Hyperbole possessed the enthusiastic reviews that greeted the 2004 Edinburgh Festival production of this Anthony Neilson play about Lisa Jones, a woman taking leave of her right mind and slipping into Dissocia's hinterland of psychosis and hallucination.
Neilson succumbs to fantasy himself by claiming The Wonderful World of Dissocia virtually defines a new theatrical form of "psycho absurdism".
In fact, his surrealist black comedy comes dressed up in a new cut from the old-hat Theatre of the Absurd, with trimmings borrowed from Alice in Wonderland, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and David Lynch - spiritual inner-linings supplied by 1960s therapist RD Laing.
The first act, in Dissocia, teems with comic, creative satire on contemporary Britain and imaginative variations on Lewis Carroll-like logic and word games. Christine Entwisle's bemused Lisa discovers from Barnaby Power's sinister watch-repairer that she has lost a crucial hour in her life and can recover it in the country of Dissocia.
When plunged into this limboland, Insecurity Guards frisk her, a half-human Scape Goat attempts anal rape before Amanda Hadingue's hilarious, robot-like council employee comes to the rescue and takes the young woman on a bombing spree from a flying car.
A zombie-like Lisa is restored to reality and a neon-lit hospital room in the ponderous second act. Nurses regiment her. An exasperated boyfriend, Vince, complains. An adorable, singing polar bear from Dissocia reappears, as if belabouring the false notion that her madness is more seductive than sanity.
By imaging the dramatic life into which Lisa trips when abandoning medication and comparing it with her doped hospital torpor when back on medication, Neilson seeks to suggest why Lisa will always return to Dissocia. This comparison distorts her life-dilemma. Lisa's stay in hospital is temporary. In the end she prepares to go home to the boyfriend.
Neilson, who directs his own exuberant production, would have made a better argument if he had contrasted the wanderings of Lisa in Dissocia and her domestic life with Vince.
Closes 21 April. Information: 020 7565 5000.
The Wonderful World Of Dissocia
Jerwood Theatre At The Royal Court
Sloane Square, SW1W 8AS
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