There is something particularly engaging about a personal revelation: insights into actual minds affect us in a way that differs from fictional narratives, perhaps not more powerfully, but with an added poignancy.  The recent and much celebrated, The Father, had, in Kenneth Cranham’s portrayal, one of the most moving performances I can recall.  Kane Power’s recollections of and investigations into his mother’s bi-polar world, whilst it deals with a similar theme of a mind spinning out of the grounded here-and-now into an alternative construction of reality, moves us for different reasons.

Mental is a one-man show in which the actor/storyteller swims in the all-consuming presence of his mother.  Surrounded on stage by boxes of written material, documenting a troubled life and various pieces of electronic instrumentation, it has a deceptively insouciant air.  That’s clever and part of the art; it has the feel of a friend unburdening a deep sorrow.

Layers of anecdote and sound, music and forensic description (Kim, his mother was at times sectioned) build into a compelling plea for understanding of the victims of this debilitating affliction.  The soundscape by Peter R. Reynolds is a distinctive feature of the show.  It is no mere embellishment and carries its fair share of the emotional impact of the piece.  Using techniques similar to the Auto-Tune pitch altering software used in some pop music and various loop-repeat schemes, a troubled mind is given an audible, fractured reality and a son’s frustration, despair and love finds expression.  Nor is it lost on us that he is singing in the face of adversity.

The psychotic episodes, the invasion of voices (which he notes that in more credulous and superstitious times might have been subject of religious interpretation) and the chemical horrors of treatments that lack the certitude of established cures, but end in a vicious cycle of prescription, are woven into an episodic narrative.  The show was written as a collaboration between Kane Power and his mother, Kim (plus Alice Lamb and director, Tid). An interesting quote came from his mother who felt that the process of giving a dramatic form to her experience was instrumental in giving it ‘value’.

Given the intensely personal nature of the related events, the actor’s emotions are surprisingly carefully controlled, except, I found, at the end when Mr Power accompanies himself on guitar in a final song and when it dawned on me that that was what the whole play, in its dramatic essence, was about – a love song to a mother.

Mental is an honest and humane piece of theatre that draws back the curtain on an area of public misunderstanding and in doing so raises our sensitivity to compassion as society begins to face up to the challenges of mental health. ★★★★☆    Graham Wyles    8^th June 2017