Category: Immersive

Image Credit: Helen Murray

REVIEW: A Midsummer Night’s Dream

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Rating: 5 out of 5.

“Pure theatrical joy under the Globe’s open sky”

Few plays carry the enduring familiarity of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, yet for the Globe Theatre’s 2026 summer season, it feels freshly reimagined. Emily Lim’s production creates a space for fun and merriment, where playfulness is apparent in every moment and the joy on stage feels infectious.

The chaos of Dream is brought to life by an excellent ensemble. Adrian Richards graces the stage as Bottom, striking a balance between earnestness and absurdity. Richards gives such an energetic performance throughout. The musical t-shirts land as a visual punchline before a word is even spoken. Michael Grady-Hall leans wholeheartedly into Puck’s mischief, embodying every familiar trait while still finding space to surprise, creating a character that feels classic and freshly unpredictable. Across the wider company, there is a true sense of unity and cheerfulness. Each performer contributes to a world that feels alive in every corner of the stage. It is this shared commitment that allows the magic to be found and the humour to land effortlessly, resulting in a cast that not only performs together, but plays together.

Frankly, there are few places greater to experience Shakespeare. As a travelling reviewer experiencing the Globe for the first time, its immersive and lively reputation was more than upheld. The audience participation throughout the show was met with such enthusiasm. Seeing people light up on stage or stood in the yard, happily surprised by a cast member rushing past, added such relatable merriment, translating the emotions on stage directly to the audience. Director Emily Lim describes the aim of her adaptation is to bring a sense of community to the theatre with the audience being the missing piece of the puzzle, something so beautifully achieved.

Visually, the production matches the energy on stage. A celebration of colour brings to life the otherworldly charm, with flowers that grow as the characters develop and humorous set pieces that heighten the sense of mischief. Jeremy Deller and Edmund Hall’s banner anchors the space at the conclusion, acting as a stunning focal point that reflects the warmth and communal spirit of the production.

Whilst some of the deeper context within the play is softened in favour of exuberance, it is a small trade-off for the smile that lasts long after you cross the millennium bridge back to the city, carrying with it a reminder of the pleasure of shared storytelling.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream delivers pure theatrical joy under the Globe’s open sky, with performances running until 29th August. Tickets are available here.

REVIEW: Chat Noir!

Published on by Tabitha JamesLeave a comment

Rating: 5 out of 5.

A lavish, wine-soaked plunge into bohemian Paris, Chat Noir! is immersive theatre at its most playful, provocative and joyfully unrestrained.

From the moment velvet curtains part and candlelit tables flicker into view, Chat Noir! invites its audience not just to watch, but to fully slip into another time, a bohemian, wine-soaked dream of 1890s Paris where art, indulgence and a little chaos reign supreme.

Entering The Lost Estate’s transformed West London venue feels like stepping into a living painting. Guests, dressed to the nines in vintage silks and waistcoats, become part of the spectacle before the show has even begun. At the centre of it all is Joe Morose as Rodolphe Salis, our charismatic compère and ringmaster for the evening, guiding the room through a three-act journey of death, absinthe and anarchy, each paired with indulgent courses and free-flowing creativity.

What follows is less a traditional narrative and more a riotous collage of performance. Issy Wroe Wright’s Muse (Yvette Guilbert) is gloriously bawdy and magnetic, prowling between tables with a voice that doesn’t just fill the room but pulls the audience into it. There’s a playful irreverence to her performance that feels distinctly modern, even as it nods to cabaret roots. Alongside her, Neil Kelso’s illusionist (Joseph Buatier) threads clever, intimate magic through the crowd, moments of quiet astonishment that feel tailored to each table, blurring the line between performer and guest.

The physical performances are just as striking. Coco Belle as Cléo de Mérode commands the space with fluidity and power, her movement sweeping the room into moments of colour and intensity, while Pi the Mime (Alex Luttley) delivers something unexpectedly tender. The opening “Death” sequence, a romantic, tragic encounter involving a simple cloak, balances humour and heartbreak with surprising delicacy, setting the tone for an evening that constantly shifts between the ridiculous and the profound.

Throughout, the house band, Les Enfants Vagabondes, are nothing short of exceptional. Led musically by Alex Ullman on piano and joined by Guy Button, Peteris Sokolovskis, Will Fry and Áine McLoughlin, they weave through the space with precision and flair, reimagining classics with a contemporary pulse. Their presence is constant, grounding even the most surreal moments in something richly atmospheric.

The second act, “Absinthe,” leans into a more introspective tone. Visually, it’s stunning, green-hued hallucinations brought to life through dance and mime, with Coco Belle’s nymph-like presence particularly mesmerising. There’s a clear intention here to explore how art fades, distorts and lingers in memory. While the energy dips slightly in this section, especially between courses, the performances themselves remain compelling, offering a thoughtful counterpoint to the surrounding spectacle.

By the time “Anarchy” arrives, the show explodes back into life. A frenetic, dazzling finale sees the company tear through operatic and theatrical references, most notably a whirlwind take on Carmen, building to a chaotic, exhilarating crescendo. The chemistry between performers is electric, and the sense of abandon is infectious. It’s messy, bold and completely unapologetic.

Chat Noir! thrives on this tension between structure and spontaneity. It’s immersive without being overwhelming, theatrical without losing its intimacy, and indulgent in all the right ways. Not every moment lands with equal impact, but the overall experience is one of warmth, creativity and sheer commitment to the world it builds.

A night that encourages you to stay a little longer, drink a little more deeply, and lose yourself, just for a few hours, in the art of it all.

REVIEW: I Do

Published on by Tabitha JamesLeave a comment

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

An emotive, honest insight into the chaos before “I do”.

Dante or Die’s I Do, revived as part of the company’s 20th anniversary season and presented in partnership with the Barbican, is an immersive theatre experience that places audiences directly inside the emotional pressure cooker of a wedding day. Staged across six hotel rooms in the Malmaison near Farringdon, the production unfolds in the fraught 15 minutes before Georgina and Tunde’s ceremony is due to begin. From the moment you enter, there is a palpable sense of suspended time: a corridor thick with anticipation, urgency and nerves as audience members are quietly shuffled from door to door.

Each room reveals a different fragment of the wedding party’s inner lives. Parents, children, partners and friends are caught in moments of doubt, resentment, love and longing, their stories overlapping as the clock ticks relentlessly towards the ceremony. Writer Chloë Moss’s script is unflinchingly honest about everyday relationships, and creators Daphna Attias and Terry O’Donovan have transformed a familiar, almost banal life event into something intimate and deeply engaging. Direction by Attias is particularly assured, allowing scenes to play with emotional clarity while making imaginative use of the hotel rooms themselves. The staging, led by meticulous stage management, ensures each space feels lived-in and specific, rich with detail that quietly extends the storytelling.

That attention to detail is, paradoxically, also one of the show’s frustrations. With around a dozen audience members packed into each room, scenes can feel cramped, and the rapid movement between spaces leaves little time to absorb the carefully placed props and environmental storytelling. A few extra minutes either side of scenes, or slightly smaller audience groups, would allow the immersive world to breathe and be fully taken in. On the night attended, the performance also ran almost half an hour over its advertised running time, but I imagine this will be addressed as the company finds its feet in its new home.

Performances across the cast are strong, with Manish Gandhi’s Joe standing out for his emotional precision and restraint. Fred Fergus’s Nick is compelling, though occasionally feels like a character who could benefit from greater depth. One of the most affecting scenes belongs to Geof Atwell and Fiona Watson as Gordon and Eileen, whose portrayal of a declining grandfather and his partner is so raw that it visibly moved an audience member to tears. These moments are often confronting and isolating – there is no distance here, no way to escape – and every other audience member’s breath, glance and reaction shapes your own experience of the story.

The Cleaner, played on this occasion by Terry O’Donovan, functions as a connective thread between scenes. While the role is conceptually effective, his repeated presence in the already crowded corridor sometimes denies the audience a moment of quiet reflection between emotionally heavy encounters. A brief pause to reset might heighten, rather than diffuse, the impact of the next scene that follows.

Ultimately, I Do is a fascinating study of ordinariness: a deeply human exploration of marriage, family and the expectations we place on one another. It gently but persistently asks what marriage means – and doesn’t mean – to its characters and, by extension, to the audience themselves. Despite minor logistical issues, this revival remains a novel, affecting and worthwhile experience, offering immersive theatre at its most intimate and emotionally resonant.

This show runs at Malmaison until 8th February before embarking on a short tour. Programme here.

IN CONVERSATION WITH: Terry O’Donovan

Published on by Tabitha JamesLeave a comment

We sat down for an exclusive interview with Terry O’Donovan, co-creator (alongside Dapha Attias) of I Do, which returns on a UK tour in 2026 to mark the 20th birthday of Dante or Die. This hugely successful immersive hit, with text by Chloë Moss, celebrates the beautiful mess of human connection — an intricate portrait of love and fear, told through Dante or Die’s signature blend of intimacy, detail, and cinematic theatricality.

Full tour details and ticket links below but I Do opens in London on 20th January until 8th February

What made now the right moment to revisit I DO, and what does this revival reveal about how your artistic thinking has evolved over 20 years?

As we approached turning 20 it’s been impossible not to reflect. When we first mentioned reviving a show to celebrate this anniversary, Daphna and I immediately said I Do. It felt like I Do was a gear shift for us. Our work previously had our hearts on our sleeves, it had a distinctive approach to choreography of space and audience, and an energy that brought audiences on physical journeys that was driving the work. 

When we made I Do in 2013 we knew that we wanted story and dialogue to match those elements. At that moment in time, I had recently married in Belgium as same-sex marriage was legal there, and still not legal in the UK; and Daphna was pregnant with her second child and didn’t want to get married despite familial and societal pressure. So many of our friends were starting families and choosing whether or not to get married. All of this led us into a constant stream of conversations about weddings, relationships, the meaning of commitment . At the same time we’re interrogating the legalities that ‘protect’ a married couple. The live experience is visceral, detailed and incredibly intimate with the theatricality of repeating action despite the up close, hyper naturalistic performance style. We’ve always loved the synchronicity between site, story, form and content. We’ve never revived a production before. So doing it now, with 12 years of growing up for Daphna, Chloë and I means that we’re re-evaluating the stories we’d originally told, and digging deeper. 

We’ve also created a trainee scheme for the production. We have 4 early career trainees – a director, producer, stage manager and performer. We wanted to create opportunities that we would have liked to have when we were starting out 20 years ago.

How has your relationship to site-specific storytelling shifted as audiences have become more fluent in immersive forms?

That’s an interesting question. Our early influences were companies like Shunt and Grid Iron. Our early work placed the physical experience and journey at the heart of the work. But I Do was a conscious shift for us – we wanted to match that physical experience to the emotional heart of the shows we were making. So, I’d say our relationship with site based storytelling has become more emotional or tied into the personal and social relationships we have with space. 

In re-staging I DO, what new perspectives have emerged from returning to a story designed to be seen from multiple angles at once?

The joy of I DO is that the form of seeing stories from different perspectives is totally married with the human experiences. Each room has a beginning, middle and end in itself but your perspective on particular characters’ actions or decisions changes as you make your way through all of the rooms and understand the reasons behind them. It’s a real exercise in looking at how we make decisions or take action as affected by others. 

We’ve worked with Chloë to heighten this for specific characters this time round – particularly the groom and father of the bride. There is a pregnancy storyline that has become sharper and gives us more insight into the character involved. It’s been brilliant to have an opportunity to push these narratives further.

How do you maintain emotional intimacy when your work asks audiences to navigate complex, multi-room environments?

Being so close to the characters as they are in such intimate moments brings audiences in, then it’s the cast maintaining the truth of the moment and allowing the audience to feel like it’s happening right in front of their eyes. The fly on the wall nature of the show creates such a freedom for the audience to relax and feel at ease. We notice that as they progress from room to room they relax more and more. Every character is in such a dramatic moment that it allows audiences to quickly empathise. The other joy of this show is that the form – figuring out how it’s all pieced together is as much part of the enjoyment.

What throughline connects early pieces like I DO to recent experiments such as Skin Hunger and User Not Found?

The throughine is human experience connected to the physical worlds we inhabit. They all play with how we behave in public vs private spaces and how they can collide. I DO uncovers a lot of mini dramas in a plush, comfortable environment – but a space that we pay quite a lot to stay in for specific occasions. We really play with how each room gives us a lot of clues about the emotional state of each character – the mother of the bride’s room is hyper organised and very cold despite her being very hot. The best man’s room is chaos.

With User Not Found we were looking at how so many of us exist in private online worlds in public spaces like cafes. We were interested in how our devices now constantly impact our emotions – if you found out that your partner had died through a text message in a café would you reach out to the stranger next to you to ask for help? Or if the stranger next to you saw you crying would they reach out to you?

Skin Hunger was a fascinating piece to make and perform. It took all of these ideas but put the audience in role one-on-one with an audience member. We were really looking at how the fear of touching people and being around others had impacted us all during the pandemic; and also exploring live storytelling at a time when that was not allowed. It was a really fascinating experience – much more visceral and intimate than any other piece of work – there was no audience really, more a series of exchanges. 

Every production we make go through a process of deciding how an audience should experience / encounter the work and that forms a huge part of the dramaturgy – that’s central to all our work. 

As immersive theatre continues to expand commercially and technologically, where do you feel Dante or Die’s ethos most sharply diverges from the wider field?

I think it’s placing the human and emotional experience at the heart of the work. The reason we love telling stories in an ‘immersive’ way is about heightening the emotional and intellectual engagement with the work. I’m always really interested to see other work in this area because there is such potential to capture peoples imaginations in new ways – and I think the physical proximity to audiences, and being immersed in a space gives us an experience that TV and film still can’t do. So that’s at the heart of it for us.

Tues 20 January – Sun 8 February 2026
Malmaison London, 18-21 Charterhouse Square, London, EC1M 6AH
Wed 11– Sat 14 February 2026
Malmaison Reading, 18-20 Station Road, Reading, RG1 1JX
Wed 18 – Sun 22 February 2026
Malmaison Deansgate, 23 Princess Street, Manchester, M2 4ER

IN CONVERSATION WITH: Ariel De la Garza Davidoff

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We sat down for an exclusive interview with Ariel De la Garza Davidoff. Co-developed by Ariel with Michal Vojtech and Pierre Albert Ollivier, L’Indiscipline is a collaborative response to archival material on Charcot’s lectures and case studies. Their work blends historical research with theatrical experimentation, using satire to interrogate power and performance in medical history.

L’Indiscipline is at Theatro Technis as part of Voila Theatre Festival on 14th and 15th November. Tickets available HERE.

Ariel, L’Indiscipline explores a fascinating and unsettling slice of history. What first drew you to this subject matter and made you want to bring it to the stage?
In 2024 we took a play to the Edinburgh Fringe and we became obsessed with the idea of taking one to the Avignon Off Festival in France, so very soon after we returned home we began looking for ideas. Pierre, our co-writer for this project, was reading a series of arcane medical texts and came across the epidemic of fugues in nineteenth century France. We originally wanted to write something about the anti-semitic tale of the Wondering Jew and how it became a medical topic but we were more and more drawn by the doctors involved and discovered Dr. Charcot and Dr. Tourette. It is difficult to overstate how famous and important Jean Martin Charcot was at the time. He discovered the physical causes of Parkinson’s disease, ALS, MS, and a host of other conditions, to many he is the father of modern neurology. He was also a larger than life figure, he knew everyone that was anyone in France, he had a pet monkey and he was so well known that people would simply address letters to ‘J M Charcot, France’, in full confidence they would reach him. 

Every Tuesday Charcot would have a public lesson where he would hypnotise his hysterical patients in front of the luminaries of Paris. His patients, ‘Blanche’ Marie Wittman for instance, became tabloid celebrities, and the experiments were highly theatrical.. We became convinced theatre was the perfect medium for this story. We wanted to put the audience in the same position as Dr Charcot’s audience in the 19th century, with all the absurdity and discomfort that entailed. 

The play blends grotesque humour with real historical events. How do you navigate the balance between satire and respect for the suffering of the women at the Salpêtrière asylum?
During the writing process it was imperative to us that we didn’t make fun of the patient’s condition. To us the comedy lays in the absurdity of the situation, our patients are the most lucid characters in the piece. But it was also important to us to show a little bit of the complexity of the issue. It would be a mistake to cast the patients at the Salpêtrière solely as victims of a medical institution seeking to control them, and to cast the doctors merely as sadists with no concern for their patients. Many of the patients were happy to be in the Salpêtrière, they had a debilitating illness with no apparent physical cause, then called hysteria, and although they were dismissed by most people Charcot took their symptoms seriously. Moreover the Salpêtrière was in some ways a very progressive institution, and many of the doctors there campaigned for the humane treatment of patients of mental illness  more broadly. Before the Salpêtrière and its doctor’s advocacy the mentally ill were sent to jails or insane asylums like St Anne  which were abject places. All the same the hysterics in the Salpêtrière were subject to strange, humiliating experiments. Our approach is to present as much of this strange reality as we can to the public and hopefully allow them a glimpse into the birth of modern psychiatry and the many conflicts that are still, oddly current.

You co-wrote L’Indiscipline with Michal Vojtech and Pierre Albert Ollivier. What was that collaborative writing process like? How did the three of you shape the tone and vision of the piece together?
It was a very exciting process. As I said earlier Pierre had the first idea and then we began bouncing ideas back and forth between the three of us until any kind of individual authorship dissolved into a rolling boil. The three of us stayed in Pierre’s tiny Parisian apartment and over about two weeks wrote and re-wrote the play until we felt like it was working. We were nearly done with the play when we went down to Avignon to visit the theatre who had taken a big chance with us since we had never performed the play before. We were sitting in a cafe eagerly awaiting dinner at Pierre’s family home when we realised something was off. The ending wasn’t quite landing so we re-wrote most of the play in the next few days to clarify Charcot’s motivations.  The process was very collaborative, ideas were pouring out and it madefor a very exciting period.

The play had its world premiere at the Avignon OFF Festival earlier this year. What was that experience like, and how did audiences there respond to the piece?
Putting on a play in another country is a mad endeavour. We packed a van in London and over the next two days drove down to Avignon. The closer we got the hotter and dryer it became. The festival was wonderful, Avignon comes to life during that month, even more than in Edinburgh every available space becomes a theatre. We had previewed in the wonderful Czech Center in Paris a week earlier but when we arrived to La Luna, our gracious theatre-home for the month, the space was completely different and it took a performance or two to get into the swing of things.
As with any festival the performance is just a tiny part, the biggest activity is getting people to come see that performance. So we joined in on the tradition of performing in the street. Our troupe would stage hypnotisms, once or twice even getting a policeman called over to check it was act, a badge our actors wore proudly. 
Audiences reacted very differently, some found the show incredibly compelling and came multiple times. Others were almost offended by the portrayal of Charcot who is very well known in France and is quite revered in some circles. It was very interesting to see what landed and what didn’t, what was clear is that the play might be divisive to some but it is never boring, and every night we would leave the theatre feeling a jolt of energy. 

Finally, on a personal note – what has working on L’Indiscipline taught you?
Too many things to list here! How to rig scaffolding, how to work with live music, how a septic tank functions (this last one was a bitter lesson to learn) but the most important thing is almost esoteric. In theatre during a long run like this one (we played 25 times) the most important things are the energy and connection of the cast. It is not something you can control, but you can remain vigilant and help channel it towards a great performance. 

REVIEW: Faulty Towers: The Dining Experience

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Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Go with a sense of humour, don’t expect a gourmet feast, and you will leave with a smile

Some nights feel like a time machine, and Faulty Towers: The Dining Experience leans all the way into that retro ride. The evening starts in a  reception area already buzzing with pre-dinner chatter and a bar queue that moves at a polite but slow pace. While waiting, I noticed a familiar face across the crowd: double Olympic champion Dame Kelly Holmes. Pure chance put us at the same table later, and sitting next to her was an unexpected highlight that set the night off on a pretty unforgettable note.

Just as everyone settled into small talk, Basil  burst through the doors, all sharp elbows and sharper insults, and suddenly we were in the world of 1970s British comedy. He herded us into the dining room with withering remarks aimed at both guests and his permanently confused waiter, Manuel, while Sybil trailed behind, perfectly sweet and perfectly sarcastic. It was the ideal chaotic welcome.

Instead of a single storyline, the show runs like a mixtape of classic moments from the TV series: quick-fire sketches, improvised bits, and callbacks to favourite episodes. If you grew up on reruns of Fawlty Towers, it’s a nostalgia hit you’ll love. If you have  never seen the original, it can feel a bit like jumping into a box set halfway through season two.  A short intro or a loose plot thread would help newcomers catch the rhythm.

That said, the cast absolutely sells it. Benedict Holme ’s Basil is a full-body performance, nailing the jerky physical comedy, sudden rages and deadpan sarcasm that made John Cleese a legend. Andrew Gruen as Manuel is a total scene-stealer: his wide-eyed confusion, lightning improvisation, and just-right Spanish accent had the whole room laughing. When a running gag about the chef’s dentures in the soup landed literally at our table, they all  turned it into a perfectly timed, hilarious moment.

The food? Definitely more retro tribute than foodie destination. Think sturdy 1970s British dinner-party classics: hearty, heavy, and a little bland if you’re not here for the nostalgia. It suits the concept, but anyone expecting modern fine dining might find it a bit of a throwback in the wrong way. Still, nobody’s here for the gastronomy. The meal is  a prop, and the cast makes that part of the joke. By dessert, plonked down with Basil-like abruptness, it’s clear the evening isn’t about a seamless plot or culinary fireworks. It is about slipping into a beloved slice of British TV history and enjoying a few hours of pure, silly fun.

Faulty Towers: The Dining Experience isn’t flawless. The lack of a storyline can feel a little scattered, and the menu won’t win awards. But the energy, the spot-on performances, and the chance to see these characters come alive in the middle of your dinner make it a unique night out. Go with a sense of humour, don’t expect a gourmet feast, and you’ll leave with a grin—and, if you’re as lucky as I was, maybe even a story about sharing soup (dentures and all) with an Olympic legend.

REVIEW: DARKFIELD: ARCADE

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Rating: 5 out of 5.

“What makes it extraordinary is how singular the experience becomes”

Darkfield have built a reputation for leading the way in immersive theatre, known for crafting unsettling yet unforgettable experiences across the globe. They bring intimate moments that catapults you into a different world, very much like a video game.

The excitement of DARKFIELD productions is going in blind, and they ensure that with the total pitch black darkness you find yourself in for the 30 minute duration. After a briefing, you enter the space and are surrounded by 80’s arcade machines and fluorescent lights. Once the headphones begin the narrative and the darkness engulfs your senses, each member follows their own, unique journey through a cleverly crafted story.

What makes it extraordinary is how singular the experience becomes. Whilst there are grounding themes to keep everyone on a shared path, different choices unlock new characters, environments, and play times. No two journeys are quite the same, and when shared with a friend, comparing storylines afterwards is half the fun – like swapping notes on a dream you both had but in entirely different versions.

Darkfield’s work is also a reminder of how powerful theatre can be when it strips everything back to its rawest tools: sound, imagination, and a carefully designed environment. Without visuals to illuminate your journey, your mind does the heavy lifting, conjuring vivid images and scenarios that feel almost tangible. It’s this clever use of absence – of light, of certainty – that makes the return to the outside world feel sharper and somewhat changed.

Arts Council England has enabled the showcase of three different DARKFIELD experiences across Manchester ARCADE at Lowry, FLIGHT at Aviva Studios, and SÉANCE at HOME Manchester. They all run until 21st September and tickets are available here.

REVIEW: What’s In The Kitchen

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Rating: 4 out of 5.

‘A feast for the senses’

Welcomed into the venue with a gift bag of food and a tipple accompanied by a local soundtrack to set the scene, ‘What’s In The Kitchen?’ delves into the bright and bold flavourings found in the Brazilian gastronomy scene. 

Split into a menu of chapters, the show follows a number of characters across Brazil and how food can create different feelings and bring communities together. Each story comes with a food pairing taking you directly into the kitchen using multiple senses with taste leading the way. You may even find you learn something about your own taste buds when discovering the five tastes.  

Eduardo Estrela is an engaging storyteller, easily transporting you to the different culinary corners in Brazil from a high-pressure, chaotic restaurant kitchen in Sao Paolo, to the glossiness of television chefs and ending with my personal favourite, the tranquil pasta making Brazilian-Italian Nonna Theresa who opens heart and home to anyone in need of a bowl of fresh pasta. 

He even nods that Theresa is inspired by the show’s director Dani Angelotti whose talents can be seen both through the performance and the delicious homemade Brigadeiro which rounds off the performance’s menu. It is worth mentioning here that the food by Chef Alejandro Huerto was a wonderful addition to the show, elevating the story telling further by incorporating all the senses. 

Along with tales of cuisine, Estrela examines himself as both a restaurateur and actor. He draws comparisons between the performative nature of gastronomy and the theatre.

Speaking about how the constant pressure of succeeding mirrors the life of an actor always trying to give his best performance. 

The performance is predominantly in Portuguese with subtitles on a screen above, so it is worth sitting back far enough to read the subtitles to accompany the performance. 

The meal kit is simple and numbered with Eduardo clearly instructing you on what to eat when. That being said, I still managed to muddle it up by eating the shrink-wrapped treat too early confusing the final desert for the sweet section in parcel two. So, make sure you follow the numbers carefully and pay attention to get the full experience. 

If you are a foodie, you enjoy travelling or love local stories or are just looking for something a little different then this is the show for you. 

This show runs until 23rd August (except Mondays). Tickets here.

REVIEW: Fight For America!

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Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

Immersive Theatre meets Tabletop Gaming for a unique and engaging experience

I wasn’t sure what to expect walking into Fight for America, the idea of playing a tabletop roleplaying game based on the January 6th riots. The show is at the Stone Nest, a hidden gem on Shaftesbury Avenue. Developed by the American Vicarious who are known for their innovative creations which reflect on America’s ideals, the show aims to have its participants reflect on the political turmoil surrounding the January 6th riots. Part traditional war game, part immersive theatre, Fight For America was an unexpectedly engaging and interesting night.

On arrival you are given a character pack, a card with a description and some abilities (some which require you to do public karaoke). Your characters either belong to Team Red (a coalition of Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, QAnon conspiracy theorists and right wing thinkers) or Team Blue (law enforcement). All of the characters are based on real people and it felt a little surreal to be wearing the name tag of someone with such diametrically opposed views to my own. In our run, there was a subversion of history, Team Red won and Mike Pence was hanged. This is not a foregone conclusion, and Team Blue have won before. 

The game was designed by Alessio Cavatore, known for his work on Warhammer 40k, who’s a major name in the Table Top Roleplaying Game space. The game is incredibly mechanically well designed, it is satisfying to play and simple enough to pick up more or less after a single round. However where the experience shines is in its theatrical elements. The set is truly phenomenal, painstakingly recreating where the actual rioters and police officers were on the day. The Stone Nest is intricately decorated, and features like interactive buttons, detailed animations and an excellent soundtrack bring the game to life. The evening is compèred fantastically by Dana Watkins. 

My criticisms are relatively small, it would have been nice if the rules had been posted more prominently, and if there were small stools for the shorter players (like myself!). My feeling is anyone who is willing to pay for the ticket, will have an enjoyable evening. Whilst I can understand the potential catharsis, I am unsure if this is the sort of thing that will change hearts and minds, but it is certainly satisfying to play. 

The game ends with sobering footage from the actual January 6th riots, followed by updates on what happened to each of the people you can play. Four years after the fact, their favoured president is in office, their sentences pardoned and commuted and the Overton window has shifted in their favour. It is hard not to think that Team Red won in real life too.

Fight For America! runs at the Stone Nest until 7th July.

REVIEW: Storehouse at Deptford Storehouse

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Rating: 2.5 out of 5.

Stunningly ambitious set pieces lead to a dystopian anticlimax in this promenade thriller

Presented in a Deptford hangar, Storehouse by newcomers Sage and Jester has lofty ambitions about the exploration of digital information, truth and power. Perhaps rather ironically, this piece of immersive theatre is financially backed by the daughter of a billionaire media mogul. Its slogan reads “truth lies here” and “The truth will set us free”- phrases that feature heavily but mean little. 

The plot explains that in 1983 when the internet was created, four founders started the Arkive, a meticulous physical library of everything ever put on the internet. In January 2025 a seismic event – the Great Aggregation- was supposed to happen and we the audience members are brought in as Trustees to oversee what might be the problem. Parallel promenade performances split the audiences as they go on the same journey with different actors before merging at the finale.

What starts out bold and interesting soon unravels into a confusing mess of a script. With eight (!) co-writers including a dramaturg, it clearly suffers from too many cooks. The subject of misinformation and truth in content creation is perfectly topical, but the writers simply don’t do anything with it. We are led through various exquisitely detailed spaces with lots of expository monologuing from the performers, sometimes referencing the sacredness of ink or the importance of binary code. However we are not really given any time to invest in anything before being shunted to the next room. Eventually we are funneled into a large inkwell room for a clichéd damp squib of a revelation before entering the cavernous main space finale whilst some omniscient voice tells us to touch grass.

Essentially the problem it is trying to solve is one we are already aware of: overuse of technology is bad. The Arkive struggling under the weight of constant content being made is not new information. However it is little surprise that a system made in the 80s is not fit for purpose in 2025. This promenade piece is so linear that it feels passive rather than immersive. The heavy marketing of names including Meera Syal and Toby Jones ultimately feels like a gimmick- they barely feature other than a portrait and occasional voiceover. The performers for my group were a highlight though, including Chris Agha as a bookbinder and Harriett O’ Grady as a stacker. Trussed up in their fun 80s outfits, they activate like a sleeper cell whenever Karma Chameleon plays, though it is never explained why.

Alice Helps’ set pieces are the real winner here, and the sense of space and scale is astonishing. Both intimate and monumental at different turns, I truly enjoyed the use of texture, organic matter, smells, touch and sound design. The rooms, tunnels and pods never felt overwhelming , despite being full of sensory elements. I wish we could have proper time to simply explore- the 90 minutes run time is clearly a constraint.

Further frustrations lie in wasteful elements that prove to be superfluous to the paper-thin plot: we are given a fortune cookie, wrapped in Storehouse branded plastic packaging, and individually made drinks while we wait in our assigned reception room. We are given a Storehouse branded lanyard to keep, with a printed ID sticker showing our name and face. We are given a glossy storehouse manual full of explanations and a terminology. I asked a staff member at the lockers if I should keep the manual with me for the show- she confirmed it’s not needed. Oh.

Ultimately, a show cannot succeed on aesthetic alone, and whilst the sensational visuals demonstrate promise to the premise, more attention is needed on the actual story. It is a bold if flawed debut.