The psychiatrist RD Laing's theories were a major influence on
Equus, so I was
interested in seeing a play about the man himself. Laing's work is now widely
discredited but Patrick Marmion's
The Divided Laing, or,
The Two
Ronnies takes place in 1970, when Ronnie Laing (Alan Cox) is in his prime: A
minor celebrity thanks to regular appearances on BBC2, and running his own mental
institution-cum-hippie commune, The Philadelphia Association. There the line between
doctors and patients is hard to see: Aaron (Kevin McMonagle) is his
long-standing colleague and the sensible balance to Laing's excess; also there is the intermittently American psychiatrist Joe (James Russell,)
and Mary (Laura-Kate Gordon,) the resident nurse, who may or may not have got
over her coprophilia. But Laing seems to identify most with David (Oscar Pearce,) a
South African with a voracious appetite for drink and drugs, who has to be kept in a
medically-induced coma much of the time.
