- The Wonderful World of Dissocia
A Powerful Piece of Drama
Theatre of a more dramatic kind arrived at the Festival in the third week and well worth waiting for it was too. Scottish playwright Anthony Neilson has slowly made his name over the past ten years as a vital and independent dramatic voice moving from radio plays to dynamic work for the stage. His plays have been performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and the Bush and Royal Court theatres in London. Themes are often dark and disturbing around the subject of murder and rape. He won the Writers' Guild award for Best Fringe play in 1997 for The Censor. For his play Stitching he was nominated Most Promising New Playwright.
His new specially commissioned play by the Edinburgh Festival, The Wonderful World of Dissocia, delves into the unknown and indefinable world of mental illness. For those who have not experienced serious depression, paranoia or Dissociative Identity Disorder, how can we empathise or understand? Neilson has studied personality and behaviour, symptoms and treatment of DID to create a highly original dramatic portrait of one such mentally ill woman, Lisa. Inspired by the dreamlike imagery of The Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland, the audience is drawn into her tortured confused mental state. She feels disorientated having lost an hour on a 7-hour flight home from New York and to find that missing hour she takes a journey to the world of Dissocia.
The stage opens up into a steep hill, it is neither night nor day but a limboland dawn or twilight. Lisa in childlike mood is excited by her adventure and begins to meet some extraordinary characters such as the very shy and nervous Insecurity Guards and the goat who wants the blame for everything. It's an upside down world, where the Queen is missing and a city councillor has a perverse way of dealing with crime - reduce statistics by becoming the only victim herself. The Lost Property office, where Lisa may find her lost hour, is also lost. But all around is colour, laughter, and music with a sweet fluffy white polar bear who sings her lullabies. Lisa's world of Dissocia is certainly wonderful - private and cosy but this is not the real world. She has to confront her fears and return to "normality" whatever that may be.
The second act is set in a psychiatric hospital, pure white and antiseptically clean. Lisa is confined to bed to rest with prescribed drugs enforced every few hours. Visitors include her sister who accuses her of selfishness and her boyfriend who is losing patience with her. Why did she not take her medication? Just a couple of pills a day will keep her sane and balanced.
Neilson admits in a programme note that he did not aim to portray realistically what mental illness is like but to give an impression, a shape through frosted glass. It was for the audience to find the space in between as a way of understanding. His aim and concept succeeds with extraordinary depth of feeling. We enter Lisa's dreamlike, intangible state of mind full of strange images, animals, people, memories, thoughts and fears. Just like Dorothy 'over the rainbow'. Christine Entwisle is beautifully cast as Lisa, capturing her changing moods and sense of loss, of childlike wonder and utter despair. Neilson and the entire ensemble deserve every plaudit for creating such a powerful piece of drama -disturbing, perceptive and utterly magical from beginning to end.
To complement the Festival productions there are two series of excellent and often illuminating talks and lectures - about selected shows. In the final Conversation with Artists, Scotsman theatre critic Joyce Macmillan talked to Anthony Neilson about his plays and the background to The Wonderful World of Dissocia. It was a captivating hour with Neilson describing his childhood - the son of two actors - and how he was drawn into theatre at a young age. He witnessed the play The Widows of Cloth by Donald Campbell at the Traverse Theatre about the sinking of a Caithness fishing boat. Neilson says he still recalls hearing the shriek of grief by the widow of a fisherman lost at sea. To this day he believes that drama should be about real emotion, to make the audience feel. Neilson certainly has the talent to do just that.
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