By James Hadley in London

If I told you I'd recently been chased down dark alleys by a macabre figure wielding a chainsaw, you'd probably think I'd had a nightmare rather than been to the theatre. But theatre it was; albeit closer to a living nightmare than anything else I've experienced.
 
Ever since I arrived in London, Punchdrunk has been the most talked about theatre company, due largely to their large cast immersive event theatre production 'The Masque of the Red Death' at Battersea Arts Centre last year. Finally I've had an opportunity to see their work for myself, in the form of their new show 'It Felt Like A Kiss', commissioned by Manchester International Arts Festival.
 
It's a collaboration between Felix Barrett (Punchdrunk's Artistic Director), composer Damon Albarn (of Blur), and filmmaker Adam Curtis. The project apparently began with the film which Adam had made, which has evolved into the centrepiece of this theatrical installation (there are barely any live performers within the work - it places the audience as the protagonists).

The film is a powerful elision of various conspiracy theories around the dark underbelly of the American Dream as it evolved post-WWII. Documentary footage is edited together with 'sixties pop songs, but when you realise that the title of the work is taken from the lyric 'He hit me, And it felt like a kiss'... well, it's clear this is going to be no romance. The song is a good metaphor for the self-delusion that millions have bought into as a result of American commercial and governmental manipulations.

The film couples such songs with subtitles about the facts linking disparate events into one big conspiracy theory of America's Dream being subverted into a nightmare through corruption and violence. We're bombarded with images such as Kennedy's assassination, September 11th, chimpanzees being trained for space travel at the same time as others are passing on HIV/AIDS to humans, a monk burning himself alive as public protest, couples feeling a sense of disconnection mid-kiss and breaking apart, Russian and American political leaders squabbling like boys in the playground... Subtitles insinuate CIA involvement with terrorists, and wilfull manipulation of people's fears and desires for the government's agenda. It's not long before you an accumulative sinking feeling grips you.
 
The film is screened in the middle of an installation filling several floors of an empty office block. You're put into a group of five to wander through (leaving 20 minutes after the previous group). But first there's a safety talk which suggests that if you're of a nervous disposition, this show isn't for you, and that you enter at your own risk (!). Then you're sent up in a lift, and step out into darkness on the sixth floor. Eventually a hell's mouth entrance is dimly visible, and our group of strangers sets off.
 
Everything is dimly lit. Sometimes all is darkness until a light goes on a little way ahead to guide you forwards. You stumble nervously through dark passages with unseen things dangling down, unsure if someone's going to leap out at you. There's plenty of nervous laughter.

We soon find ourselves in a series of typical 1960s American domestic interiors and offices. They're populated by dummy figures who look disturbingly real in the half-light, apart from their bulging, malformed eyes. I keep waiting for one of them to suddenly move and freak us all out. There's a constant soundtrack of '60s popsongs and brooding strings reminiscent of Bernard Herrman's 'Psycho' soundtrack. A mother and daughter watch TV in their living room, a father looks in on his son sleeping in bed. What would normally seem innocent is sinister in this context. Footage on the TV of a '60s dance shows forced smiles failing to conceal a shared terror and sense of entrapment from those living the 'dream'.

We've been told to explore the environments we travel through at our own pace, and papers left on office desks tell of plots and CIA investigations, witness accounts of assassinations and scientific observations of the effects of LSD on people. A half-written letter on a type-writer advises to keep telling yourself 'it's only a movie, it's only a movie...' The stillness is laden with neuroses, paranoia and stifled hysteria.
 
A film producer's study includes script excerpts suggesting nine extras have accidentally died during the shooting of a prom scene. A surgery set up for electric shock therapy is lit only by intermittent bright lights which blind us, burning after-images on our retinas. There's a room of chemical hazard suits, and later a room of decontamination showers filling the room with steam. The air is thick with an unpleasant chemical smell, and our shoes stick on a gummy sludge covering the floor. Then there are rooms completedly whited out - as if after a nuclear explosion.

The level of detail that has gone into designing and assembling all these rooms is astonishing. They're as detailed as film sets, with all the accumulated detroitus it takes to give them a lived-in quality... and hence harder to disbelieve the reality of the experience. Lighting always remains dim, often flickering, with a pervasive musty smell. We turn a corner and there's a dead body in a corridor - you just don't know what's going to confront you. The darkness starts to play on our minds, and our group starts walking closer together.
 
At the centre of the piece, in a room decorated as if for a high school prom, is the screening of the 35 minute film which inspired the production. As groups are around 20 minutes apart, there's an overlap at this point in proceedings, but by my calculation it shouldn't be by as much as the 25 people gathered would suggest. I decide that groups are just sitting there, watching the looped film over and over because they're too scared to be in a hurry to proceed. Nobody speaks. There's a communal sense of foreboding as reviews and word of mouth have suggested it's the second half of the piece which is most disturbing.
 
When we eventually move on, gone are the brooding domestic interiors, and instead it's like their contents have been emptied out like those of dolls houses and revealed as a pile of junk. The dream is clearly over. This domestic detroitus has been shaped into makeshift shelters, as if for the homeless, and we're encouraged to sit in them to watch further footage of the American dream collapsing in on itself. We next find ourselves in corridors made of polythene. Suddenly a jet of gas and smoke is propelled into our claustrophobic passageway with a loud industrial shriek. This has left us all with jangled nerves, practically clinging together as a group. It's nice to realise how quickly primitive tribal instincts kick in when you feel threatened - the sense of urban individualism, apathy and distance goes out the window in an instant.
 
Eventually we find ourselves in a hospital ward. We've just walked past a whited-out model of a city suburb, and there's an eerie nuclear holocaust subtext to proceedings. (This show is clearly the product of minds that grew up during the Cold War.) We're encouraged by a nurse to sit on the hospital beds and fill out psychological questionnaires on clipboards. Everyone's been given a letter, which repositions you into a group of nine. When my group is called, we're escorted into some kind of control room, and here told that from this point there's no turning back, we must stick together as a group, and do exactly as we're told. And just to make sure we're not still sitting comfortably, we're told about a group of nine people on a ghost train who burned to death because everyone thought their screams were part of the ride...
 
We set off down some stairs, and then find ourselves in an expanse of darkness. Single naked light bulbs mark our way ahead, down passages made out of cage bars. It's an inhuman, prison-like space. We're staying close together as a group - expecting some ghoul to jump out at us. We scurry down the maze-like path to keep close to the light, fearing the dark like children. At some point we see ourselves on a security camera monitor. Then we find ourselves in a caged chamber with a table on which there's a gun, and a light flashes 'pull the trigger', a ticking noise emphasising urgency. A girl at the front of the group reaches out and as soon as she touches the gun it goes off in her hand, making us all jump.

I make a mental note not to volunteer for anything else that comes up! And there are indeed a succession of such commands, many of which no-one is willing to follow - for instance a command to take the pill on the table.

But others are a test of nerve that people rise to - turning on a chainsaw or combing the hair of a dummy, feeling sure that he'll suddenly turn round and scare the living daylights out of all of us. We then see another camera monitor and in it can be seen one of the dummies who is indeed moving - like the fulfillment of the fears which have been brewing in these dim encounters so far. The presumption is that he is following us and at the point where we saw ourselves on camera earlier. This is soon followed by a chamber where the table is empty, and the light flashes 'RUN !' - suddenly we hear the chainsaw being started up behind us, and we certainly don't need telling twice! I don't think I've ever seen an audience group move so quickly. We sprinted through a series of rooms until we found ourselves beyond a door that could be closed, giving a sense of security. My heart was racing as we laughed at how scared we'd all been by the encounter - 'it's only a movie' indeed!
 
The final section of the show has us in an even larger expanse of darkness, moving through a series of paired turnstiles that will only allow half the group through each, so that you're all split up into smaller and smaller groups until everyone is on their own. Because there's a blaring siren going on in the background, everyone's running like lab-rats trying to find a way out of this space, and I'm sure I'm not the only person who keeps looking over his shoulder to see if anyone's chasing me.

The cumulative effect of all the conspiratorial suggestions, dimly lit rooms, sudden loud noises and flashes of light, and, not least, the nightmarish dummies, has frazzled everyone's nerves. According to some accounts, depending on which turnstile you choose in this section, you do indeed find yourself being chased by a chainsaw-wielding figure. I was so relieved to not experience that myself.

In any case, by that stage I was determined to run so fast that no-one would catch me - down the series of dark passageways, and suddenly I'm outside, blinking in the light as an usher hands me a programme. Did that really happen?... Part horror movie, part conspiracy theory documentary, part thriller - yet not a movie at all, but a lived experience. It was all such an adrenaline rush that it's no wonder the run sold out like wild fire.

This is a theatre experience for people who would normally find theatre a bore. And as such, I predict we're going to see plenty more such 'extreme' theatre experiences in the future.