Secret Cinema: Casino Royale

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 22^nd 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.