THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF DISSOCIA. To 16 June.
London/Tour
THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF DISSOCIA
by Anthony Neilson
Royal Court (Jerwood Theatre Downstairs) To 21 April 2007
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat 3.30pm no performance 6. 9 April
Audio-described 21 April 3.30pm (+Touch Tour 2pm)
BSL Signed 16 April
Posy-show Discussion 12 April
TICKETS: 020 7565 5000
www.royalcourttheatre.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 31 March
Theatrically vivid, dramatically limited.
This play was praised in 2004’s Edinburgh International Festival drama programme. And Anthony Neilson’s Realism was a major hit of the 2006 Festival. Seeing the earlier play for the first time, having been impressed by Neilson’s Realism, the impact is theatrically exuberant but dramatically flat.
There’s no lack of fire and fun in the first act, a kind of X-rated Wizard of Oz or Alice in Wonderland (the title suggests Oz, Lisa’s entry to Dissocia and lack of companions there, plus Neilson’s wordplay, Alice). Lonely Lisa sits strumming her guitar, alone at home, tightening a string till it snaps, when she’s visited by a Swiss watchmaker (don’t ask) who sends her to the land of Dissocia.
Hectic comedy and drama creates a colourful splash in this crazy world. Audiences doubtless come back after the interval expecting things to spiral to higher levels of lunacy, but it’s here Neilson reveals his central dramatic strategy. Just as the chaotic life of Realism ends in an epilogue of true, uneventful mundanity, Dissocia’s second act shows the external reality of Lisa’s situation. It’s an unwonderful world where flat fragments of speech interrupt the surrounding silence, and is about as undramatic as theatre can be.
Neilson hinted at this world at the first act’s concluson, and the quietly uneventful act is a necessarily protracted climb-down from its predecessor’s fantastic heights to a point when the reason for Black Dog King being Dissocia’s great enemy is revealed.
What disappoints is not theatrical invention. Even the brief post-interval scenes have their own intensity, creating dissociation from the audience as they’re played behind a perspex screen, with flat voices and amplification picking-up on the most ordinary of sounds – a foot-fall, a bedspring. What they don’t deliver in overt action is compensated for in the way each of these fragments ends - mostly with 10 seconds’ silence - thwarting traditional dramatic expectations.
But the play says nothing new. Lisa’s perceived world is a nightmare, her objective existence on-hold. Terry Johnson’s Hysteria for one theatricalises more with greater precision, while as a director Neilson has something to learn about sightlines.
Passenger 3/Oath-Taker Attendant/Goat/Biffer/Nurse 2: James Cunningham
Lisa: Christine Entwhistle
Passenger 4/Oath-Taker/Ticket/Dr Clark: Alan Francis
Passenger 1/Oath-Taker Attendant/Jane/Violinist/Dot: Amanda Hadingue
Guard 1/Inhibitions/Vince: Jack James
Passenger 2/Oath-Taker Attendant/Britney/Nurse 1: Claire Little
Guard 2/Laughter/Dr Faraday: Matthew Pidgeon
Victor Hesse/Oath-Taker Attendant/Argument/Nurse 3: Barnaby Power
Director: Anthony Neilson
Designer: Miriam Buether
Lighting: Chahine Yavroyan
Sound/Composer: Nick Powell
Voice coach/Additional choreography: Andrew Panton
Assistant designer: Claire Halleran
2007-04-02 14:23:18