Layered Reality and Historic Royal Palaces have teamed up to create a Gunpowder Plot experience, opening in May 2022 at the Tower Vaults, next to the Tower of London.
Launching on May 6, The Gunpowder Plot is billed as the biggest attraction to open in London since The Shard. Tickets for the experience are available from November 16.
Featuring live actors, virtual reality (VR) and multisensory special effects, The Gunpowder Plot takes audiences back in time to 1605. Guests have an active role to play.
Set in a purpose-designed theatre space in the Tower Vaults, the location-based experience (LBE) is led by Layered Reality (formerly known as dotdotdot), creators of Jeff Wayne’s The War of the Worlds: The Immersive Experience.
High-tech Guy Fawkes attraction
Layered Reality attractions offer large-scale sets and actors, as well as technology such as VR, projection mapping, ambisonics and multisensory SFX, and physical sensations including temperature, scent, taste, touch and sound.
“So when you’re stepping back into 1605, all of your senses are telling you that you’re there,” said Layered Reality CEO Andrew McGuinness.
“Your eyes are seeing London as it was in 1605, you get the smells, you will for the first time see the Tower of London how it looked in 1605, and you’ll go down the Thames and see it as it was at that time. That’s what makes it so magical.”
Instead of observing as the action unfolds, audiences are “right in the heart of the story”, said Hannah Price, creative director at Layered Reality.
Guests travel back in time to 1605
“You get to go undercover in the most infamous plot in history and you are at the centre of it and absolutely active in finding out what is happening and meeting all those famous players that were part of that extraordinary period of history,” Price said.
“It’s like somebody made a brilliant movie version of the Gunpowder Plot and it came to life around you and exploded in your face with bits of Jacobean London flying at you,” said writer Danny Robins.
The attraction is historically accurate, with research by Alden Gregory of Historic Royal Palaces. “Ultimately my role is making sure that what we do will be rooted in its history and in a sense of authenticity,” Gregory said.
