World apart

When you find yourself tumbling through a topsy-turvy world of strange and wonderful things that you don't want to leave, why should you be forced to? Playwright and director Anthony Neilson will be laying just such a question before us when his latest play, The Wonderful World of Dissocia, is staged at the Oxford Playhouse next week.

This hugely original play of two extremely distinct halves, which is being hailed as a kind of Alice in Wonderland for the Prozac generation, takes the audience for a helter-skelter ride through the world of Dissocia and then invites us all to tiptoe carefully through sterile wards of a psychiatric hospital where Lisa Jones, the troubled heroine, is sealed off from the audience by glass doors leading to a white room. She is so stupefied by drugs we are able to feel her anguish at leaving Dissocia.

This violent mood swing of a crazed journey is Anthony Neilson's way of evoking the mental illness of bipolarity. The Black Dog King character who terrorises her is the symbol of Lisa's depression.

The meaning of this work is contained neither in the first act nor the second but in the juxtaposition of the two. Anthony explained that when he first wrote The Wonderful World of Dissocia it was very much of an experiment.

He says that creating mental disintegration for the stage is notoriously difficult to pull off, but he was determined to work out how you could theatricalise a person's inner thoughts.

His first act goes anywhere and everywhere. Lisa, played by Christine Entwistle, travels to Dissocia in a quest to retrieve the hour of her life that she lost in a temporal accident while flying over the Greenwich meridian just as the clocks were changing.

It's in this topsy-turvy world that she meets a Lost Property Office that's lost itself, a randy Scapegoat who is fed up because no one is falsely accusing him of anything, and a do-good council worker who keeps the crime figures down by submitting herself to all the violent sexual assaults in the region. Lisa also confronts a polar bear who promises in song to hold her paw when she dies.

All of which become an extended metaphor for the manic side of mental illness. The dullness of her stay in hospital then allows us to feel her anguish at leaving Dissocia.

When The Wonderful World of Dissocia was first shown at the 2004 Edinburgh International Festival it wowed critics and audiences alike and came away having gained five out of the seven nominated categories of the Critics' Award for Theatre in Scotland, winning Best Direction, Best New Play, Best Female Performance, Best Design and Best Theatre Production.

It is now enjoying a tour by the National Theatre of Scotland, which unites the cast and creative team from that original production. The tour began in March at the Royal Court Theatre, London, and comes to the Oxford Playhouse on Tuesday.

Anthony says the play was a breakthrough for him. In writing and directing it, he believes he has managed to achieve with form what he had previously only achieved with content in that the entire structure of the play was designed to force the audience into at least an analogous identification with the protagonist, Lisa.

"Hopefully, when she is asked in the second act why she doesn't take the medication that will suppress the symptoms of her mental illness, the audience, having been deprived during the spectacle of the first half of any conclusion to its narrative, will understand on a visceral level why she is drawn to her condition," he said. He emphasised that he wants members of the audience to be participants rather than voyeurs.

Michelle Dickson, deputy director of the Playhouse, who saw this play when it was performed at The Royal Court, says that sometimes a play comes along that is unmissable and The Wonderful World of Dissocia is one.

"As I sat at the Royal Court watching the show, it was great to be seeing what I expect will go on to become a classic play, and I felt really excited that we are bringing the show to Oxford Playhouse. It's an amazing journey full of moments of pure theatre that will linger long in the memory.

"What's more, this fascinating play is an easy to understand, witty, disturbing and thought-provoking work delivered by an exceptional ensemble of actors. But what really stood out for me is, without question, the fact it's pure theatre, a spectacle unfolding as we too go on Lisa's journey to Dissocia and back. I left the Royal Court changed by the experience," she said.

The Wonderful World of Dissocia is being staged from Tuesday until Saturday, May 5. For tickets call the Oxford Playhouse box office on 01865 305305.