderimmersive.com/
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