Yesterday, for those in the know, the entire City of London was taken over by a free festival called The Golden Key. This day-long extravaganza featuring performance, games and immersive theatre was the first part of a grand plan to inspire more visits to the Square Mile and blimey, they threw everything but the kitchen sink at it.
The Golden Key was organised by a creative agency called Coney and funded from the City's bottomless pockets. It was loosely based on stories, legends and heritage, which when you're the City of London can include anything from dragons to Suffragettes to Roman soldiers. It was designed to be appropriate for families, groups and individuals, and to appeal to those who wanted a proper immersive challenge as well as those who just wanted something fun to watch. I wonder if you went, or whether you'd have gone if you'd known about it.
The event started at noon in 17 different locations and with over 200 performers. It was all quite overwhelming to be honest, trying to work out where to be and what to do so as not to miss out on the best bits, whatever they might turn out to be. I had a go at all three aspects of the event - the fairs, the maze and the hunt - which might have been overdoing things but when it's only on for one day you have to throw yourself in.
The Fairs: Not just one fair but three fairs - at Guildhall, outside St Paul's Cathedral and on the London Wall highwalks. I went to the Topsy Turvy Fair in the Guildhall courtyard where giant princesses posed for photos, rustic musicians strode around bugling and a big Golden Key sat ominously on a raised stage. Lots of people seemed to be queueing to walk through the Guildhall and its gallery, but I've done that before so I skipped it. Burgers, souvlaki and beer were also available, along with details of how to get involved in the other, more mobile, activities...
The Maze of Adventures: Normally the Barbican is maze enough for the City, but on this occasion the labyrinth spread much wider. 12 red doors appeared across the Square Mile, locatable on an online map, each with a door number you had to text to a special phone number. An incoming phone call then explained the rationale and sent you a weblink which you clicked to follow a themed route around that part of the City. Listen to this, now make a choice, now enter a name, now follow this map, now listen some more... and eventually you ended up at a 'key' location for a surprise finale. Thoughtfully the organisers had added a 'jump right to the end' button, which I needed on my first attempt when my (quite interesting) quest suddenly stopped working, and again on my second attempt after I grew weary of hearing about Jewish boxers. The final surprise for Maze 2 was a black history burlesque show in the subterranean Turkish bath round the back of Liverpool Street, which was brilliantly unexpected. I didn't bother with the surprise for Maze 4 because it involved joining a queue and going through a security arch. The Maze of Adventures felt very much like rolling the dice, and I scored high on one of my throws and low on the other.
The Hunt: And this, well, this was a smartphone-based treasure hunt across the City based on a bemusingbook of myths, riddles and rhymes. To start you had to find a bloke in a red hat on Tower Bridge, ask him to show you his small door, then he showed you a password which you texted to a dragon called Clessa Peltier. I'd worked out that her name was an anagram of Reptile Scales which I hoped would prove useful, but it never did. Excitingly the first destination was the seventh floor roof terrace of a hotel overlooking the Tower of London, where I joined other baffled groups in the lift, and beat them to spotting the next key word to be texted to Clessa. "What were they on when they devised this?" I thought.
Alas The Hunt never quite regained these heights, sending us on long walks only to tell us long stories when we got there, and with only the occasional online question needed to proceed. At one point the next clue required answering a payphone, which proved tricky when there was a long queue outside because the quest was so popular, but they'd thought of that in advance and rang us direct with the message instead. After a tortuous hour via the London Stone and Bow Bells I reached the end of the hunt at Mansion House, where I was supposed to use all I'd unpicked to locate 'the Heart of the City' on a map, a bit like Pin The Tail On The Donkey upgraded for the 21st century. A dozen other people were queueing to go in (ooh, inside the Mansion House), but the steward told me the next available entry slot was 40 minutes away, at which point I threw in the towel and went home. So I never did get my invite to the special 6pm celebration at which Clessa presented the golden key to one lucky custodian, but perhaps she'll eventually update her blog and tell us who won.
Full marks for ambition, City of London, if not quite for all the practicalities.
