We’re covertly running around the absolutely gorgeous Brighton Dome trying to shake off a tail. I’m not sure if I’m a good guy or a bad guy at the moment and I’m pretty sure mysterious forces are trying to sow seeds of doubt into our chummy little group of activists.

We are at Unchain Me, the new dreamthinkspeak production inspired by Dostoyevsky’s novel, The Possessed. The story goes that a provincial town (in this case Brighton) descends into chaos as it becomes the focal point of an attempted uprising orchestrated by a shadowy conspirator.

Unchain Me was my first dreamthinkspeak show and I was going in with high expectations. This is an established company often mentioned in the same breath as Punchdrunk on their third Brighton Fringe commission. The show sold out almost immediately and I myself got in on a last minute return situation.

While there were definite highlights, I’m sorry to say that it did not quite live up to the hype that I had imbued it with.

Let’s start with the good bits - being given free rein to run around Brighton Dome and feel like we had it all to ourselves was absolutely joyful. There were some really good performances, particularly by (sort of) antagonist “The Governess” who was the immaculate, the perfect politician and our cell lead (although of course, I’m biased) played by Abigail Lythgoe. It brought me together with a particularly fun and chatty group who were game to engage and frankly, have some fun.

I appreciated the attempt to bring Brighton politics into the story and encourage debate about systems, even if I didn’t think it was always successful.

To very briefly summarise my trouble, the core political logic of the piece just didn’t resonate with me. The tone was serious all the way through, encouraging us to engage sincerely with the subject matter. Our activist group were fighting to stage a revolution to install direct democracy in order to rebalance inequality, mainly economic, in society.

(To put it very simply, direct democracy is where more people have control over making policy decisions - one implementation might be using referendums.)

I for one really wanted to be politicised. Hell, with everything going on in the world right now I think I’m probably the most politicis-able (if that’s a word) I’ve been since my misspent uni days. And yet it felt impossible for me (or anyone in my group for that matter) to get on board.

Lots of themes were thrown at us - homelessness, gentrification, lobbying power, social care - but they remained only lightly explored and so lacking the specificity to truly invest. The rest of the performance really depended on this early investment in the revolution as I think the intention was that our faith was pulled back and forth. As it was there wasn’t much to pull.

Doing my best Carrie Bradshaw, I couldn’t help but wonder if given the number of hot-potato issues in post-Brexit Britain the production shied away from putting a stake in the ground and discussing ‘real’ politics.

So, light politics and as it goes, little space for light heartedness, which seems counter to the sheer childish joy that seemed to be felt in our group to have a night running around a museum. The audience members of our group itself instead provided the levity, mainly through accusing each other of being enemy plants that were going to betray the rest of us.

(Spoiler: no one betrayed anyone and I will say again I am so sorry nice man in our group for grilling you. I now believe that your wife really did give you the ticket last minute… I’m a bad person.)

All in all, it was an interesting site-specific piece in a beautiful location, but a swing and a miss for me.

Unchain Me is playing at the Brighton Festival in the Brighton Dome until 12 June. Tickets are available here.