Cultural Digestion

In an outbreak of screaming good taste remarkable even for current levels of cultural Britishness, a firm by the superbly inspiring name of Inventive Productions is pushing an "immersive cocktail experience" in which, rather than imitating olives as the label seems to indicate, bar patrons dress up and role-play as prison inmates while staff pose as old lags and corrupt guards. Subtly named Alcotraz, the experience is allegedly intended as a subtle reference to various cinematic and televisual soap operas set in the prison system. Nevertheless, despite the subtlety, organisations representing prisoners and ex-prisoners have expressed some annoyance at the perceived trivialisation of the system's brutalities. Admittedly there seems a distinct echo, duly vulgarised for the corporate age, of Marie Antoinette playing milkmaid; and doubtless the time is not far distant when Auschwitz itself will graduate from playing backdrop in "serious" Netflix romantic dramas to the still greater subtleties of the hospitality trade.