Welcome to the Imaginarium, a strange contraption, an immersive world and the setting for some very good performances running up through December almost till Christmas.

As you'd expect from Secret Productions (the guys who were behind the Secret Garden Party for many years and now Wilderness Festival) the setting is very pretty. Creating beautiful sets is first and foremost what they do! So as you enter the Imaginarium, walking past a couple of Russians playing cards in fur hats and a lady with an accordion you know right from the start this is not going to be your typical evening.

Billed as the Anti-Christmas party, prices aren't cheap, ranging from £89 - £149 per head which means there is a good deal of money that has gone into making this a beautiful space. Aerialists hang above the crowd on silks, champagne cocktails appear from nowhere and the cast of interactive actors playfully engage you. The food prepared by chefs from Urban Caprice of Caprice Holdings (the restaurant group behind London’s exclusive The Ivy, Le Caprice, J Sheekey & Scott’s), is also excellent. Waiters appear with great trays and I find myself looking about for second helpings of slow cooked salmon and a delicate lamb couscous – this later morphs into wonderful macaroons and the like.

So to the Imaginarium itself. The setup for the show involves taking members of the audience into the contraption in order to see what lurks in their subconscious. It's a simple device but one that works well and allows for interaction as well as mixing the bizarre with the sublime.

I will admit some bias. I know a lot of the performers here. Some are in fact performing with my own circus company currently. Having said that, it is a joy to watch The Ungewinster who is bringing his own style of abstract mime to more and more audiences and stands out as truly unique. The Late Night shop are a poxy bunch of harlots who bring a veneer of Victorian corruption to the evening. Millie Dollar's burlesque routine is cheeky and fun. The strongman act is great. The aerial hoop duo perform a routine that is admittedly not overly technical, but full of beautiful shapes, and comes just at the right point of the evening. The final performance of the night by Kwabana Lindsay is a really big ending. His slack rope walking act gets more and more impressive by the minute as first he sheds his clothes, then hula hoops, finally playing the violin, all whilst balancing perilously in the centre of the audience. 

My only thoughts are that one or two of the acts do fall a little flat. I'm sure that they looked good in rehearsals and worked well on paper, but the ones that feature talking simply get lost. The crowd tonight is full of office workers on the company night out given access to a free bar, this means they are not always fully engaged and naturally enough are having various conversations themselves. This means the visual acts tend to work better. 

The Imaginaium is definitely a success though. For a while I forget the outside world completely and am more than happy to exist in this new one. It feels strange to go for a cigarette and be suddenly outside again in Shoreditch and grey wintery London.

I want to go back. It's a very pleasant evening in a well thought out and beautiful space.

Photos by Will Poole