The Wonderful World of Dissocia

Lisa’s been feeling a bit out of balance lately, so she’s absolutely thrilled when the son of the Swiss watch-repair man shows up at her door to explain that on a recent transatlantic trip, she lost an hour from her life. To get it back, she must travel to the land of Dissocia, which resembles an extra-lurid Lewis Carroll creation; Ricky Lurie’s attractive costumes reinforce the Wonderland associations.

But it’s clear there’s something less than fantastic going on here; for one thing, Lisa is all too eager to embrace this strange environment. Even Alice displayed more healthy skepticism. All becomes clear after intermission, when Lisa wakes up in a sterile psychiatric hospital; the first act was an episode of a woman with mental illness who’s gone off her meds, and not for the first time.

It’s an interesting experiment in form; Neilson essentially dramatizes Lisa’s inner life, then attempts to eschew dramatization of her outer life. Compared to Dissocia, the real world is distressingly (and, for a playwright, daringly) mundane: Much of the second act consists of near-wordless scenes of nurses administering medication, day flowing into night and back again.

Cox’s direction of this U.S. premiere can be overly frenetic in the first act, but Benson’s Lisa makes a terrific anchor, and the suffocating stillness of the second act chills. Scottish playwright Neilson’s script comes close to a Cuckoo’s Nest romanticizing of illness over treatment, until an unexpected exchange between Lisa and her bewildered, frustrated boyfriend blindsides us with the simple force of real-world emotion.

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