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The Flying Pigs: I feasted on the spartan delights of Willy’s Chocolate Experience

Glasgow's recent Willy Wonka experience was brilliant - a powerful evocation of how childhood dreams and hopes are crushed by harsh reality.

The recent disappointing Glasgow event was worlds away from the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory film. Image: Moviestore/Shutterstock
The recent disappointing Glasgow event was worlds away from the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory film. Image: Moviestore/Shutterstock

The latest topical insights from Aberdeen musical sketch comedy team, The Flying Pigs, written by Andrew Brebner and Simon Fogiel.

J Fergus Lamont, arts correspondent

I was moved to take a rare trip southwards this week to experience Scotland’s most powerful artistic event in years. You will not have heard of it, for it has garnered little or no publicity, but I speak of Glasgow’s “Willy’s Chocolate Experience”. It is an immersive installation by the aptly-named “House of Illuminati” – an artistic enfant terrible new to me, but, on this evidence, sure to join the panoply of great west of Scotland cultural icons: Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Bill Forsyth, Wee Jimmy Krankie.

Like many others, I was initially drawn by the project’s website – full of delightful and whimsical Wonkaesque imagery, which bravely rejected the use the trademarked “Wonka”. Instead, it conveyed its meaning with vibrant colour, joyful faces, candy canes, and the exhortation to “dive into the whimsical of Willy’s Chocolate Experience” – the missing noun after “whimsical” here acting as a perfect nub of intrigue, and oh so exquisitely setting up what was to come.

The Flying Pigs

Further promises also stimulated the imagination. Who could resist an exhibition said to contain “cartchy tuns, exarserday lollipops” and “a pasadise of sweet teats”? Simultaneously evoking the style of Roald Dahl and demonstrating his skill by comparison.

Upon arrival at a bleak industrial area of Glasgow, one finds a near-empty warehouse and within – ah, what spartan delights! A small bouncy castle. One plastic bear.  Some empty tables. Of the delightful candy-coated marketing images, there was no sign – apart from a solitary poster flapping forlornly on a wall.

Everyone around me seemed, as I was, stunned at the brilliance – a powerful evocation of how childhood dreams and hopes are crushed by harsh reality. “Wake up, weans,” it seemed to say, “this is real life!”

The powerful dichotomy acted as a brilliant metaphor for the defining experience of our age – the gulf between what is promised to us and what we actually get. The pictures on a McDonald’s menu. Brexit. George Galloway.

According to mutterings from my fellow attendees, the artist behind a lot of what we saw was a mysterious entity known only as “A.I.” This publicity-shy heir to Banksy works in the multimedia space, producing images of things which could not exist, and scripts given to actors to perform which should not exist.

“There is a man who lives here. His name is not known, so we call him the unknown,” intoned a young man in a cardboard top hat. “The unknown is an evil chocolate maker who lives in the walls.” And, in his panicked eyes, I saw man’s primordial existential terror.

The attendance of further performers known as “the polis” added little, but brought the event to a dramatically satisfying conclusion, when a mysterious figure (could this be “A.I.” himself?) promised refunds “which could take up to 10 working days.”

This final masterstroke will allow everyone who attended the stunning work a further tantalising week and a bit to enjoy the anticipation of discovery. Will reality match expectation? Given the dedication the artist has shown to his theme so far, it would be astonishing if it did.

One cannot overstate the power of the work. I was sufficiently impressed to give a standing ovation, which was essential, as there weren’t any seats. Many were moved to tears. Children, mainly.

But, like them, I wept.


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