The Fantasist

Louise is an artist living in a secure mental health unit, being treated for bipolar disorder. Not that we would know this at the start, for the world she usually inhabits is of her own involuntary creation, peopled by curious, mischievous objects and fantasies of a tall, velvet coat-wearing muse.

What begins as slapstick slowly becomes an overwhelming headwreck of hallucinations, at first filling Louise with a frenetic energy that nourishes her painting, before turning into a crawling, cloying nightmare she cannot escape.

There are shades of Anthony Neilson's The Wonderful World of Dissocia here, but where Neilson's play splits the world of its protagonist into two acts—fantasy world and real world—here, perhaps more plausibly, Louise flits erratically between the two, being rudely interrupted from her luxurious delusions by her "jovial jail keeper," health worker Josie, and later pleading with Josie to intervene as the visions become too much to bear.

The puppets co-designed by Julia Yevnine—who also plays Louise—walk a tightrope between charming and horrific, all brilliantly handled by Cat Gerrard and Julia Corrêa. Bruised women pop from cupboards and sing ballads about their deformed faces, a tiny doll makes squealing conversation, and the tall dark man mixes sinister seductive potions for Louise to drink.

But the piece's quiet power comes through in the way it deals with the two sides of the disorder, the enrichment and the debilitation, without either romanticising or victimising Louise. "I've been riding on the back of a tiger," she confides frantically to Josie, "but I want to get off."