Dead Hard
21 December 2024
Colab Tower
4.0 out of 5.0 stars
On to another raunchy Christmas show in the evening, Dead Hard is running at the glorious new Colab Tower, London’s first fully wheelchair accessible, DDA compliant immersive venue, until 12 Januart. The immersive Die Hard parody drag panto is a whirlwind of immersive action and hilarious performances.
The Bank Bar downstairs is perfectly themed as a bank vault, with lock boxes covering the walls, a vault displaying a plethora of gold bars and gems, and more gold bars decorating the bar. The roaring 20s aesthetic of the bar is subtle, but extremely welcoming. There’s plenty of space both inside as well as in the small courtyard outside. Upon arrival, attendees get treated to a wandering Holly McNotclean who is loudly entertaining and involving all her co-workers with gossip and chatter to prepare them for the upcoming company Christmas party, while a masked intruder sneaks around to recruit a crew for a heist. We’re lucky enough to be recruited, so while the rest of the audience heads up to the 30th floor of Nakablowme Tower (ignore that it says 5th floor, that’s an admin error in the lifts…) we’re led off to a side room to be briefed on what is going to happen. This short side-bar is hilarious, and extremely immersive where all five of us have to prove that we’re ready to take hostages and boost Hans Grubby’s ego.
Once we re-join the rest of the group to take them hostage, the show becomes a little less immersive and a whole lot more raunchy panto. While the audience is still encouraged to interact and shout back and forth with the actors, it’s mostly a seated experience at this point. However, this doesn’t stop it from being a laugh-out-loud ridiculous dragified version of the beloved Christmas film that makes fun of itself, and the immersive production, throughout an extremely entertaining show with audience participation.
While I personally wouldn’t call it fully immersive, it’s a brilliantly enjoyable festive show that’s a delight to attend. With a plethora of raunchy jokes, plenty of very adult humour, Dead Hard is a definite Yippie-Kay-YASS, don’t miss out on this one!
