Review: Dissocia

I sometimes wonder about the necessity for intermissions in theatrical productions, though I fully realise that in some longer, more demanding works, the actors may well need a breather. Often, though, it seems that intermission does little but break the play’s flow, extend the evening by half an hour, and swell the coffers through bar sales.

With Anthony Neilson’s Wonderful World of Dissocia, however, there are several reasons why an interval is virtually a necessity.

The actors certainly deserve a break from the frenetic activity of the first half, and I think the audience appreciates the breather, too, and the chance to absorb the wondrous chaos they’ve had the pleasure of watching for the previous hour and a bit.

The stagehands also need the break to clean up and completely change Alice Babidge’s exceptional set before restart. For Dissocia is very much a play of two quite different parts. So much so, indeed, that it could almost as easily be considered as two plays.

In the first half, the stage is a raised field of grass on which the eight actors frolic, cavort and create absolute mayhem.

Lisa, absolutely beautifully and convincingly played by Justine Clarke, is obviously going through some kind of psychotic episode. She thinks she’s lost an hour on a flight from New York and blames the loss for her life becoming a bit shambolic.

She has to get the hour back, and the only way to do that is to catch a lift to Dissocia and track it down in fantastical, Alice-in-Wonderlandish world that exists there. The existence of an evil ruler called the Black Dog King might provide a clue, but at this stage, Lisa’s hallucinations could just as easily be the result of psychosis, a nasty mushroom or a rather extreme dream.

One thing is for sure, though. Lisa has a highly nimble mind well versed in clever word play and the challenge of left-field abstract constructs.

She confronts the (in)security guards and questions their titles: if you felt secure you wouldn’t need guards, they explain. And they do an excellent job of feeding their own insecurities.

She responds to the (scape)goat’s pleas for blame by saying he hasn’t done anything to her. That’s the whole point, he says: “If I’d actually done something wrong I couldn’t be a scapegoat.”

The scapegoat is over the moon when Lisa blames him for stealing her hour, but lines her up for a dose of bestiality anyway. That unpleasantness is taken over by Jane, whose “duty” it is to reduce Dissocia’s crime rate (in terms of victim numbers, anyway) by being the universal victim.

Even when nasty and frightening, these scenes — and many others, such as Lisa’s experiences with Dissocia’s oath-taker — are hilarious, laugh-out-load, really-out-loud stuff, brilliantly written and acted with real verve and panache.

The grassy field is replaced by a stark, single-bedded hospital ward; Lisa’s addled mind is struggling with slow, painful recovery rather than battling Dissocia’s demons; the pace becomes less-is-more rather than over-the-top; humour is removed totally from the equation, replaced by the reality of prolonged hospitalisation, the struggle of family and close friends to cope with seemingly simple complexities, the slow healing.

Absolutely everyone associated with this production deserves prolonged applause.

Justine Clarke, as already mentioned, is superb in the lead role of Lisa. The supporting actors — Kate Box, Matt Day, Michelle Doake, Russell Dykstra, Socratis Otto, Justin Smith and Matthew Whittet — all play multiple roles with great skill. The second half doesn’t provide them with many opportunities to shine, but they’ve already shown more than enough exuberance and flair in the first half to provide vivid memories.

Director Marion Potts has brought the best out of a talented cast and, with the aid of a production team including Alice Babidge (set designer), Tess Scholfield (costume designer), Nick Schlieper (lighting designer), Alan John (composer) David Franzke (sound designer), Imara Savage (assistant director), Scott Witt (fight consultant) and Fiona Malone (take a special bow for the performance touches you really nailed as movement director), created a truly memorable piece of theatre.

Anthony Neilson has been included among the mid-90s group of “in-yer-face” English playwrights and his ability to disturb and shock was evidenced by several half-time disappearances from the audience the night I attended.

Their decision was unfortunate, because, in this case anyway, they glimpsed only the very brash, provocative head of a coin with a very touching, equally provocative tail.

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