‘Noticeable booing' – is the ‘atrocious' Elvis Evolution this summer's Willy Wonka experience?
Age: New this week.
Appearance: Up to 12 shows a day at Excel London, until December.
What is it? A 'first of its kind' production, according to its creators, 'celebrating the life and work of Elvis Presley.'
Celebrating it how? With a 'walk-through experience' combining 'cutting-edge digital technology, live actors and musicians, mind-blowing multimedia and heart-pounding music'.
So is it holograms of Elvis and that? Not exactly, no.
Can you be more specific? You really have to see it to describe it, and that will set you back at least £75.
At least? VIP tickets are more like £300.
And what have the people who have seen it said? Different things.
Like what? 'Absolutely atrocious,' was the assessment of one attender.
Not quite two thumbs up, then. 'It was a shambles from start to finish, there was no Elvis; it was just a video of him that you could watch on YouTube,' a VIP ticket holder told the BBC.
Oh dear. Then again, some fans seem to have really enjoyed it, with one saying she 'loved every minute'.
What about the reviews? Decidedly mixed. The Telegraph gave it one star and described it as 'a limp assembly of video, actors, a live band and indifferently recreated sets'. Time Out was much more positive, giving it three stars, but also alluding to 'a noticeable amount of booing'.
How do you explain the discrepancy? It appears to be a matter of expectations. When the show was announced last year, the creators, Layered Reality, suggested it would use AI and holographic projection to create a lifesize digital Elvis, leading to obvious comparisons with the hugely successful virtual reality extravaganza Abba Voyage.
But it's nothing of the kind? 'We ultimately took the creative decision not to mimic Elvis's performances,' said a company spokesperson. 'Instead, we use AI to upscale archive footage.'
What does that mean? Reviews suggest they have dressed up some footage from Elvis's 1968 comeback TV special and built a show around it (which includes visits to three separate themed bars selling expensive drinks).
Sounds more like an escape room. Some visitors have drawn comparisons to that Willy Wonka experience fiasco in Glasgow last year.
Is it really that bad? They certainly have a problem on their hands. On Sunday, the show had to be stopped after an audience member who allegedly kept shouting 'This is bollocks!' was dragged from the venue by security.
Do say: 'We're caught in a trap – we can't walk out.'
Don't say: 'Elvis has left the building.'
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24 minutes ago
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'I went to Elvis Evolution to see if it's as bad as everyone's been saying'
Since opening at London Excel last Friday, Layered Reality's Elvis Experience show has been torn to shreds by punters, who have complained about the visual effects and the cost of tickets "It makes me feel sick." Not the most glowing of reviews from Ann, a pensioner who opted to leave the Elvis Evolution experience as soon as the mind-bending, sound-warping, completely Elvis-free first half had finished. Since opening at London Excel last Friday, the show has been torn to shreds by punters like Ann, who had been expecting to see a hologram of the King, only to settle for a selfie with a cardboard cutout. One pensioner was so irate at the steep ticket price he was dragged from the venue after shouting 'b****cks' over the live finale. A tough opening week then for Layered Reality, a London-based events company that combines "the latest in performance technology with live actors and feature quality sets" to produce "the future of entertainment", or so its website says at least. When I visited Elvis Evolution on the grey Wednesday afternoon after its opening, I was taken on a "unique immersive" ride into the world of Elvis. It was just more the parts when he was stuck in a Las Vegas penthouse suite, blasting his mind apart with a diet of nightly shows, hamburgers and Quaaludes, than the bit when he was hot and good at performing. It begins in a 50s-style diner-come-holding pen, where guests are invited to arrive early to enjoy a £10 King and Tonic or a Paramount Pretzel. "They've run out of ice cream, so the Pepsi Floats are off," Cambridge man Carl told me. He'd had to schlep over the Thames on the IFS Cloud Cable Car from Greenwich after discovering the official car park was closed. Having had a good moan about the prices as we queued for the first of about ten times that afternoon, we shuffled into the first scene - a recreation of Elvis's dressing room - and then around it for about 20 minutes. A generous timeslot, given the room was about as faithful a creation of the 50s as the (admittedly incredible) OK Diner on the A1. And then the lights dim and the conceit begins. A washed-up Elvis is refusing to leave his dressing room and hit the stage for his iconic 1968 NBC Comeback Special. A distressed show manager tells us not to worry, the King will be out soon, and that security guards are on site both for our and the staff's safety. A little on the nose, given the pensioner dragging that took place just days ago. Shockingly, the stage manager is wrong. Elvis doesn't actually appear for the entire duration of the show, aside from in short projected clips of old performances, briefly recreated as an uncanny AI figurine and, at one weird point, as a comic book superhero. After tempting punters with a hologram Presley just like ABBA Voyage down the road, Layered Reality made the 'creative decision not to mimic Elvis's performances' with the tech. 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Or in this case, performing for a visibly bored crowd of pensioners, some of whom have spent up to £300 on VIP passes that get you three "free" drinks and a seat in the finale performance. The actors gave it their all and were the best thing about the show. But they were fighting a losing battle. The script is bad, the effects are weird, and the sound is not quite ear-splitting enough to mask their Mississippi via London accents. We are likely to get more and more of this kind of thing as the film industry continues its contraction and immersive events take over. According to Gensler Research Institute's 2025 Immersive Entertainment & Culture Industry Report, the global market for immersive entertainment was valued at £98bn - and it's projected to reach £351bn by 2030. Elvis Evolution has been likened to the catastrophic Wonka and Bridgerton experiences, but that's a little unfair. Layered Reality has certainly thrown some cash, time and expertise at the event, it's just not enough. The show comes to a climax in a small auditorium where groups of elderly people (who clearly have trouble keeping on their feet but only paid £75 for the cheapest tickets) are ushered into the standing pen, while the VIPs enjoy cinema seats at the back. As has been widely reported elsewhere, Elvis does not appear here as expected. He is beamed onto a flat screen behind a live band, who are pretending to play. It's a limp way to finish things off, yet it gets people dancing, clapping and smiling for the first time. It always seemed to me that Elvis was great in spite of his corny origin story, the cringeworthy PR ops he was pressured into and his vast back catalog of sickly sweet love songs. He was great because of his incredible musical talent, which stayed with him until the very end, when he was still able to summon choirs of angels from his broken, slug-like body. Layered Reality probably should've realised this, cut out most of the bells and whistles, and actually hired an Elvis to sing a few of his tunes. A spokesperson for the company said: 'Elvis Evolution has been praised by Elvis fans and newcomers alike — but it's not a traditional concert or hologram show. From the outset of development, we made a deliberate decision to explore the most powerful and authentic ways to tell Elvis' story. "This major scale production brings together a cast of 28 performers and over 300 skilled professionals across design, production, and visual effects. "Elvis Evolution is a multisensory experience, where technology plays a powerful supporting role — but the show doesn't attempt to recreate Elvis' performances. Instead, it joyfully celebrates the ones he gave us. We're incredibly proud of what's been created, and of how it's reconnecting people with Elvis in new and meaningful ways.'
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