Just over a decade ago, Belarus Free Theatre began its extraordinary existence with a production of Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis. Now it returns to the subject of mental health with Vladimir Shcherban’s adaptation and staging of a memoir by a Norwegian psychologist, Arnhild Lauveng, recording her own experience of schizophrenia. It is performed with the company’s usual physical expressiveness, yet it also left me wondering if theatre is the ideal medium for recapturing a prolonged curative process.
Five actors sit in a circle and take turns in embodying Lauveng’s experiences. As a schoolgirl, she shows all the symptoms of mental disturbance: she imagines jumping off tall towers, sees wolves in the hallway, suffers a crisis of identity and hears voices. In one of the most telling passages, she records the presence of another self she calls “The Captain”, who rebukes her for her failings, physically attacks her and squats on her back as she tries to go about her daily life.
One advantage of theatre is that it can make Lauveng’s experiences manifest: when she talks of the fog that surrounds her, the actors blow smoke rings that slowly envelop her, and the images that fill her head are ingeniously projected on to a screen through a copy of the very memoir she has written. When Lauveng is institutionalised, we also get a vivid idea of her initial resistance to much of the treatment: the morning workouts, the confinement to an isolation ward, the meaningless tasks that, at one point, involve her in routinely rolling earplugs.
All this is graphically and imaginatively shown. But the production also raises several questions. The story has a positive note in that Lauveng eventually overcomes the illness (today describing herself as a “former schizophrenic”) and fulfils her dream of becoming a psychologist. But in an 80-minute show it is difficult to record every stage of the curative treatment and Lauveng’s leap from afflicted patient to qualified expert is sudden and only partly explained. The production also seems intended to stir us into action on patients’ rights. At the end we are invited to sign postcards protesting at the increased use of physical restraints against mental health patients. That seems entirely just. But, since Lauveng explicitly says she wouldn’t be alive today if force had not been used to prevent her from harming herself, it is difficult for the layman to know at what point restraint is appropriate.
This is the first Belarus Free Theatre production to use an all-British cast and the five actors involved perform with exemplary lack of inhibition. Emily Houghton, Grace Andrews, Samantha Pearl, Oliver Bennett and Alex Robertson all switch easily from representing Lauveng herself to the doctors and staff who attend her. But, while the show enhances our awareness and understanding of schizophrenia, it also disturbs one in another sense. By condensing the treatment into a limited time, can theatre ever convey the arduousness of treating mental illness? And, as spectators, are we equipped to make instant ethical judgments on practical issues? Vibrant as this show is, I remain deeply unsure.
- At the Arcola, London, until 29 October. Box office: 020-7503 1646. Then at the Albany, London, in rep until 12 November. Box office: 020-8692 4446.
