How do you feel about mental health? Have you experienced a breakdown, watched others suffer? Are you scared of it? Or think it couldn’t happen to you? This is what Bent Architect’s new production ’The Wonderful World Of…’ hopes to help the audience question, and inspire new ways of thinking about mental health problems.
The production is very site specific. I saw it at Temple Works, before it tours to Nottingham, and then Tooting Market in London. As the production roams around the mill, taking advantage of its industrial spaces, my experience will therefore be quite different to audiences who see it in other venues. The room in which the audience gathered waiting for the production to begin was displaying art works provided by Arts & Mind, an organisation that believes art can promote mental well being. As you stroll around the room examining the paintings, a woman in a wedding dress wanders through the audience, greeting guests and chatting, and so the performance begins. We parade through the rooms, out into the open air, joining in with the singing, and end up as guests at a wedding reception. Throughout, there is a level of interaction that encourages the audience to involve themselves as much as they want. Speaking to producer Jude Wright, she discussed a real desire to break away from the natural constraints of theatre; box office, sit down, silence, interval etc. In this, the audience were encouraged to sing and dance along, and your own involvement enhances the performance.
The play reveals 2 different experiences of mental health. One part focuses on a young man who experiences psychosis; the voices in this head are acted by 2 creatures, almost like pirates, who are outside of time and space, and interact with the audience to become as real to us as to him. His family worry about him as he spends thousands of pounds on credit cards in sprees, and is unable to provide a stable life for himself. However, he is also joyful, taking pleasure in many aspects of his life, and his illness is portrayed very much as a part of *him*, not something separate to be treated and therefore conquered.
The 2nd story is separate, but the character interweaves occasionally with the 1st. We are guests at her happy wedding, but it is shortly after this that her problems with depression begin. She grows distressed at the suffering of others, and begins to see life as equating pain. Her new husband is in denial, and she is unable to comprehend or accept what is happening to her. Her tentative friendship with the other character falters when she realises he is ‘madder’ than she is; he experiences mania, and she is unable to acknowledge her depression has a strong interrelation with that. The characters reveal 2 different experiences of mental health, and we the audience can recognise ourselves either in the characters, or the reactions of others.
I attended with a friend, and we both commented on how much it had made us think, and question the way in which we may make judgements about mental health. However, the play is not some worthy learning experience. It is warm, funny and affectionate, if a little bit crazy. Which seems exactly right.
Tickets available for 26-28th May in Tooting Market, London http://wonderfulworldof-eorg.eventbrite.com/
Alexandra (@sewhipfolkie)
Nice review! I understand the play even more now, thanks! I did see it too and loved it. The high point for me was really feeling part of it, not that I’m a big fan of audience particpation or anything. But it was subtle, just being able to wander around with the actors and I think being set around a wedding scene worked really well. After all its one of those occasions that’s going to get a traditionally uptight British audience going (not the ones at Templeworks specifically, just us Brits in general!) And sitting us down at wedding tables at places set with special name cards, nutter or psycho for example was genius! I loved the use of the projections too – great for visualising the female character’s varying states of mind during her depression. And I’ve not seen that in the theatre before. Another first for Templeworks? Lastly the acting was great as was the ship of fools and bands afterwards. Seen The Rats before? Do. They’re great.