Anthony Neilson’s 2004 drama about dissociative identity disorder is a reminder to never judge a play at the interval. It is certainly tempting to write the whole thing off as we are dragged through the irrational and kooky first half. Everything changes in the short, stark, second act and radically transforms our experience.
Leah Harvey plays Lisa, a woman who falls down the rabbit hole of her mental illness into a fantasy world of surreal creatures, from a sexually violent goat to a bear singing about brain death. The borrowed motifs from other lands are easy to spot, from Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland to CS Lewis’s Narnia and Eugène Ionesco’s absurdist universe, all set against flat picture-book backdrops (designed by Grace Smart).
Directed by Emma Baggott, this feels naively charming at first, then befuddling and finally infuriating with its surfeit of whimsy. The laddish toilet humour is uncouth, the linguistic jokes try too hard: there are “time flies”, which buzz around at times of happiness, and insecurity guards (“If it’s secure why would you have to guard it?”).
It is clear this world is allegorical but the signposting seems deliberately withheld. A character defining the meaning of a wild goose chase says it is when “you are hunting for nothing” and it feels like a description of this play as it descends into ever more random circles of phantasmagoria.
The second half is as sombre as the first is lurid, showing Lisa inside a psychiatric ward. The repetition of days filled with sleep, medication and desultory staff carries grinding force. The set, now stark, feels like a cell. The psychiatric system is not shown as especially cruel but appears no less heinous for its indifference and immobilising medication culture. Lisa lies in a doped state, with moments of boredom, frustration and loneliness. Her relationships are few now but dramatised with delicacy.
It feels moving rather than manipulative, as we realise, retrospectively, that we have been positioned inside Lisa’s head in the first half, experiencing her scrambled worlds. That these are summoned rather crassly matters less than the meaning its switching brings. This revival more than stands the test of time in its portrait of mental illness – it is original, brutal, memorable.
• At Theatre Royal Stratford East, London, until 15 October.
