Peaky Blinders Underworld London has arrived at the London Bridge Arches, and it arrives with a concept that sets it apart from the usual immersive-theatre pitch: one half of the experience costs nothing to enter. The catch, as any reasonable person might suspect, is that you are walking into a pub.
The Garrison: a Peaky Blinders pub built into the railway arches
The Garrison occupies what is believed to be the former home of Southwark Playhouse, tucked into the brick vaulting just off Tooley Street. It is, nominally, a recreation of the Victorian boozer that serves as the Shelby gang’s headquarters in Steven Knight’s Birmingham gangland drama. Entry is free, though the pints are emphatically not priced to match the 1920s originals, the reviewer at Time Out notes those would have run to roughly 2p a go.
The period details are faux rather than faithful (wooden boards, a proper bar, costumed staff) but they land as atmospheric rather than cheap. The music policy leans into the show’s own anachronistic sensibility: Nick Cave on the jukebox, live bands several nights a week. Actors in character move through the space, delivering hard-nosed Brummie bark on demand, though the pub section carries no real narrative. It is, in the end, a Peaky Blinders theme pub, which is precisely what it says it is.
The experience is produced by Banijay Rights in partnership with KMJ Entertainment, and carries the blessing of Knight himself. It is also, the producers note, made by entirely different people from the previous London immersive venture, Peaky Blinders: The Rise, which drew considerably less favourable notices.
Inside the Peaky Blinders Underworld London experience
Beyond the pub doors, the paid section of Peaky Blinders Underworld London opens into a walkthrough designed around the show’s more lurid geography: a fairground, a Chinatown, a bookies, a tattoo parlour doubling as a bar. Visitors receive what the reviewer describes as an activity book on entry, loaded with tokens for the fairground games (hook a duck and variations thereof) alongside the option to take on one of several larger challenges.
On opening night, the only challenge running was ‘Catch the Rat’, which involves following clues and solving puzzles rather than anything more literally rodent-related. The task is briefed by a costumed gang member; the puzzles themselves are gentle lateral thinking rather than demanding escape-room fare. Completing the challenge on the night in question produced a drinks voucher, though whether that is a standard reward for all finishers is not entirely clear.
The space is compact. Unlike a Punchdrunk production, where losing yourself across multiple floors is part of the design, Underworld is contained enough that you will see most of it within the hour-long timeslot. The storytelling is thin (this is puzzle-chain territory rather than any deep drama) but the design is polished, the iconography is well-deployed, and the atmosphere holds.
Tickets are around £25 for a one-hour slot. Whether that represents fair value will depend heavily on temperament. For anyone already fond of the show’s visual language and willing to lean into the games, the experience delivers. For anyone hoping for something closer to narrative theatre, the evening’s real pleasure may turn out to be the first drink in The Garrison rather than the rooms beyond it.
Peaky Blinders: Underworld is at the London Bridge Arches, just off Tooley Street, London.