From boozy immersive dive bars, to fantastical Christmas adventures and festive three-course meals, here are our recommendations for the best immersive experiences in London this side of New Years...
With the nights drawing in and the temperature beginning to drop, Christmas is fast approaching. While London has no shortage of festive activities, you might be on the lookout for something a bit more interactive and immersive. We've made a list, checked it twice, and these are our picks of London's best immersive experiences this Christmas. From family-friend festive adventures to immersive three-course meals and adults-only parties with Santa, these are the top immersive offerings this Christmas...
HUMBUG! Immersive Christmas Dive Bar
Photo: Grant Walker
Returning for 2024 following a sold-out season on Leake Street beneath Waterloo Station, HUMBUG is an immersive adults-only Christmas dive bar experience. Split into two halves, with live music, festive DJs and singalongs following the 2-hour main show, guests need to try and help Santa regain their Christmas spirit in his favourite watering hole alongside a cast of characters including Daphne, the disgruntled dive bar waitress, Rudy, the bar's overworked owner, and Howard the mailman, who's misplaced all of the letters addressed to Santa after one too many cocktails.
This year, the experience is bigger than ever, taking over The Truman Brewery in Brick Lane, and includes brand-new rooms and spaces including a hectic mailroom, Santa’s ‘Grotto’, a shrine dedicated to the Queen of Christmas, Mariah Carey, and a festive themed beer can bowling alley.
Throughout the night, guests can sip on festive tipples from HUMBUG’s ‘Naughty or Nice’ cocktail menu including the ‘Bah F*****g Humbug’, which comes with a mince pie on top, before refuelling in the spacious outdoor courtyard where they can tuck into a full menu of festive-themed street food from Bang Bang Burger.
Photo: Grant Walker
Santa’s been working overtime for centuries and he’s hit breaking point so, of course, he’s back at his favourite dive bar where Christmas cheer (and booze) is available on tap. Along with some of Santa’s closest friends, guests will be tasked with bringing their Christmas A-game, ready to help the big man get his groove back and, as long as they do, everyone will be rewarded with an epic party complete with confetti canons, merriment and festive surprises.
Photos: Grant Walker
📍 Brick Lane 💰 From £25.00
🕒 14th November - 31st December 2024 🎟️ Book via humbugchristmas.co.uk
PHantom Peak's Wintermas
Photo: Alistair Veryard
Hot on the heels of its excellent Halloween season, the town of Phantom Peak will once again be getting a festive makeover for its Christmas offering, Wintermas. Continuing the show's ongoing story, this festive version of the platypus-obsessed mining town will have 10 brand-new festive trails for guests to complete.
Last year's Wintermas saw the return of demigod Father Platmas, who vowed to take down JONACO following their imprisonment in a make-shift jail during Phantom Peak's first Wintermas. Mayor Pocket, who had just been re-elected, cordoned off a large part of town around Father Platmas' Grotto and a Defence Centre was erected to try and keep them at bay - a plan that ultimately failed. The specifics of what's in store this Wintermas are still under wraps, but it's safe to assume that the town will be on high alert for the return of the man in purple.
To finish all the trails on offer at Phantom Peak you'll need at least two visits, but a one-off trip is still a great experience, with the various storylines you complete throughout the 4-hour long experience all getting wrapped up neatly during the closing ceremony.
Photos: Alistair Veryard
Step into Phantom Peak's one-of-a-kind Wintermas celebrations, where festive fun meets the usual adventures and mystery of town. Join Mayor Pocket, Dr Winter, and all of your favourite townsfolk as we present a season full of surprises, schemes, shivers, and secrets - a season where the town itself faces the biggest challenge yet.
Phantom Peak is a family-friendly experience, and the free-roaming, experience-at-your-own-pace design of the show means you can take a break from the storylines at any time and pick them back up without missing anything. There's a string of additional activities on offer beside the trails, including carnival games, Afternoon Tea, Father Platmas Grotto visits and the Wintermas Puzzle Hunt for those looking to pack their visit full of extra festive cheer.
📍 Canada Water 💰 From £42.00
🕒 21st November 2024 - 19th January 2025 🎟️ Book via phantompeak.com
The Great Christmas Feast - An Immersive Dining Experience
Photo: The Lost Estate
The Great Christmas Feast is one of London's immersive dining mainstays. Now entering its seventh year, the show is quickly become many people's annual tradition - and for good reason. It's Christmas Eve 1894, and Charles Dickens is opening the doors to his home to guests - this immersive production of A Christmas Carol is famed for its world-class storytelling and excellent menu.
Guests will tuck into a three-course meal designed by Ashley Clarke that's described as a 'love letter to Christmas in Victorian London'. From Smithfield Pressing or Spiced Beets Terrine for starters and Confit Gressingham Duck or Devon Tart for your main, the meal is rounded off with Twelfth Night Cake. Additionally, there's a selection of Victorian-inspired cocktails on offer including the legendary Smoking Bishop, Pear Tree Cup, and the House Punch.
Alex Phelps (Shakespeare’s Globe) stars as Charles Dickens in the immersive show that's seen critical-acclaim and sold-out performances for the last five years. You'll see Scrooge, Tiny Tim and the Ghosts of Christmas come to life around you through the course of the 3-hour show.
Christmas Eve. Charles Dickens – writer, performer, occasional magician – is preparing his famous annual feast at his home near Regents Park. This year is very different. Charles has spent months stalking the City at midnight; locked in his study, weeping and gaffawing at who knows what; ushering vast theatrical machines into his home amid the pre-dawn light. Tonight, you, and his other guests, will discover why. Tonight, ‘A Christmas Carol’, the greatest festive tale ever told, will be born.
📍 West Kensington 💰 From £135.00
🕒 1st November 2024 - 12th January 2025 🎟️ Book via christmasfeast.thelostestate.com
Dead Hard - Immersive Christmas Drag Panto
Photo: Yippee Theatre
Brand new immersive theatre company, Yippee Theatre, will debut their first production this festive season at COLAB Tower on South Bank. Dead Hard is an immersive drag pantomime, which will lovingly send up the long-debated Christmas classic, Die Hard (which is 100% a Christmas film by the way!).
The show will see Hands Grubber and John McClean facing off against each other over the course of 150 minutes. Expect plenty of lip-sync battles, thrilling heist scenes, and unexpected romantic moments, all set to a soundtrack that will have you singing along.
Photos: Yippee Theatre
Audiences will follow fabulous drag queen Hands Grubber and the daring John McClean. Join John as they journey from being a gym bro to exploring their sexuality through a series of explosive encounters and comedic twists. All set against the backdrop of a Christmas party gone wrong, this production pushes the boundaries of traditional pantomime through a completely immersive environment. Taking on the role of the antagonist, Hands Grubber is Toby Osmond (Game of Thrones, Summerland) who will perform alongside their counterpart, Alex Dowding (NewsRevue, Jack and the Beanstalk) as John McClean. Calum Robshaw (East 15 Acting School, Boomtown Festival) is multi-rolling as Theo/Neo when siding with Grubber and as Holly, McClean’s wife. Jacqui Bardelang (The Nevers, BATSU!) appears as Towel in this riotous parody of a Christmas tale!
📍 London Bridge 💰 From £32.00
🕒 10th December 2024 - 12th January 2025 🎟️ Book via colabtheatre.co.uk
Viola’s Room – A Christmas Tale
While Punchdrunk's latest show, Viola's Room, may have been running since May at the company's Woolwich headquarters, it's had a festive re-theme ahead of its final performances on 23rd December. Based on Barry Pain's gothic short story, The Moon Slave, Viola's Room invites guests to explore a maze of rooms and passageways barefoot, while listening to Helena Bonham Carter’s narration through headphones.
Over the course of 45 minutes, visitors follow the story of Princess Viola, a teenage girl who finds herself drawn to the centre of a hedge maze one evening and compulsively dances for hours on end after surrendering her free will to the Moon. It's a wonderfully moody and atmospheric experience which is unlike anything else on offer in London.
From 20 November through to the end of the run, Viola’s Room will undergo a festive transformation with the launch of Viola’s Room: A Christmas Tale. Featuring Christmas music alongside other seasonal twists, visitors will be able to experience a different version of Punchdrunk’s intimate, linear immersive tale. An audio-driven journey through a moonlit fever dream. Barefoot and wearing headphones, audiences feel their way through a labyrinthine installation as an unseen narrator reveals a story of innocence lost and obsession unleashed. Written by Booker Prize-shortlisted Daisy Johnson, Viola’s Room reimagines a classic gothic mystery for a new audience. It distils two decades of Punchdrunk’s immersive practice into an intimate sensory adventure that promises to infuse the dreams of anyone who dares to follow the light.
Photo: Julian Abrams/Punchdrunk
📍 Woolwich 💰 From £28.50
🕒 20th November - 23rd December 2024 🎟️ Book via punchdrunk.com
Jury Games: Death at the Office Christmas Party
Photo: Jury Games
Jury Games were born in the midst of the 2020 lockdowns. The brainchild of Tom Black, Joe Ball, Edward Andrews and Ellie Russo, the Zoom-based immersive experience invited attendees to become jury members, who were asked to look over the evidence, talk to suspects and deliberate over their final verdict.
With the show becoming a runaway success that ran throughout the pandemic, it later transferred to Theatre Deli near Aldgate for a real-life version. Throughout December on select dates, players can take on Death at the Office Christmas Party, a slightly sillier, festive version of a typical Jury Games show.
Over the course of 90 minutes, you'll be reviewing physical evidence, sworn statements, and CCTV footage, as well as interrogating a couple of hungover suspects, to try and get to the bottom of what happened at the office Christmas party in which the company's CEO was found dead.
The high-flying CEO of a ride-sharing app dropped dead at his office Christmas party last night. Police suspect foul play but have little to go on. The room was full of witnesses, but can you distinguish the useless gossip from the crucial leads? By comparing CCTV evidence and witness statements with information you can get by questioning two very hungover eyewitnesses, you have a chance of putting together the pieces of last night. Was the boss's sudden death an accident? And if it wasn't, who's to blame?
Photo: Jury Games
📍 Aldgate 💰 From £41.65
🕒 6th - 21st December 2024 🎟️ Book via jurygames.com
Once Upon a Kingswood Christmas
Returning for its second year at Kingswood Arts in Sydenham Hill, Once Upon A Kingswood Christmas is an immersive promenade show designed with families in mind. Running between 45-50 minutes long, the experience takes visitors through several beautiful sets, as characters welcome them into a bespoke Christmas Tale in which they need to help Bella find the Fairtyale Alliance, rescue Father Christmas from the clutches of the Snow Queen and save the festive season.
The show has been created by Cerebrum Entertainment, who have previously created immersive experiences for the likes of Warner Bros, New Line Cinema, Amazon Prime and Paramount+.
Photo: Cerebrum Entertainment
Delve into the magical world of 'Once Upon a Kingswood Christmas' and embark on a journey that will spark wonder and joy in the hearts of both young and old. Our show is a celebration of love, family, and the true spirit of Christmas. Immerse yourself in a captivating tale that will transport you to a winter wonderland like no other. Let your imagination soar as you discover the origins, traditions, and joyous inspirations behind this new and exciting Christmas Fairytale. With every moment you spend, you'll be captivated, amazed, and filled with the warmth of the holiday season.
Photos: Cerebrum Entertainment
📍 Kingswood Arts, Sydenham Hill 💰 From £20.00 (Group of 4 for £60.00)
🕒 14th - 24th December 2024 🎟️ Book via onceuponachristmas.uk
For the latest news and updates on all things immersive in London, follow us on Instagram 🎅
Comentários