Immersive entertainment is so widespread now, from the intimately disorienting surrealism of You Me Bum Bum Train to the widescreen sweep of Secret Cinema, that it can sometimes seem as if it’s not a proper night out unless you’re being led around a converted factory by actors who’ve raided the dressing-up box, followed by themed cocktails to finish.
Somnai, a new immersive theatre evening with virtual reality trimmings, sleepwalks in the footsteps of companies such as Punchdrunk by taking audience members into the land of their dreams. It begins very much like airport security: shoes off, valuables in a plastic bag, a bit of waiting around for take-off. Ten minutes later, after our group of six has been read a bedtime story by a nightgowned guide in the company of a giant teddy bear, and we’ve climbed into bed for the trippiest overhead light show since the London Planetarium, we do indeed leave the ground.
VR headsets on, we are flying through the clouds alongside a flock of migrating geese while the mountains beneath us give way to the sea. The swings in which we are kneeling tilt forward or backwards in sync with the visuals, while gusts of air simulate the sensations of flight, or at least the feeling of standing too close to the hand dryer in a public toilet.
The choice of bird is apt, though, for this sometimes feels like a wild goose chase. Where exactly does dotdotdot, the company responsible for staging Somnai in a converted warehouse in London, think it’s taking us? Inside the cover art of Tales from Topographic Oceans by Yes seems to be the answer.
Sleep packs strapped to our backs, we are invited to cross a rickety rope bridge high above a ravine. I hesitate. Look, I’ve seen Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, so I know this could end badly. But I also know we are only 10 minutes from Angel tube station, and that there are no real ravines round here. After some verbal nudging from the guide, I proceed, even stepping exaggeratedly over the missing planks so as not to plunge to my death. It’s impossible not to feel silly – and equally hard not to succumb to the elation of play. With the rope bridge behind you, it becomes that bit easier to walk through the gaping void and into an underwater paradise or a psychedelic starscape. Move your hands like Bonfire night sparklers and you will make shapes in the air. Miraculously, no one writes any rude words or draws penises.
Perhaps that’s part of the problem. Properly evoking the subconscious world would require a hint of the transgressive or disturbing or even the mildly naughty. (It also demands the illusion of the solitary, whereas the groups of six give this the air of a slightly awkward team-building exercise.) Despite a brief detour into a creepy childhood bedroom followed by a jog down an eerie hallway, the world here has an Inception-style, one-dream-fits-all air of corporate slickness. It’s there in our guide’s introduction, which invites us to imagine that we are the boss, or that we earn more than we really do. If those are the sorts of fantasies that animate your subconscious, no amount of immersive theatre can save you.
• Somnai is at 2 Pear Tree Street, London, until 6 May.
