Trance

Anthony Neilson's recent 'The Wonderful World of Dissocia' raised the bar high for plays that theatricalise madness and dual identity. Too high for Shoji Kokami's 'Trance', a diverting
confection about a writer who thinks he's the emperor of Japan, but one whose journey into reality and illusion diverts into platitude. The best thing about the production, directed by Kokami himself, is Meredith MacNeill's performance as psychiatrist Reiko: there's a lovely, believable contrast between her gawky off-duty persona and the authority of her professional identity. The contrast serves the play well – after all, it's a disquisition on split personality, in which all three characters have assumed seemingly arbitrary roles. The troubled Masa (Stephen Darcy) slips in and out of his regal alter-ego. Sanzo (Rhashan Stone), who is in love with him, has reinvented himself as drag queen Sylvia. But one struggles to engage with Masa's imperial delusions, and with the roles Sanzo and Reiko adopt to complement them. Perhaps because Darcy makes little impact as the posh-accented emperor, the love-triangle subplot becomes more involving than the schizophrenia story. But neither are resolved, as Kokami, flaunting the flimsiness of all three characters' identities, folds the play in on itself.