Review by Laura Money
Do you love your dreams so much, you keep hitting snooze for ‘just another five minutes?’ Struggle to get out of bed because it’s the best place to be? Meet Alex (Andreas Lohmeyer) a dreamer, in the true sense of the word. Alex heads a company called Lucidity that helps people achieve lucid dreams – it puts them firmly in control over their dreams. Alex states that dreams are nothing more that warnings for humans – thousands of years of evolution that serve as teachable moments – the nightmares children have, chased by monsters and such, prepare them for the dangers of the real world, they will know how to react if they’ve spent all night running and hiding. So, what do you have to do tomorrow? Can you control your training?
Alex has become a little too obsessed with the lucid dreams he has every night….and sometimes all day. He spends all day abusing his own self-help methods to inhabit a dream world where his ex-wife, Em (Shaynee Brayshaw) hasn’t stopped loving him and wants to fight zombies, go jet skiing and make love. Dream-Em is fun and over the top, a brilliant piece of acting from Brayshaw. Everything about her is hyper-real, so that when we meet the ‘real’ Em, we are shocked to find her slightly aggressive and wary. Alex’s relationship with his business sees him walking on rather thin ice – stuck sleeping his life away, forcing his younger sister, Billy (Alex Malone) to care for him and potentially put her own dreams on hold. Lohmeyer is fantastic as the tortured Alex, vulnerable and frail in his dream world, useless and distracted in the real world. Upon meeting Ash (Charlotte Devenport) it seems that reality is going well enough for Alex to cease his retreat into dreamland. Unfortunately for Alex, dreams are harder to escape than it appears.
This is a cleverly written play – Michael Abercromby has done it again, after the success of Dirty People. With themes of addiction beautifully rendered – mass empty coffee cups littering the stage, repetition of daily routine, bed sheets and covers being stripped bare – and the blurring of reality and dreams becoming so confusing that both appear to fall apart around Alex. Lucidity asks the big question: what is reality and why does it not do to dwell on dreams?
When: 14th – 18th February 2017 | 6:00pm
Where: The Blue Room Theatre | Fringe Central | PERTH
Tickets: $21 – $26
Info: Duration 60 minutes | Suitable 15+
Link: https://fringeworld.com.au/whats_on/event/lucidity/634fde3d-820b-4363-aca8-4fcd6c41366c/
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