At
Charing Cross Station, London, there's a gathering of people wearing
blue and teal in their clothes. I'm one of them, in a black tuxedo
with teal tie and pocket square. This is no coincidence: they, myself
included, have each followed specific instructions and have arrived
at the London train station to meet their contact. Mine is a woman
carrying teal peonies. I can't see her, but the group are being
stewarded by professional looking types, down a road, to the
rendezvous point: a large warehouse, emblazoned with the name Casino
Royale.
It's
Sunday 22nd September, and we're her for the Secret Cinema event, which
promises to be a fully immersive cinematic experience. It's a
birthday present from my sister, who, along with her boyfriend, are
joining me on the event. We're chaperoned through to the entrance, where our phones
are sealed in electromagnetically-locked pouches so we can't take any
pictures. We find our contact, who is in the midst of explaining the
mission brief to the Teal Team. She starts over as more people
arrive. The low-down: We're tracking a spy called Margot Delacroix,
recently seen in Venice. We expect she's travelling to Montenegro.
We'll receive more information at the next rendezvous.
We're
brought into a dimly it room where our Peony Woman reminds us we
should have our secret identities and backstories prepared. (To prepare for the
event, following the site's instructions, I created an identity
called Jericho Barton, a trust-fund socialite. Jericho invented an
app called Videosuite, a video editing tool for mobile phones, and
worked out a deal with the Google Play store. He's living off the
royalties for the moment.) We're encouraged to introduce each other
and get to know our teammates, under our new guises. I dish out a few
of these I had made.
One
of the audience is brought on stage, where Peony Woman asks him his
'name,' and his reason for coming to Casino Royale. As he begins to
answer- he's here to meet someone- a shot fires out and he hits the
deck. A rope ladder appears from the ceiling and we hear a helicopter
noise, and a man in black charges on stage and scrambles up into the
darkness above the room and we're quickly ushered into the next area.
It
seems the interviewee was not an audience member at all. Well played.
The
lowdown: A group of terrorist financiers are meeting at Casino
Royale. There's a table reserved- we need to know who this is for. As
we're led into the next section of the building- made to look like an
MI6 office, walls lined with flat-screens awash with pulsing green
data- we're told we believe Margo is in Miami. We need to know what
she's doing there. We're led through to another section, and we're
transported into 'Miami Airport.' Plasterboard walls are adorned with
LCD flight boards and holiday ads, and a large model aeroplane hangs from
the ceiling. The sounds of planes landing and Tannoy
announcements fill the air. We're listening to the guide's
instructions (these are admittedly already a little hard to hear)
when sporadic bursts of gunfire interrupt (through overhead speakers)
and a man with a briefcase charges full pelt through the crowd.
Security guards order us down to the ground and, after another shot,
the running man tumbles to the floor. Alarms blare and we're quickly
ushered out of the airport and across an overhead metal walkway into
a room with corrugated iron walls and bongo players, where an African
dancer and a singer perform in a cordoned-off square ring. They make
way for 2 shredded semi-naked black men who mime a bare-knuckle
fight, suplexing each other into the sawdust. We buy a drink at one
stall- their cocktail menu suggests we're somewhere tropical now- and
we buy a code from a man at another stall. We'll need this later.
There's food available, as the event turns out to be somewhat of an
epic experience. They don't want you running out of energy.
Before
long we're ushered over a walkway that looks down on the area we've
been standing in, where another crowd have arrived in our place. This
leads to a brick-walled basement with an Aston Martin DB5 behind
thick protective glass, flat-screen monitors with pulsing green data
displays, and an 'MI-6 operative' who requires the code we bought
from the stall attendant. Once inputted, we're led through to the
actual casino- my memory of this section gets very blurry, as does my
notetaking- where someone is playing an electric guitar. From there
we're led to the cinema's seating area where there's a huge screen
and space between us and it for a stage, furnished with a baccarat
table. With a pop, movie
money and glitter fall from the ceiling, and the film begins.
The
Secret Cinema performance doesn't end there though, as actors chosen
and tailored to mirror the on-screen characters walk on stage and
behind the screen, sometimes in front of it, matching the entrance
and action of on-screen characters. Sports cars, henchmen and Bond
girls all take their part. Mercifully, the torture scene wasn't replicated.
The
run of Casino Royale events has now ended, and we agreed to keep
quiet about this, hence our phones being locked at the entrance and
the delay on the release of this blog post. It was intricately
planned, exquisitely tailored and designed, great fun and well worth
the trip down south. Stranger things is the next franchise to get the
Secret Cinema treatment. Prior to this I understand Baz Luhrmann's
William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet was the subject matter brought
to life.
No comments:
Post a Comment