Anthony Neilson's latest work commissioned by the International Festival his first or Edinburgh 's premier festival sees Neilson taking a “look through frosted glass” at mental health and more specifically Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID).
The story shows two different worlds. The world of Dissocia, a bright and vivid world, full of colour, larger than life characters and a rather randy scapegoat. Nielson starts the action off beautifully as Lisa, masterfully played by Christine Entwistle, literally snaps the string of the real world by breaking her guitar string. Allowing her to enter the world of Dissocia in search of her lost hour. Dissocia is a world full of fantastical creatures and people that seem to have been lifted from the works of Lewis, Carroll and Pullman . This first act is a highly entertaining piece of theatre, which after a rather prolonged interval is turned on its head. A rather stilted and boring reality with Lisa doped up to the eyeballs and confined to her sterile hospital room. On watching both sections of the play I know which one looks the most appealing and it's not reality.
Neilson has crafted a play which shows an insight into mental health, as he states in the programme notes, that's all he can do without experiencing it first hand. There are some excellent characters most notably the Insecurity guards and the people in the lost property office who have lost the argument, their sense of humour and their inhibitions. In comparison to some of Neilson's previous work it is a rather timid piece of theatre whether this has been due to the fact that he has been invited to write for the Closing show of the festival or if it's a natural progression remains to be seen. It would have been better to see this play in a smaller more claustrophobic theatre where the sterile hospital room would have played far more intensely than in the larger Lyceum where it lost some of its power. It is nice to see a play by a Scottish writer, produced in association with a Scottish theatre, closing the festival and holding it's own with some of Europe's most influential companies.
