This dark 'Alice' lookalike delights
Saturday May 24 2008
According to my 'Bluffer's Guide To Psychology', extreme dissociation can result in split centres of consciousness, different perceptions of reality. This mental divorce is brilliantly rendered in Calypso's version of Anthony Neilson's acclaimed play.
The first part consists of Lisa's (Judith Roddy) attempts to recover a lost hour of her life in the looking-glass world of Dissocia. She's helped and hampered by an array of disconcerting characters all prostrate with fear of the Black Dog King, and pining for the return of their banished Queen. Comparisons with 'Alice in Wonderland' are inescapable, but its satirical humour is far more blackly surreal and, sometimes, casually brutal.
The cast take on a handful of roles each, and all are wonderfully funny. But for inspired wackiness, the Oathtaker (Gerry McCann), to whom Lisa must swear allegiance on arrival, a kind of Polynesian/Hindu deity, stands out above the rest.
After the interval, Lisa's just another mental patient in a bed at a psychiatric ward. The world of Dissocia was simply the result of her not taking her medication.
Bairbre Ni Chaoimh's production is a verbal and visual delight, while Neilson's take on mental illness makes for beguiling, disturbing and very decisive theatre.
- John McKeown
