IMMERSIVE ENTERTAINMENT WILL GET DANGEROUS

YOU CAN BE ‘IN’ ‘STRANGER THINGS’, ‘JURASSIC PARK’, ‘SQUID GAME’ ET AL… BUT WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO?

It used to be that the depth of a film or TV show’s penetration into the culture was measured by whether a junior minister tried to work in a laboured gag about it during a Commons debate about SureStart centres. Now the immersive theatre spin-off is the surest sign of a proper hit. Peaky Blinders: The Rise puts you in the deeply stressful position of consigliere to Tommy Shelby. Shrek’s Adventure gobbles up the unwary on the South Bank. Mamma Mia! The Party will outlive us all. Of late, though, things have rather taken a turn. The new fandom is loving a show or film so much that you’re glad to witness your own destruction by its bad guys.

If you’re around London from August onwards, you’ll also be able to whisk yourself off to Isla Nublar — well, the ExCel Centre — and hot-foot it away from a T-Rex at Jurassic World: The Exhibition, or to Hawkins, Indiana (read: Brent Cross) for Stranger Things: The Experience. T-shirts and painstakingly edited fancams of David Harbour aren’t enough anymore. Launching yourself, bodily, into an environment where the fun is predicated on everything wanting to kill you — including the drama graduate with the thousand-yard stare making sure your hour slot doesn’t overrun — is the least you can do for your favourite show now.

But it gets better — by which we mean worse. The even-more adventurous can now head to Riyadh for a Squid Game immersive-theatre experience (remember! No pre-show sharpeners!), and even more exciting — by which we mean terrifying — is the Squid Game reality-television show, currently recruiting cocksure British contestants who believe that they could definitely dodge the giant doll’s bullets and give those pink-trackied guards the slip. Given we are still having nightmares about, well, Knightmare, this might be a step too far (into an admittedly now-shonky-looking CGI hole — but it seemed so real at the time!). tn

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