Dead Quiet

Finding the unsigned entrance at the venue is the first challenge, but that overcome, you step into 1962 in the basement archives of Kensington library. The Cold War is raging and the Cuban Missile Crisis is unfolding. Gwendolyn Radcliffe, a young librarian, has been put in charge of the lecture to be given by Esteban Moreno on Cuban music rhythms. The lecture is interrupted by a scruffy drunken man, who is found dead less than an hour later. Gwen spent the rest of her life trying to work out what happened, and before she died, discovered that a CIA agent died in a library in the same year. Could the scruffy man really be that agent?

Immer-City have produced another fantastic evening’s entertainment. There is something electrifying in roaming around the shadowy basement through the stacks as we follow characters crafted by the actors with an incredible level of detail. It’s an apparently effortless flow of random interactions which provide clues and red herrings alike, the seamless staging of which is a wonder of organisational planning.

Then it’s back to the auditorium to confer with your team and compare theories, before going out again to question each character. The teams are loosely allocated, and the excitement of testing the characters’ answers soon brings everyone together before the solution is revealed. The whole experience is so engaging, whether you were right is the least important part of the evening. Entrancing.
At Kensington Central Library until 15 February 2020.