The Gunpowder Plot: The Immersive Experience opens next month at the Tower Vaults, with Tom Felton guiding visitors through the notorious scheme. Creative director Hannah Price tells Anna James how the show recreates 1605 London’s Guy trouble.

Over the years, the Tower Vaults, next to the Tower of London, have housed an eclectic array of ventures from a tea warehouse to a fast-food joint and an underground theme-park ride. From next month, it will send audiences right into the middle of one of the most notorious plots in British history.

The Gunpowder Plot: The Immersive Experience is a collaboration between Layered Reality and Historic Royal Palaces, the charity that oversees the running of six palaces, including the Tower of London, Kensington Palace and Hampton Court.

This is not HRP’s first foray into immersive shows. Its research and development team has been exploring potential collaborations for a while, most recently with a Covid-shortened run of United Queendom, working with Les Enfants Terribles at Kensington Palace.

To tell the story behind the 1605 attempt to assassinate James I by blowing up the Houses of Parliament, HRP has come together with Layered Reality, formerly known as dotdotdot. The company, which brings together live theatre with digital technology, emerged on the immersive scene with 2018’s Somnai. It followed that with The War of the Worlds: The Immersive Experience, which opened in May 2019 and – after the enforced break due to lockdown – is still going strong on Leadenhall Street.

Overseeing The Gunpowder Plot is creative director Hannah Price, a freelance theatre, film and virtual reality director, as well as founder of Theatre Uncut, which creates and supports political theatre. “I’m lucky enough that lots of different sides of stuff I’m really interested in have all come together on this project,” she says. “We’ve been able to really explore all kinds of things: ambisonic sound, binaural sound, projection mapping, facial projection, virtual reality…” But among all this technology, the team has been keen to ensure that the show remains, at its heart, all about storytelling. 

Price was brought on board in late 2019, as HRP and Layered Reality were developing ideas. The Gunpowder Plot was selected from the options but then put on pause when the pandemic hit, finally going into workshops last summer. The team wasn’t able to break ground on the nearly 25,000 sq ft of site until last November. Before they could start recreating the world of London in 1605, there were 300 tonnes of concrete to remove from the former Tower Hill Pageant ride, as well as fridges left over from the McDonald’s that occupied the space that the show’s entrance and bar now exists in. And then there were the dead rats to clear.

All of this is a far cry from the now fully accessible, purpose-build immersive space that houses nearly 300 speakers, 18 projectors and 24,000 individually controlled LED lighting pixels. Not to mention the 55 3D printed candles, or the smells, rain and other surprises that emerge during the experience. “We owe a debt to all the people who have done this type of immersive work before us,” Price says. “I go to all those things and try to learn as much as I can, but I haven’t seen quite as much technology in an experience. Virtual reality does allow us to go somewhere really physical and immediate. We joke that we hope it’s the most immersive immersive.”

The site’s history came with another hurdle, aside from concrete and rats: it is partially grade II listed, which means that severe restrictions are placed on what can be moved or altered. The top floor of the vaults is a shopping centre and a plaque there says: “The site was originally known as St Katherine’s Rents, bestowed in 1370 upon the Royal Hospital at St Katherine’s by the Tower.” 

But the vaults, as they exist now, were built by the Mazawattee Tea Company in 1864. Its warehouse stood above ground and was destroyed in the Blitz. In 1991, a “dark ride” called the Tower Hill Pageant was produced on the site but was not a commercial success. The top floor then became the Tower Vaults Shopping Centre, and the rest of the site, now home to The Gunpowder Plot, hasn’t been accessible since the ride closed 20 years ago.

’The aim is to make people feel they’re there in a way they can believe’

“The vaults are almost like another character,” Price says. “Some of the walls in there, they’re not even quite sure how old they are, and we have to be really careful. There are walls that we are literally not allowed to touch. But you can’t really feel any more involved in a story from 1605 than standing in a place where some of those people could have been right there.” Or at least nearby.

The key players in the plot ended up a stone’s throw away in the Tower itself after their capture, and the show’s narrative opens here after an out-of-world briefing that explains how the virtual reality works and what audiences should do if they need assistance. Actors are supported by hidden tablets where they communicate to their colleagues and stage management (observing via 128 CCTV cameras), and can give live updates on attendees who are particularly keen, nervous, young or drunk. The hour and 45-minute show then takes groups of up to 16 on a promenade-style adventure featuring three scenes of VR and six live actors per show.

With groups entering every 10 minutes, it’s been quite the task for writer Danny Robins. A comedian and podcaster, he’s perhaps currently best known in theatre for writing 2:22 – A Ghost Story. “Because we’ve got particular timings to fit the space, it was a bit more like a writers’ room,” Price says. “Although Danny’s 100% responsible for how it all came together. We have to cover off the practicalities of the VR and resets and cleaning, and moving audiences, without damaging the narrative, which I think he’s really excelled at.”

HRP has been involved at every step of the way. Its creative consultant, Tim Powell, is a producer, and curator Alden Gregory has been on hand for historical accuracy. Although they gave some unexpected advice when it came to sticking exactly to the real details versus audience expectation. “Some stuff is not what you’d imagine,” Price says. “Alden talked brilliantly about helping people access history, and how people are informed by a cultural idea of what history is. So, for example, we see wood panelling in every period drama, but at the time a lot of that would actually have been painted very bright colours. But if you saw that, you wouldn’t necessarily think you were in 1605, you’d think it was wrong. The aim is to make people feel they’re there in a way they can believe.”

While some creative licence has been granted for storytelling, mainly around streamlining and amalgamating timelines for maximum excitement, the story is firmly rooted in actual history. “HRP have been very generous with us,” Price says. ‘They wanted us to understand and reflect the complexity of it, so people can learn and experience history in a new way, while also making sure we were telling the story through character and keeping it exciting and buoyant and all the things you want from an immersive experience.”

‘If the plotters had succeeded, there would have been a kilometre-wide blast zone in the middle
of London’ 

Audiences will meet Guy Fawkes himself, played by Tom Felton, who played Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter film series, as part of the pre-recorded VR scenes. The show doesn’t shy away from the political nature of the story, and is keen to get audiences thinking, asking them to decide which side they’re on: “We’re so used to the idea of Guy Fawkes and Bonfire Night as being kind of jolly,” Price says. “But when you look at it – it would have been a kilometre-wide blast zone in the middle of London if they’d succeeded.

“Guy Fawkes has become a bit of a folk hero, but we ask questions around that – where do you sit on what he was trying to achieve and the methods he was using? We felt it was important that was reflected because this was a real period of time, and real ramifications happened to real people. I hope audiences have an epic, exhilarating time and have an experience they can’t get anywhere else, but I also hope they have a look at that central question at the heart of the story – what would they have done?”

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The Gunpowder Plot: The Immersive Experience runs at the Tower Vaults, London, from May 6. For full details. visit gunpowderimmersive.com

Source: thestage.co.uk

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