LET LOOSE SID by Calum MacArthur at Barons Court until 8 June 2004

“Tackles a dark, desperate subject with heart and imagination.” ★★★ ½

The subterranean, dark cave you descend into at Barons Court Theatre is the perfect venue for a play about our deepest, darkest subconscious thoughts. Let Loose Sid which charts one person’s journey through their reality and fantasy lives has been written and directed by Calum MacArthur. Louis Walwyn who plays twenty-one-year-old Sid, does so with confidence and energy and immediately draws the audience into their tale. We see Sid go through a box of their mother’s belongings where alongside random stuff like her favourite Elvis album, a diary is unearthed but it’s a diary of her unconscious life, a dream diary. Sid who suffers from night terrors is able to access his mother's more triumphant dreams and also learns the skills of lucid dreaming, the ability to control one's dreams.

Sid’s bricks and mortar reality of urine-soaked sheets, crippling anxiety, a mother on life support – perhaps related to domestic abuse, stress or dementia - and a brutal unsympathetic father who also dies at some point, contrast with Sid’s escape into a fantasy life peopled by action heroes, Hulk and Spidey and their mother’s dreamworlds. For a while, lucid dreaming gives the feeling of “a superhero who can do anything.” Can Sid’s new night-time strategy stave off a disintegrating self and downward spiralling life? Or will there be a more permanent solution?

Lighting and sound design are used effectively to create atmosphere and anticipation. Creepy, weird sounds underline our protagonist's “bat-shit crazy” life and mental state. We hear a heart beat faster in a chest and a cardiogram flatlines. The use of lighting is striking and simple. Sid initially appears blinking from the blackness in a stark white spotlight while dreams sequences are denoted by washes of hot pink and other colours. Occasionally, a piece of rope creaks out and dangles enticingly before Sid, to offer a tantalising and permanent solution to this life of relentless woe.

As this isn’t a linear, forward-moving narrative, but one that plays with time, space and reality, the order of events can sometimes be puzzling. Some transitions were a little unseamed and might have been less obvious and spell-breaking with more consistent use of sound but overall, this is a worthy and absorbing hour-long production with no interval. The play has partnered with James’ Place, a charity that offers lifesaving treatment to suicidal men and manages to tackle a dark and desperate subject with both heart and imagination.

LET LOOSE SID by Calum MacArthur at Barons Court Theatre 28 May – 8 June 2004

Box Office https://www.baronscourttheatre.com/letloosesid

Reviewed by Nilgin Yusuf