09/04/2024, 14:54 The Wonderful World of Dissocia - review • Afridiziak Theatre News

The Wonderful World of Dissocia – review

“Leah Harvey plays Lisa with earnestness”.
Stratford East
Review by: Folabomi Amuludun

Published: Wednesday 28th September 2022, 11:20am

The Company of The Wonderful World of Dissocia at Theatre Royal Stratford East. Credit Marc Brenner.

Lisa (played by Leah Harvey) has recently been experiencing sluggishness,

irritability and relationship troubles – all these symptoms are the result of Lisa
having lost an hour when travelling from New York to London during the changing
of the clocks.

Victor, an eccentric watch specialist, who diagnoses this problem, gives her a
nebulous, yet deceptively simple solution: dial a number which will take her to a
country called Dissocia, whose citizens will assist her in relocating her missing hour.

And yet, this isn’t a simple quest at all. Rather, Anthony Neilson takes us on a
spiralling, absurdist journey through the fantasy-land of Dissocia where Lewis
Carroll meets the Safdie brothers. Neilson’s cult modern classic at first feels like a
pantomime on drugs, but we soon learn that Lisa has a dissociative disorder, and
what we’ve witnessed in the first half is her in an acute crisis.

One can’t deny Emma Baggott has understood not just how to stage this
play, but how to connect the two parts of the play for the audience and for
the now, in a world where many of us have lost years of our life to a 
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09/04/2024, 14:54 The Wonderful World of Dissocia - review • Afridiziak Theatre News

pandemic, and where many of us are still struggling to open up about our
mental health.
If Victor is this play’s equivalent to Alice In Wonderland’s White Rabbit, Lisa is not
only Alice but the Queen of Hearts – she’s both victims to the citizens of Dissocia
who send her on a wild goose chase but also ultimately the one in charge of this
fantastical mind-prison in which she has found herself. This is a view many people
without dissociative disorder, or any history of mental illness might take when
learning that Lisa has not been taking her meds, which has led to this dissociative
period.

Leah Harvey plays Lisa with such earnestness and director Emma Baggott has
created a production with such tenderness that audiences of this Theatre Royal
Stratford East production would be hard-pushed to take such a stern moral
position. There is a danger with Lisa’s character, up against the ensemble of off-
beat nonsensical characters, to be overshadowed but Harvey commands the stage,
both when they’re standing on their own in the middle of the dais dancing to music
or when they’re cowering in confusion as the citizens of Dissocia enact chaos on the
stage.

Tomi Ogbaro and Michael Grady-Hall, who play the Insecurity Guards, commit to
their bit relentlessly, always delivering the jokes flawlessly. Archie Backhouse
delivers his performance as the Scapegoat with the utmost energy while remaining
balanced in staggeringly unstable hoof heels. Phoebe Naughton hits every comedic
beat as the “Australian” Britney, the frazzled hot-dog server and Lost Property
employee. It feels as if this group of actors were the original LAMDA students who
first workshopped this play with Neilson when it was first devised in 2002.

It’s a safe bet to say that Angela Gasperetto’s work in bringing the physical comedy
to life will keep the audience in stitches throughout the run. And the intimacy
Gasparetto and Baggott create in the final scene also stay with audiences- with
Leah’s delivery of a particular analogy and the weight of what is unspoken between
them and the worn-down yet empathetic Michael Grady-Hall is a haunting
condensation of what so many people who either suffer from mental illness or cares
for someone who does, feel in every relationship.

Tomi Ogbaro and Michael Grady-Hall, who play the Insecurity Guards,
commit to their bit relentlessly, always delivering the jokes flawlessly

Lucía Sánchez Roldán’s lighting design and Alexandra Faye Braithwaite’s sound
design is slick – and effectively simple when it needs to keep the conversation of
mental health at the forefront. In particular, Grace Smart’s disconcerting set design
keeps the audience on the edge – the halo that hangs over all the characters
throughout the play remains slightly off-kilter, and the backdrops to represent
Dissocia are bewitchingly and grotesquely detailed. The design team’s vision of the
surrealness of Dissocia bursts with elements of pantomime, even though at times it
feels cramped on stage. 
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09/04/2024, 14:54 The Wonderful World of Dissocia - review • Afridiziak Theatre News

Yes, there are issues with the writing and how it binarises the tragicomedy,
belabouring the allegory, and how, although the scene with depictions of rape
rap has
been protracted, there are some gags that don’t always land. However, one can’t
deny Emma Baggott has understood not just how to stage this play, but how to
connect the two parts of the play for the audience and for the now, in a world
where many of us have lost years of our lives to a pandemic, and where many of us
are still struggling to open up about our mental health.

NEED TO KNOW: The Wonderful World of Dissocia is at Theatre Royal Stratford East
until 15 Oct 2022.

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