The hour is in the country of Dissocia, reached when her flat is turned into an elevator that goes sideways as well as up and down. Helped or hindered by the bizarre locals, she must go to the Lost Property Office to claim her hour back. Which is tricky, because the Lost Property Office is also lost.
The first act of Neilson's play is a direct homage to classic fantasies about young girls on surreal quests, especially Alice in Wonderland - there's something very Tweedledee and Tweedledum about Michael Grady-Hall and Tomi Ogbaro's Insecurity Guards (security guards make no sense, why guard something if it's already secure?) who are a bundle of nerves. There's the sombre Oathtaker (Daniel Millar) who's a bit less imposing when he has to ritualistically eat an oatcake every time someone says his name (they're very dry,) a scapegoat (Archie Backhouse) who just wants someone to blame him for everything, a polar bear who sings a comforting song about death (yeah, sometimes it's a musical) and when Lisa finds the site where the Lost Property Office should be, Britney (Phoebe Naughton) has turned it into a hot dog stand.
In a brilliantly cartoonish design from Grace Smart, Dissocia comes to life as a hilariously bizarre place; Neilson has a taste for jokes that are incredibly juvenile, painfully punny (the Three Mungarees are Musketeers who wear dungarees; there's only two of them but nobody mentions that) and often filthy. As I have precisely the same kind of juvenile sense of humour I've always clicked with his shows, and while some might find it goes a bit too close to panto, for me this was just outrageously funny. But not without some sudden lurches into real darkness, like the scapegoat suddenly turning sexual predator.
That scene only gets more sinister with the arrival of Jane (Dominique Hamilton,) a civil servant tasked with lowering crime figures by being the sole victim of all crimes in Dissocia. As she takes the beating and assault in Lisa's place she's a desperately tragic figure, but she transforms into something of a villain herself when she takes to the skies to cheerfully bomb whole swathes of the country - but it's cute because the burn marks are in animal shapes.
Most fantasy quests have a sinister villain threatening the land and the fact that Dissocia's is called the Black Dog King gives us an indication of what's going on (not to mention the fact that the country's name points to dissociative disorders) and the shorter second act brings us crashing down to earth in a mental ward. Although made up of many short, repetitive scenes this act is still grippingly moving, and Lisa's frustration as a succession of doctors give her the same, energy-sapping treatments suggests why skipping her meds and escaping into Dissocia's colourful world, however terrifying, might be tempting.
Perhaps what's ultimately most impressive about The Wonderful World of Dissocia is how well its two completely different, in content and tone, acts hold together. After the wild and colourful journey through Dissocia the deliberately repetitive half-hour spent in a hospital bed could have been too jarring a jolt back to reality, and frankly boring. But Baggott's production paces it pefectly so that the sad scenes build a moving picture of the way the fantasy world has sabotaged Lisa's real-life relationships with people who have no clue what's in it. It's a sharp turn but a fitting coda to the madness of the first act, in a very Neilson mix of stupidity and wisdom.
The Wonderful World of Dissocia by Anthony Neilson is booking until the 15th of October at the Theatre Royal Stratford East.
Running time: 2 hours 5 minutes including interval.
Photo credit: Marc Brenner.
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