Dreams of Violence @ The REP

5th Nov 2009

DESPITE the extrem­ity of the dys­func­tional fam­ily, direc­tor Fee­hily keeps the audi­ence recoil­ing in hor­ror with this witty, touch­ing and con­tem­po­rary play. The story com­bines the col­lapse of the econ­omy, the col­lapse of cheek­bones and the col­lapse of fam­ily life with remark­able ease in a pool of Freudian melodrama.

The respon­si­bil­ity of deal­ing with an alco­holic mother, senile father, drug-addicted son and adul­ter­ous hus­band, with the back­drop of social rev­o­lu­tion, rests uneasily on Hildy’s shoul­ders. Inter­ludes of psy­cho­log­i­cally dis­turb­ing dreams show her under­ly­ing bit­ter­ness, which not only char­ac­terises her; but also as the title sug­gests, is the premise of the whole play. The real drama locates itself ulti­mately in the sub­con­scious desires of each of the char­ac­ters, ren­dered in inti­mate scenes of per­sonal mono­logues and bril­liant dra­matic scenes between characters.

Nonethe­less, the play grips tight to its sense of laugh-out-loud humour, as ele­vated scenes of com­edy cure oth­ers of extreme sad­ness. The actors were able to trans­gress through these vary­ing scenes with real­is­tic believability.

The direc­tor effec­tively laid dia­logue on top of each other, which extended the clash­ing atmos­phere that the play attempted to cre­ate. The mod­est set, of a white semi-circular wall with an inbuilt cup­board, worked well, as the actors wheeled on and dragged off props.

The dia­logue was fan­tas­tic, with the actors giv­ing a remark­able per­for­mance, albeit on a small stage. But it was this sim­plic­ity that really helped make the play so effective.