Cold steel meets hot temper
“The scotch has run dry, so has my caseload. The crime rate of my city is through the roof, but no one has walked through my door for months. Something stinks. The rich get richer; the poor get screwed. As with everything, it all starts and ends with money and dames. So tonight I’m going where the cats get their groove on, the jazz is loud, the dolls over-friendly; where the liquor runs free, but it all leaves a bitter aftertaste.”
You’re invited to attend the society party of the season and experience an evening of glitz, glamour and duplicity at one of the country’s finest stately homes. Join The Lost Boys on this interactive and immersive event as Caesars’ Hall becomes the 1950s luxury mansion of American steel magnate Vincent Vanderbilt, a man with a reputation as big as his bank balance.
During the evening, your welcome drinks and three-course meal will be accompanied by live jazz vocals from femme fatale Veronica ‘Ronnie’ Velvet. And as the evening progresses you will be joined by hard-bitten detective PI Bill Houston, and a host of other shady characters, each with their own motives for being under the Vanderbilt chandeliers on this fateful night.
Looking back
The Lost Boys were tasked with creating a bespoke event for Kedleston Hall, that would bring in new audiences without off-putting existing audiences. They knew we created interactive and immersive events on-site and often accompanied by food. We decided this would be a good fit for the very grand stately home.
Thus Kedleston Noir was born, audiences were invited to journey back to the late 1940s and early 1950s Los Angeles, where a tale of political corruption, romantic duplicity and ultimately murder played out. Inspired by the film noir of that era, it gave us an excuse to watch some classic Bogart and read some Chandler and Hammet. We landed on a story during the expansion of Los Angeles as a city and all the corrupt business that came along with it. We loved playing with the tropes and genre conventions and in some instances subverting them including first-person narrative, chiaroscuro, dames, gangsters and pulpy dialogue. Plus, the costumes of that period are cool.
