JADAR

★★★☆☆

Sweet Dreams is a brand-new immersive adventure by Marshmallow Laser Feast at Factory International, where participants are invited to step inside a surreal world of a fading fast-food empire.

Sweet Dreams takes place in The Warehouse at Factory International, a versatile space that hosts theatre, music, exhibitions, Joe Wicks’ gym classes, and now this – whatever it is.

I’d describe it as a multi-sensory surreal satire (I think I know what I mean by that).

The press preview was preceded by a press reception – introductions from Gabrielle Jenks (Digital Director at Factory International) and Robin McNicholas (Co-founder and Director of Marshmallow Laser Feast).

Participants are put into small groups, each given a tour guide – supposedly a representative from the Real Good Chicken Company… though some of them are still learning their lines. I understand budget constraints but it might be better hiring actual actors than forcing staff to act. I’ve taken part in immersive experiences in the past where the actor makes the whole thing. The characters in this adventure are digital, which creates a disconnect, so an actor-attendant would really enhance the experience.

The adventure begins with images on a screen. “This is a chicken,” a voiceover tells us, as dozens of images of chickens – from an actual chicken to a roast chicken to chicken-shaped objets – are shown onscreen. Right from the beginning, the bizarre, whimsical nature of the experience is evidently clear.

Participants are then taken from room to room, with the company’s jingle signalling that it is time to go into the next room – and everybody heads straight to the doors each time, not only out of excitement for the next room in this weird, wonderful world, but also out of fear of being left behind, in the darkness.

The Real Good Chicken Company’s mascot, Chicky Ricky (Munya Chawawa), is our host, with appearances from his friend, Penny Peckish (Morgana Robinson), a shelved mascot, and The Boss (Reggie Watts). With the empire crumbling, Chicky Ricky is on a quest to understand what people really want in this weird and wonderful journey into the food chain.

Participants can become a worker in a cartoonish factory (a videogame room but there aren’t enough sets for everybody and the instructions are a bit unclear), or a test subject in a department researching human appetite; there’s a room with mats and smoke, and another with a large chicken-shaped mirror (they really should have done something with a room made of mirrors!).

The experience blends animation, cinema, and interaction, immersing audiences into the world. Yet, I struggled to fully connect with it.

One of the later rooms has a series of slim, mirror-like screens and beanbag-chairs that allow participants to sit back so that when the huge, diagonal ceiling turns out to be a screen, you are already staring up at it. The imagery here is very cinematic, especially the zoom in to bread (as someone with gluten intolerance, I felt a little sick). It was utterly immersive and captivating – but it felt like it belonged to a different (better) experience.

Indeed, the event feels more like a walk-through story than a fully immersive experience. It is very much a linear journey that we are taken on; we watch a story play out and never really feel like participants in the story ourselves.

Fortunately, the colourful characters are wonderfully written and performed; they’re quirky, witty, and would fit right into Alice in Wonderland. Indeed, the experience, as a whole, is like a mad trip, but it could be made more sensuous (and immersive!), perhaps with the use of 3D imagery, more things to touch and feel, and even smells and scents. Heck, it’s a chicken factory – where are the tasters?!

The immersion is dented by the rooms not being soundproof, which means that you can hear distracting noises from the other rooms. At one point, we are told to cry quietly, but we can hear noises from outside. Earlier, we’re watching a whimsical advertisement and can hear horror-like noises from the room next door – they really take you out of the gripping propaganda!

Speaking of propaganda – the experience tackles some interesting ideas, some of them a bit surface-level, but I appreciate that the ideas need to be more straightforward in an immersive experience – especially one aimed at everybody.

The script is sharp but not always as clever nor as funny as it thinks it is. There are some zingers, though, such as, “[People] don’t wanna know a chicken burger comes from a chicken,” and “There’s a new chain everywhere called ‘food bank’ – that’s where a lot of our customer base has gone.”

Sweet Dreams is an amazing attempt but it does not feel fully realised. It’s artistic and ambitious but it needs sharper execution to reach its full potential. I came out feeling a little lost, not sure exactly what I was supposed to be thinking – and maybe that’s the point, but I don’t understand the point in that.

If you like immersive experiences, you’ll no doubt enjoy Sweet Dreams, but you’ll probably want a little more zing. At one point, we were given sachets of salt to “season” our chicken, and that encapsulates the problem: salt is not seasoning, habibi; the dream may be sweet but it needs a little more spice.

Sweet Dreams runs at Aviva Studios (The Warehouse) until September 1.