E-Mail This Article to a Friend DEPT. OF STRANGE AMUSEMENTS Battling the Pharaoh in the Fenway BY CAMILLE DODERO

"Would you like to die quickly?" asks the Pharaoh, a tetchy spirit inhabiting 5W!TS’s Tomb, an unusual interactive show opening this Friday in the Fenway. "Or would you rather cling to your miserable lives as long as you can?" The deceased king’s question seems rhetorical, but it’s not. In this ancient Egyptian vault, where escorted groups of five to 15 "go head to head with the Pharaoh" (which one, we’re not told), paying customers can "die" if they fail a battery of tests. But death, in this family-friendly environment, isn’t grisly. Instead, it means getting ejected through an alternate hallway and embarking on a walk of shame. It means missing Tomb’s grand finale. Death also means — here’s the good part — getting a discounted rate.

"We had to have death be a real option, so people would take the tests seriously," explains 5W!TS CEO/president Matt Duplessie. "It’s not a scripted show; it’s all dependent on a team’s performance."

The press release announcing Tomb’s advent compares it to "a haunted house" and "a Choose Your Own Adventure book." But it’s more like a Museum of Science exhibit and a low-intensity Survivor challenge. Nestled in a wedge of buildings down the road from Fenway Park, Tomb casts patrons in the role of archaeologists and sends them on a mission to find a professor who ventured inside the vault and mysteriously never returned. Once behind the rumbling stone entrance, they discover his fate: his skeleton sits by the door, à la The Goonies.

Then the adventurers find themselves facing the Pharaoh, whose stentorian voice sounds like a cross between Vincent Price and that basso-voiced movie-trailer narrator. To avoid the professor’s fate, they have to prove they’re equipped with "the eyes of a falcon, the strength of an ox, the courage of a lion, and the ears of a fox." So they search for 15 hieroglyphic discs, confront his army of "serpents," and play a melody by tagging drum pads implanted in the walls. After those tests, two more rooms, various riddles, and a couple of puzzles await. In total, the trek is designed to last about 40 minutes, with new groups entering each room every quarter-hour.

But perhaps the most surprising thing about Tomb is that it’s the conception of a 27-year-old. A wiry fellow in glasses, Matt Duplessie decided to get into the theme-park industry after he "spent a few too many moments in a cubicle" (though at 27, that can’t be too many moments), where he designed rubber casings for portable, thermal printers — the kind used by high-tech meter maids and rental-car attendants. So a few year ago, the MIT graduate and a buddy traveled to an amusement-park trade show featuring everyone from the "cotton-candy maker to the roller-coaster guy." Instead of begging for jobs, the pair posed as buyers, asked to see the highest-ranking manager at every one of the 1500 tables, and then presented their résumés. The odds worked in Duplessie’s favor: he got a job as a project manager for a Disney World contractor. After two years in that role, the Attleboro native managed to convince three of his former professors to invest in building "a little slice of Disney World" in Boston. And that’s how his own company, 5W!TS, began and Tomb was conceived. Despite his title, Duplessie is continually reminded that he’s still a youngster in the industry. "Sometimes I go to meetings," the Cambridge resident says, grinning, "and clients I haven’t met will give me their coffee orders."

But Duplessie’s vision for 5W!TS doesn’t end in the Fenway. He’s certainly aware Tomb is a business: the lobby has a cappuccino-serving café and a boutique hawking "handmade Egyptian gifts." Tomb’s admission price isn’t exactly peanuts, at $16 for children, $20 for adults on the weekends. If this succeeds, Duplessie envisions sending Tomb to Providence in another 5W!TS venue, inserting a new show in this Fenway space, and then continuing to "build up the 5W!TS chain as far as it can go." Nevertheless, Duplessie knows he’s taking a risk. "This isn’t a sure thing. But it’s certainly more fun than rubber casings."

Tomb opens this Friday at 186 Brookline Avenue, and runs from 11 a.m. to 1 a.m. Admission is $16 for children and $20 for adults on the weekends; $13 for children and $15 for adults during the week. Call (617) 375-WITS or visit www.5-wits.com.