She was the sad Oompa Loompa seen around the world. Inside a bleak warehouse in Glasgow, a supposed celebration of Wonka’s delectable world of chocolate left children crying and parents calling the police. Attendees paid £35 to visit a bleak warehouse with a handful of props and posters; inside, they were treated to two jellybeans each and a few poorly costumed actors. Images of the event went extremely viral, making international news and inspiring a horror film and an hour-long documentary.
Two months later, I found myself walking toward another grim-looking warehouse, this time in downtown Los Angeles. I was here for Willy’s Chocolate Experience LA, a tribute to the Glasgow disaster promising live entertainment, a red carpet-style photo op and a rare chance to meet the celebrity Oompa Loompa herself.
An early description of the LA event, which had no official links with the Glasgow event, touted “an immersive journey” into a whimsical world featuring the Oompa Loompa, Kirsty Paterson, “maybe” in conversation with the comedian Nathan Fielder. Also included would be performances by local musicians, film screenings and “two complimentary jelly beans”. A later version of the invitation cut the reference to Fielder and said all text had been generated by AI (typos included). Also gone were claims that Timothée Chalamet might show up and a line banning refunds because “we’re actually going to deliver”.
Given the history, and the not-so-promising LA event listing, I was prepared for the entire thing to be fake, despite a highly reassuring caveat on the invitation: “YES THIS IS A REAL EVENT. PLESE READ THE COPY BEFORE PURCHASING.”
But when I arrived in a desolate area on Sunday evening, a guy in a wig pointed me down an alleyway – and I entered a world of pure imagination.
That is, if your imagination conjures up a nondescript warehouse with a few booths, a big van and a lot of balloons. Several characters were wandering around in high-school-theater-grade costumes, including a man getting wheeled around in a bed like Charlie Bucket’s grandfather and someone in a black cloak with a shiny mask, honoring a mysterious villain called “the Unknown” who had turned up in Glasgow. A man in a top hat, who turned out to be Willy Wonka himself, rejected any description of the Scottish event as a “fiasco”, calling it a “fun time”. His goal today, he said, was for visitors to “understand the wonders of imagination”.
And, to be fair, everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. This time, they received not two but three jellybeans at the door, provided by a mad scientist with googly-eye glasses and a table full of beakers. An Astroturf path led deeper into the event, where drinks were for sale – including a signature cocktail of Thai iced tea with green whipped cream. Across the room, visitors could buy high-end candy. Hung on one wall was a blown-up cease and desist letter apparently from Nathan Fielder’s lawyers, complaining that the event was misusing his valuable name. Perhaps the most memorable part of the experience was the Tiny Cinema, which featured four theater-style seats inside a van. At the back, a man who identified himself as Davey B Gravey ran silent films on an old projector, accompanying the screenings live with his synthesizer and ukelele. When one tape broke – not part of the performance, he explained – Gravey gamely demonstrated the repair process.
Later in the evening, a pair of Oompa Loompas, portrayed by the troupe Clowns of Color, stormed in with signs demanding reparations from Willy Wonka. “There have been three Willy Wonkas in our generation,” one explained (“Three – one, two, three,” his partner echoed), “Gene, Johnny and now Timothée. And now look at us: no funds, no money, taken from our homelands as Oompa Loompas.” (Jokes aside, this enslavement narrative matches Wonka’s description of the characters in Roald Dahl’s original text.)
The Oompa Loompas later danced and bathed in chocolate onstage, between performances by DJs and a comedian condemning AI and drugs, all emceed by the night’s biggest star: Paterson herself, described as “the ‘mother’ Oompa Loompa with a heart of gold”.
A brief conversation with the Guardian supported that claim. She’d arrived in LA that day and was operating on eight-hour jetlag. The event’s planners – who remain secretive but say they have no ties to the Glasgow event – had contacted her to say they wanted to recreate the event. “I’m like, yeah, it’s in LA, if you take me over I’ll definitely be here!” she said after posing, sadly, with fans. Next up for her was a trip to Disneyland and then a performance at a club night in New York. “I feel like I’m on a different planet,” she said.
That summed up the general mood at the event, amid the neon-colored candy posters and disused ladders. It might have been tempting to grumble about the $44 entry fee – which was part of the performance, aligning with the £35 charged in Glasgow (and reportedly going to the National Alliance for Mental Health). But the organizers had landed on a can’t-lose proposition: how can you complain when shoddiness is the point?