Automated answering services and their endless options are the bane of modern life.

Dissocia’s call centre set the humour level for the first act at a very high 10 out of 10!

The lift ride down made me laugh out loud and Lisa’s conversation with the two security guards was just priceless - I won’t spoil it by telling you why...you have to find out yourself.

Things Get Violent and Messy

Claire Little

Her interlude with the "time-flies" and "scapegoat" - although funny - was very disturbing, involving bestial sexual assault.

We don’t see it actually happen but from the noises off we get the idea.

Crime figures are reduced by the hobbling council woman who enters on her go-cart and takes the rape on Lisa’s behalf...sheer insane genius.

Act 1 ends with the equivalent of Alice’s Tea Party involving hot-dogs, aromatic fried onions ketchup and mustard.

It gets very messy and there’s a surprise appearance by a gentleman’s genitals (so don’t go if that sort of thing offends you). Lisa has lost an hour but he has "lost his inhibitions"!

Surreal Comedy

The first act is surreal and comical, played out on a nauseatingly hideous carpeted raked area with the eight strong cast doubling up on many of the roles.

Christine Entwhistle as Lisa also starred in Neilson's previous work for the Drum, "Edward Gant’s Amazing Feats of Loneliness".

Surreal drama

Certain themes re-occur. Gant had a singing bear and Dissocia has a soft and gentle pure white polar bear who magically appears from a hole in the stage to sing a pretty song about holding your paw when you die.

Gant had trepanning and Dissocians hold their bleeding heads when the black dog king threatens them.

A Play of Two Halves

A major scene change means a long interval and Act 2 is set in a sterile white hospital room. Inside a glass rectangle, Lisa is in a hospital bed and with monotonous regularity given drugs to take.

I hated this part with its muffled voices, endless fades to black and repetitions of nurses and doctors entering and leaving, but that is the whole point.

Lisa’s mental illness means she has so much more fun in her own world.

Without the drugs there’s a whole cast of amusing characters to play with and everything is exciting and strange.

Daily meds make her sluggish and bored so why should she take them? It might make her family and boyfriend happy - but where’s the fun in being normal?