Ridiculusmus create bold theatre, and The Eradication Of Schizophrenia In Western Lapland is no exception.

The company have extensively researched the Finnish “Open Dialogue” treatment for schizophrenia and are touring throughout the UK to initiate debate about the technique. The Basement host the premiere as part of their Sick! Festival.

The piece is startling; under stark lighting the performers enact a fragmented, interlocking text simultaneously performed to a split audience across two distinct spaces. The spaces are bridged by transparent curtains and a doorway through which the characters move between the opposite worlds.

The first half is fairly incomprehensible from either side of the divide and acclimatises the audience to the strange experience of hearing voices from the other space. Sometimes the characters react, and sometimes they don’t, creating an ambiguity as to who is experiencing these auditory hallucinations – is it one, or all? Is it the audience?

The audience is flipped after the interval, experiencing the half presented as intrusions before. Suddenly, the worlds collide, in a burst of clarity; the past and future projections are brought into a nightmarish present and we watch the traumatic root of the schizophrenic symptoms.

A challenging piece performed with conviction and clarity.