Peaky Blinders: The Rise by Immersive Octopus (London)

➕ The set was excellent. Peaky Blinders: The Rise took place at the Camden Garrison – a suitably grungy underworld setting that was beautifully and thoroughly transformed for the occasion. The set was lavish and a joy to explore. There was a wealth of detail, and the whole thing is thoroughly immersive, from the fully-functioning bar to the betting shop and cabaret club.

➕ The staging of key events also deserves a mention. The show excelled at creating spectacular moments. spectacular entrances, special effects, actors on multiple levels making excellent use of the space. The whole thing is an extremely well put-together

➕ It’s a fun evening out. You can enjoy most of this experience with a drink in hand. There’s music and dancing, and the actors give it their all. Even if all you do is go and hang out in the tavern, it’s still a fun and immersive way to spend an evening.

➖ The dancing felt forced and awkward. At various points, the characters crack out modern pop songs and try to get the audience to dance. One or two people in the audience loved this. The vast majority, however, seemed uncomfortable with being asked to dance alongside trained and choreographed professionals in front of a crowd.

These moments were too brief (they rarely lasted longer than a minute) to be enjoyable to people who enjoy dancing, and had a weird forced-fun vibe to them.

➖ Most of the interactivity is meaningless. There are plenty of moments where actors interact with you, give you missions, ask favours of you, or entrust you with important-seeming information. However, as the show goes on it becomes increasingly clear that none of this actually matters or makes a difference to anything.

For example, you’re given a small wad of bank notes at the start of the show, and told that if you can turn this seed fund into a much larger amount (by trading with other audience members, betting on races, interacting with characters, etc) you’ll be in line to be promoted to an important role in the Shelby gang.

A small number of people accomplished this feat… and were vaguely gestured at and given a round of applause at the very end of the show. That was it – the promised promotion never materialised, and meant nothing. The whole money game had been pointless busywork.

At another point we were asked to transcribe and deliver a message from one character to another. This was exciting. We were thrilled to be given a job, to be trusted with something useful… and we were delighted by the idea that our task might affect something that happened in the ongoing story unfolding around us. What if we failed to find the correct recipient? What if we didn’t get the message to them on time?

In the end, we did find the intended recipient… who glanced at the note, shoved it in a pocket, thanked us, and then never acted on the note. This piece of interactivity was again just a bit of busywork to make us feel like we were part of the story.

And that was the main issue with Peaky Blinders: The Rise as an immersive production. Nothing you do matters. And that’s not a problem… except that the show’s marketing and the characters throughout constantly try to make it seem like what you do does matter.

The best way to enjoy Peaky Blinders: The Rise, therefore, is to not think of it as interactive. You’re there to watch, to soak up the lavishly detailed atmosphere, to have a drink and enjoy a multi-threaded piece of promenade theatre. You have no influence whatsoever on the action – so gamble your money away, do chores for the characters on request, follow who you find most interesting, and don’t concern yourself with actually trying to achieve anything, because you won’t be able to.