Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of the War of the Worlds
Produced by Layered Reality
Experienced in London, UK ~ 2024
By Eve Weston
The Experience & How it Works:
You arrive at a bar/restaurant and, when your group is called, head through a door. You’re told that you’re traveling back in time and soon enough, you find yourself seated in a theatre in 1898.
It’s a musical in the sense that there is a score playing throughout and it does sometimes have lyrics, however, it’s hard to hear it well enough to follow the lyrics. Really, this a show set to parts of a musical album. I was fortunate enough to have a big fan of Jeff Wayne’s musical in my group, so he explained it to me: the 1978 album was a big deal at the time, recorded with a lot of famous voices; it told the whole story of the War of the Worlds, set in Victorian England; the show that we were “currently” in was using much — but not all — of the album.
While the experience can be appreciated as unique and immersive without having heard the album, it became very clear that knowing both the album and the story would help immensely with being able to appreciate the experience and follow the story. For him, it was an imaginary world that he’d long lived in finally being brought to life — like a Harry Potter World for the boomer generation.
Why it’s Interesting, IMHO:
While I love musicals, I hadn’t really realized it had a “musical” element, despite it being in the full title. I’m glad I didn’t realize it, because while the show offers much, it doesn’t offer what most of us Broadway and West End fans have come to expect when we hear “musical,” so it was nice not to have those expectations.
What drew me to the show was the fact that it was an immersive narrative and that it had been recommended by a colleague. I was curious to see how London is doing immersive these days, and this show seems to be enjoying a significant run.
Another thing I realized only when procuring tickets is that, unlike a traditional theatre show, this show has multiple show times throughout the day. (So you can still catch a West End musical in the evening if you like.) It’s impressive that they have enough demand to keep it going. From a business model standpoint, the fact that the venue is also a bar and restaurant — which you can eat and drink in without attending the immersive experience — must also help.
Initial Impression & Critical Discussion:
This show uses an impressive variety of immersive technology, from projection on scrims to VR headsets synched with moving “vehicles.” The technology succeeds in exposing the audience to new worlds and experiences that would not otherwise be available to them in a real world performance space. Riding in the VR boat was well done and used rocking and splashing to great effect. The VR hot air ballon ride was neat and, like the boat, a nice way to convey movement and motion without needing the audience member to travel physically forward in space.
#Spoiler Ahead
The middle use of VR, the moment where the audience member is grabbed by the alien in the confessional, was really effective. It felt like there was a tentacle in the booth with me tapping me on the shoulder now and again. VR very effective because it mirrors the real space, so when you look around, there’s nothing there, even though there well could be something or someone present in the confessional in the real world.
Additionally, the use of the slide as an escape route from the alien robot was cool. It made sense given the aesthetics of the robot aliens and the slide. And it gave audience members the opportunity to do something as part of the immersive experience that they (as adults) rarely do in real life. It’s worth noting two things: (1) there was a woman in my group who was averse to slides and they did manage to accommodate her with an alternate route; (2) whether part of the original plan or something learned over the run of the show, the cast cleverly has you put your feet in a sack so that one’s shoes don’t stick to the slide and slow you down.
Technology & Romance
Interestingly, the main character and protagonist of the show’s love story is introduced through a projection on a scrim and only ever appears in digital experiences, including those in VR. Considering that the show does have real life performers, it raises the question of why the character that the audience arguably would most need to connect with and feel for is most remote. I wondered if having those characters be real would’ve made us feel more emotionally connected to the story.
I suppose it would have then been harder to incorporate the same characters into the VR experience; the casting wouldn’t be as flexible. However, it begs the question of whether that matters. Is it better to have a stronger emotional connection with characters in fewer scenes? Could the mini-narratives in the VR experiences be just as well served by characters in smaller roles? Could the romantic reunion be moved out of the final VR experience and into the physical location? Or maybe the better question is whether the evolution of technology will make this question moot. If we have access to quality mixed reality headsets—think Apple Vision Pro—can we enjoy the best of both worlds? The VR settings that take us into Victorian England and the emotional impact of live performers in front of us.
On the other hand, movies regularly make us feel emotionally connected to characters, even animated ones. And so, perhaps it’s not an issue of technology but of narrative execution that’s hindering the audience’s emotional investment. Clearly the writers have the ability to make us root for a couple. There was a really fun interaction early on in the show: a guard has taken us into the dining room of a house where he knows the staff and a great back-and-forth plays out between the guard and a maid. He wants her to want him to stay, and she wants him to stay but doesn’t want to tell him not to leave, and clearly they both want some time together without the audience there. After watching that scene and the engaging romantic tension, I was sad that the guard actually left and disappointed that their storyline never reappeared. Whereas I had a hard time rooting for the journalist and his love—even though I knew I was supposed to—I was absolutely rooting for the guard and the maid.
In fact, I was more emotionally impacted by the guard’s departure than by the alien attack which, after he left, seemed to have low stakes. No one that we knew or had any real connection to was in the room (in each room, we were passed off to a new performer) and while the show was wonderfully immersive, it was quite hard to really believe that we were in real danger. (I’m grateful for that; I wouldn’t have come if it were mean to scare like a haunted house.)
After the dining room scene, when we’ve moved into the next room, an alien inhabits the maid. I can’t help but wonder if we would’ve been more emotionally affected by that if someone who loved her (like the guard) were watching it happen. As Andrew Moskos of Boom! Chicago says, “A scene requires two people.”
Another factor worth considering when analyzing this scenario is that, as I always say when I teach television writing, “the best stories are relationship stories.” With the guard and the maid, there’s a conflict between two people; there’s a relationship problem that needs to be resolved. It’s a great set up for a story: their inability to communicate clearly about their feelings leads to misunderstanding and then one of them will need to take action to resolve the conflcit. With the journalist and his love, the story is ostensibly about their relationship, only it’s not. It’s about an alien attack getting in the way of two people who clearly love each other. There’s no conflict between the characters. There’s no “relationship story” only a thing that happens that separates two people in a relationship. “A story about people in a relationship” is not the same thing as “a relationship story” and the audience feels the difference.
In this show, the audience member travels back in time to experience the War of the Worlds. On this journey, the audience member travels linearly through space, however, as the experience went on, I realized that we were not traveling linearly through time. What we cover in just under two hours unfolds over months, at least. This was not made apparent as we entered the experience. There was no acknowledgement of traveling through time.
One could debate the impact that calling it out would have on the experience, however, since the experience is meant to be immersive and “feel real,” experiencing time passing at a faster rate without it being acknowledged feels a bit funny.
Experiential Viewpoint Expression (E.V.E.):
Embodied, 1st person visual, 1st person narrative, participant, mortal.
Note: It’s tempting to want to think of the posemperic POV as “robot deity” because you’re traveling through time (and having control over temporality is deity posemperic POV) but you don’t have control over whether or how you travel through time. So, what level of impact on how we experience the story/scene do we really have? We are traveling through time, and we don’t have control over how or whether we travel through time, but in real life, we never have control over how quickly we travel through time, so… mortal.
This is one of several experiences that raises the question of whether and how we might acknowledge what an experience affords (e.g., time travel, ability to be other characters) even if it’s not the level of impact we can have on the experience?
I mean, we never have control over how quickly we travel through time.
Story Anchor:
When aliens invade the Earth, YOU follow the instructions of various helpful citizens who are trying to make sure you get through unscathed, and then an alien being abducts you.
Pillars of Game:
Voluntary Participation — check!
Goal — to survive.
Rules — none of note; don’t touch the performers, follow instructions. (There are rules that govern the audience/performer relationship, but no significant rules that govern the audience-as-character’s behavior.)
Feedback — none of note; if you talk, performers will respond.
Conclusion: This is not a game. The “player” doesn’t really have any choice. It feels like some level of choice is needed for it to be a game. The feedback that’s given isn’t feedback to an attempt at accomplishing something. The rules don’t guide attempts toward accomplishing a goal. If you follow instructions, you will survive; that being said, if you don’t follow instructions, you will also survive.
Who Should Experience This?
Lovers of the War of the Worlds musical. Sci-Fi fans. Those curious to dip their toe into immersive in an experience that has a low level of interpersonal interactivity required.
