A performance where madness hovers on the fringes of the stage, peeking around the curtains and manifesting itself in obscure and questionable yet tangible ways, weaving itself through all of the characters to trigger episodes of ‘mad’ action or emotional overload in themselves as a result of the mentality that surrounds and impinges upon them. A highly emotionally-charged atmosphere with some fantastic characterisation and dramatic tension, yet a somewhat confusing and incoherent plot that left the audience, even at the close, a little curious and still questioning the certainty of what they had just witnessed.

"Os Leanse excelled in portraying a confused, shifting and ambivalent character whose states of sanity and insanity overlap"

The enactment of Ray, discharged into the care of his sister following an un-elaborated upon stay in a mental hospital, was very clever. Os Leanse excelled in portraying a confused, shifting and ambivalent character whose states of sanity and insanity overlap, bridging the boundaries between sense and nonsense in his words. The perpetual shifting of character from apparently ‘normal’ to behaviour that touches the brink of violence, drunkenness, addictive dependence and identity crisis was executed with ease by Leanse. His skill at manipulating different emotional states throughout the play maintained a dramatic tension that kept the audience compelled throughout the performance. 

The questioning of whether Ray was breaking the barriers of sanity leaked into other characters too, as Laura, Dave and Ives also appeared to merge the distinction, one moment behaving entirely ‘ordinarily’ and in accordance with expectation, the next shocking the audience.

"Moments of violence, implicit of underlying madness or with hints at dangerous motives, were portrayed with comic ease that enabled the audience to laugh and release tension"

A notable moment was Laura’s sudden whipping of a hammer from her pillow as deemed ‘natural’ by her character, that was brilliantly portrayed by Helen Vella Taylor, inducing comic laughter in her justified logic that masked undertones of violence and extreme methods of self-protection. Throughout the play, moments of violence, indicative of underlying madness or with hints at dangerous motives, were portrayed with comic ease that enabled the audience to laugh and release tension. This contrasted well with the ongoing sense of disease that pervaded throughout, as the topic of true mental disturbance haunted the background, following the protagonist on his journey through love, cookery lessons, friendship, drinking, and coming to term with the voices inside his head.

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The stage was very well designed to facilitate a wide variety of settings and scenes with props craftily hung on pegs around the walls, plucked off when in use and then cast aside. Almost like a washing-line, the audience could trace the progression of the play through the removal of props from the walls as they counted down each scene to discover what fate would await their protagonist. With each passing prop and scene, tensions tightened and relationships moved on, dispersed, reformed and then fell apart again, just as life offers new beginnings and endings.

Lighting was efficiently manipulated with the main light and spotlight indicative of central acting and an alternative backlight used during scene changes. This worked well with the very effective sound to demonstrate the setting as well as providing authentic accompaniment to onstage action – a favourite part was the final cooking lesson, not only portrayed with fantastic detail by Amy Malone but enhanced by the sounds of steam and frying that echoed around the small theatre space.

With a brilliant cast, some very clever and effective lighting, sound and staging devices, admirable attention to the detail of costumes to demonstrate different stages of the play’s progression – particularly in the character of Laura – this was a well thought-out performance, dramatized to an excellent standard, just lacking a little in cohesion and coherency of plot and narrative framework. Yet overall a strong, dramatically-delivered and emotionally-charged performance