£300 to see Elvis perform live? This immersive show is not worth a tenth of the price

Telegraph

4 days ago

The King of Rock 'n' Roll is hardly an underexploited figure when it comes to depictions of his life and music, most recently in Baz Luhrmann's blockbuster biopic. Still, when the production company Layered Reality announced that they would be putting on a 'brand new interactive experience' at the Excel Centre in London with Elvis at its heart, it was suggested that cutting-edge AI and holographic imagery would allow excited audiences to get up close and personal with the Memphis hip-thruster himself as never before.
However, if audiences have been expecting Abba Voyage-esque technical wizardry, they are likely to be disappointed. I was unable to discern any sign of hologram effects in this show. Instead, all you get is a limp assembly of video, actors, a live band and indifferently recreated sets, at high prices.
The central conceit, if that's not too grandiose a term, is that the audience has been corralled at short notice for a recreation of Elvis's 1968 comeback special, when he performed live on NBC. This was once rumoured to be the centrepiece of the performance – Elvis resurrected via the latest in AI and three-dimensional video – but this has not quite taken place.
Instead, spectators are firstly shown an indifferent recreation of an NBC studio backstage, which might as well be labelled 'selfie opportunity'; there is no information about anything, just influencer-bait. The room comes festooned with large, cheap-looking boxes with memorabilia of mugs and key rings. It is not clear if this is a satire on the mass merchandising of Elvis, or simply gift shop memorabilia that has been left out too long. Then the show begins proper, as an actor playing Elvis's childhood friend Sam Bell leads the audience through a sanitised, tedious account of Presley's coming-of-age in rural Mississippi, described in the clichéd script as 'the only place in the country that you can hear the music come from soul and yearning.'
After an interval, complete with opportunities to buy blue-tinted cocktails in a themed bar, it's straight into an underwhelming partial recreation of the 1968 special, complete with three musicians and Elvis videos that you can probably find mostly on YouTube. All of this starts at £75 a ticket; if you want the 'If I Can Dream' Super VIP package, it will set you back £300. It is not worth a tenth of the price.
Although there are hundreds of people credited for Elvis Evolution, from a revolving cast of actors to two separate live bands to the technological types responsible for what little pizzazz there is, the overall impression is of something rushed and cheap, flung together once the approval of the Presley estate had been obtained, and designed to appeal to only the most committed super-fans. As I fled through the gift shop, looking suspiciously at the £35 T-shirts around me, the words 'we're caught in a trap' most certainly came to mind. At the end, we are solemnly informed, 'None of us knew this at the time, but [Elvis's] death wasn't the end of his music.' If this underwhelming show is to be the King's epitaph, he may have wished the whole industry died with him in 1977.