MARK FISHER found himself glued to his seat during Rapture Theatre’s latest touring production.

Jimmy Chisholm, Christopher John Hall and Greg Powrie

MADNESS HAS a special place in the theatre. Whether it’s ‘Hamlet’ or ‘One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest’, dramatists like characters who live on the borderline between sanity and insanity. Theatre is all about extreme situations and in extreme situations people don’t behave as normal. When no one behaves as normal, it’s impossible to tell the mentally balanced from the unhinged. And when that happens, the very notion of madness comes into question.

This is the scenario in Joe Penhall’s award-winning play, ‘Blue/Orange’, which is being given its Scottish premiere in a gripping production by Rapture Theatre. We’re in a mental hospital where a patient, Christopher (Christopher John Hall), is waiting to find out whether his young doctor, Bruce (Greg Powrie), will let him return home after his short stay. Bruce thinks he needs further treatment – Christopher’s instance that the oranges are blue gives him grounds for concern – but his superior, Robert (Jimmy Chisholm), has ideas of his own.

On one level, Penhall plays familiar Cuckoo’s Nest games that make the authority figures appear more impulsive, irrational and dangerous than the man they have labelled as mentally ill. Christopher’s condition is on the borderline between neurosis and psychosis, making it hard to tell if he’s delusional or just a bit wound up. The doctors, on the other hand, have no such diagnosis yet frequently behave as if they’re the ones being held against their will.

But Penhall adds another dimension to the three-handed drama by suggesting that the treatment of the mentally unwell (and by the end, it is clear that Christopher does have psychiatric problems) is subject to the petty politics and prejudice of those running the National Health Service. Robert is more interested in what the black Christopher can contribute to the completion of his half-baked book about racial misunderstandings. Bruce is more interested in staying on the right side of Robert.

It’s a three-way struggle in which each of the men strives to assert his authority over the others. Through this, Penhall builds a tremendous tension reminiscent of the to-and-fro battles of the student and professor in David Mamet’s ‘Oleanna’. We’re never quite sure whose side we should be on.

Yes, the scenario is a little unlikely, the setting static and the play wordy, but in Michael Emans’s production, the three actors never let a beat drop, giving tough, pacy performances that keep you glued to the end.

‘Blue/Orange’ can be seen at the following Highlands and Islands venues:
Community Hall, Easdale Island, Saturday 28 May, 2005
Corran Halls, Oban, Monday 30 May, 2005
Mull Little Theatre, Tuesday 31 May – Wednesday 1 June 2005
Spectrum Centre Inverness. Monday 6 June 2005
TBA, Thurso, Tuesday 7 June 2005
McPhail Centre, Ullapool, Wednesday 8 June 2005
Ardross Hall, Ardross, Thursday 9 June 2005
Sabhal Mor Ostaig, Sleat, Isle of Skye, Friday 10 June 2005
Sunart Centre, Strontian, Saturday 11 June 2005

© Mark Fisher, 2005