BWW Reviews: COSI, The Kings Head Theatre, June 28 2011

With echoes of Ken Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest and Malcolm Bradbury's The History Man, Louis Nowra's Cosi invites us to question who is really sane in a world in which madness is accepted as the norm. Set in 1971, the madness outside the asylum is the Vietnam War, in which the USA and its Australian allies are pouring blood and treasure into a struggle with a poor indigenous population fired by an all-encompassing ideology - communism. 40 years on, the helicopters are in a different part of the world and the ideology is of a religious rather than political character, but, otherwise, plus ca change.

Straight out of college, not quite sure of his girlfriend nor his politics, Lewis (Matthew Burton) takes on a project to produce a play drawing on the patients of a Melbourne metal asylum as cast and crew. Brecht was his choice, but he is soon overwhelmed by Roy (Edmund Dehn) whose passion for Mozart wins over his reluctant colleagues. Soon, as anyone who has ever "workshopped" in a staff training environment knows, the group has bonded and the production of Cosi Fan Tutte (in English, without the music) gains a momentum all of its own. Sure enough, the patients do blossom with Henry (David Price in a lovely performance) going from tongue-tied mute to eloquent actor. But it is Lewis, now an actor-director. who travels furthest, coming to respect, even love, his charges, leaving him with difficult choices outside the asylum walls in a world now far more mad than the one inside.

Despite moments of farce and comic interludes, the play is serious in its portrayal of the patients - they have plenty of the familiar ticks and they're damaged, but they are rounded human beings with the same desire for love, community and self-expression as anyone else. Cosi was first produced twenty years ago in less sensitive times, so the danger of VOPishness (VOP  = Vicariously Offended Person) exists, but Adam Spreadbury-Maher's direction patronises nobody and sends his audience out into the heat and dust of North LonDon Wondering exactly who is, and who isn't, mad.

Cosi is in rep at The Kings Head Theatre until 13 July.