Review: Secret Cinema's Wishmas experience
Secret Cinema returns to London with Wishmas: a Yuletide immersive experience promising family-friendly, sugar-coated escapism
Secret Cinema presents Wishmas. Photo: Matt Crockett
Tucked away off a side street in Waterloo and away from London’s relentless grudge, sludge and gloom is the heavily sugar-coated, non-denominational delight that is Wishmas: an immersive festive experience.
BOOK HERE
What is that experience exactly? It’s being in a soft play CBeebies show with a Yuletide gleam. With big plastic colours and a whimsical plot, everything, even the performers, seems to emit a luminous neon glow.
Punters hobble in and out of a labyrinth of rooms ornamented with a kaleidoscope of scarlet and green, each of which has a designated activity. Spin a wheel, find the lost 'wishes' that the klutz of an elf, sorry wishmaker, as he calls himself, dropped on the way to the North Pole, with the help of digital reindeer.
Wishmas. Photo: Matt Crockett
Credit where credit’s due: the narrative is niftily constructed to knit it all together with the warmth of a novelty Christmas jumper even if it is equal parts silly, saccharine and sentimental. The inevitable cameo from a rosy-faced Kris Kringle as the crescendo cherry on top of the Christmas pudding gets the toddlers gawping with glee, as do the actors fully committing to the bit with delightfully infectious enthusiasm. Despite the efforts to mask it all in secularism, Santa does let slip a 'Christ' in wishing us a Merry Christmas. Oh well. It is his birthday after all.
Anyone over the age of 10 will likely groan at the pantomime frivolity of it all. Although there is a gag about blue baubles that may raise a parent or teenage sibling’s eyebrow. But look: anything that keeps kids’ eyes unglued from the iPad can’t be a bad thing – even if does set you up back around £29+ per head for the short, sharp, hour-long experience (and up to £79 for add-ons like a meet and greet with St Nick).
Wishmas. Photo: Matt Crockett
Adequately immersive details, from the lingering odour of burnt cinnamon to the endless piano music that could out-schmaltz a pre-pubescent Aled Jones, is at best cutesy and at worst a tad cloying. One wouldn’t expect anything less when the team behind Secret Cinema collaborate with Elgiva Field, a former Punchdrunk associate director, the theatre company world renounced for immersive productions. Is it worth £200 for a family of four? Probably not. But ‘tis the season for spending money. Fa-la-la-la-la!
Book soon before the tickets sell out!
Old Bauble Factory, Waterloo, London SE1 7AD. Until Sunday 7 January, various times.
BOOK HERE
What is that experience exactly? It’s being in a soft play CBeebies show with a Yuletide gleam. With big plastic colours and a whimsical plot, everything, even the performers, seems to emit a luminous neon glow.
Punters hobble in and out of a labyrinth of rooms ornamented with a kaleidoscope of scarlet and green, each of which has a designated activity. Spin a wheel, find the lost 'wishes' that the klutz of an elf, sorry wishmaker, as he calls himself, dropped on the way to the North Pole, with the help of digital reindeer.
Wishmas. Photo: Matt Crockett
Credit where credit’s due: the narrative is niftily constructed to knit it all together with the warmth of a novelty Christmas jumper even if it is equal parts silly, saccharine and sentimental. The inevitable cameo from a rosy-faced Kris Kringle as the crescendo cherry on top of the Christmas pudding gets the toddlers gawping with glee, as do the actors fully committing to the bit with delightfully infectious enthusiasm. Despite the efforts to mask it all in secularism, Santa does let slip a 'Christ' in wishing us a Merry Christmas. Oh well. It is his birthday after all.
Anyone over the age of 10 will likely groan at the pantomime frivolity of it all. Although there is a gag about blue baubles that may raise a parent or teenage sibling’s eyebrow. But look: anything that keeps kids’ eyes unglued from the iPad can’t be a bad thing – even if does set you up back around £29+ per head for the short, sharp, hour-long experience (and up to £79 for add-ons like a meet and greet with St Nick).
Wishmas. Photo: Matt Crockett
Adequately immersive details, from the lingering odour of burnt cinnamon to the endless piano music that could out-schmaltz a pre-pubescent Aled Jones, is at best cutesy and at worst a tad cloying. One wouldn’t expect anything less when the team behind Secret Cinema collaborate with Elgiva Field, a former Punchdrunk associate director, the theatre company world renounced for immersive productions. Is it worth £200 for a family of four? Probably not. But ‘tis the season for spending money. Fa-la-la-la-la!
Book soon before the tickets sell out!
Old Bauble Factory, Waterloo, London SE1 7AD. Until Sunday 7 January, various times.
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| What | Review: Secret Cinema's Wishmas experience |
| Nearest tube | Waterloo (underground) |
| When |
14 Nov 23 – 07 Jan 24, 10:00 AM – 8:00 PM |
| Price | £49 - £149 |
| Website | Click here to book |