Play’s premiere offers startling insight
What happens when an imaginary friend takes over? That’s the intriguing premise behind this dark tale of mental illness.
With its title a variation on ‘‘Perchance to dream’’ from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the locally written play is an intense exploration of mental and social dysfunction.
Same-sex couple Elena and Anita Hayes take in Melanie, a troubled 9-year-old. Melanie’s father committed suicide and Nathan, his partner, can no longer cope with his step-daughter’s increasingly antagonistic and antisocial behaviour.
What her guardians, social worker and teacher don’t know is that in the netherworld of Melanie’s mind, there are real demons.
Here’s where the two-hour-long play begins operating in double dimensions – reality and unreality. At night, the mercurial Ira slips out from beneath Mel’s bed, demanding to be her only true friend.
The girl’s fragile mental state has given Ira an opportunity to maintain dictatorial dominance over every aspect of her life.
Ira defies warnings from the shadowy Conduit, another manifested netherworld being, and his ‘‘supervisor’’.
Despite these surreal Monsters, Inc elements, the play speaks with an authentic voice, offering credible and genuine insight into the emotional and mental crash-cart experiences of its characters.
It rests on a compelling performance from Katherine Lyons as Mel. Jittery, fidgety and unpredictable, she moves her character cohesively from emotionally blank automaton mode, to frenetic and semihysterical hyperactivity.
The antithesis of Peter Pan, Cameron Dickens also maintains a remarkable and animated presence as the increasingly sinister and tyrannical Ira.
There’s a notable performance by playwright and director Aaron Mclean as Nathan, and from Aimee Dredge’s Lana, Mel’s sole school-mate.
Playing Elena and Anita, Rachel Ramsay and Taryn Field start well as the increasingly compromised foster parents, but never move their overly modulated roles beyond showing degrees of compassionate concern.
There are the odd moments of ironical humour in this concentrated and no-holdsbarred expose, and the play could use more of them. A promising script that could do with some dramaturgical oversight, this contemporary perspective on complex social, mental and emotional ills, is worth genuine consideration.