^{Cover Image: WAAPA graduate ‘Ana Ika plays the 18-year-old budding writer Anna in Kendall Feaver’s The Almighty Sometimes. Photography by Daniel J Grant.}

Mental illness has long been a go-to subject for drama and comedy because of the natural conflict it creates and, for pieces with a Freudian vibe, it takes us on a journey back in time to the moment of trauma. 

Indeed, there are so many movies made about mental illness its Wikipedia entry organises them around the particular disorders they depict, ranging from agoraphobia and antisocial personality disorder through to schizophrenia, stuttering and substance abuse disorder. 

And there is the ever-present concern that when dealing with the afflicted with an artistic inclination things get a little too cute and fanciful (the 1993 Mike Figgis/Richard Gere drama Mr Jones was accused of this). 

In other words, how do you strike a balance between the giddy highs, madcap rush and creative hyper-activity that can come with these conditions and make for such great entertainment with the crushing lows that inevitably follow? 

^{Anna (‘Ana Ika) with her mother Renée (Alison van Reeken). Photography by Daniel J Grant.}

We learn that Anna leapt from a window and was disappointed she did not end her life, which led to her spending her entire childhood on a cocktail of medications and under Vivienne’s care. 

We flash forward to Anna as a teenager, seemingly well and returning from a night out with a boy she grew up with, Oliver (Ika’s fellow WAAPA alumnus Harry Gilchrist). They are about to head into Anna’s bedroom when Anna’s mother Renée (Alison van Reeken) pads out of her bedroom into the kitchen and is shocked to see the kid who once came over for playdates now straddling her daughter. 

Anna is champing at the bit to not only plunge into a relationship but go to university in some faraway city. What worries the ever-anxious Renée even more than Anna leaving home is that she has dug out her old stories and is wondering if going off the medication would allow her to recapture the talent she showed as a child and unlock the door to a full-blown creative life. 

However, Anna’s drive toward a fully independent adult life is contradicted by her unwillingness to hold down a job, her inability to treat Oliver with respect instead of using him as a sounding board for her brilliant but often cruel flights of fancy and her refusal to accept Vivienne’s announcement that she must now go under the care of an adult psychiatrist. 

Things come to a head when Anna makes the decision to come off the medication, which brings a creative explosion but once again plunges her into darkness and mania. 

The consequences of Anna dumping her pills send the play into its much more interesting and challenging second half, allowing Ika to give us the full force of off-the-meds Anna — brilliant but dangerously unhinged, electric but a narcissistic nightmare — and giving the two senior actors licence to dig deep into the complexity of the young woman they both care about. 

In the play’s strongest scene Renée crosses the line and confronts Vivienne about her daughter (as any mother would), opening up about her fear that Anna did not need to be medicated in the first place, and Vivienne admits that psychiatry is not an exact science, that at best they are making educated guesses. 

It is in this splendid scene that these two wonderful actors elevate a play that at times feels written for a young audience (that is, not quite as rich and troubling as it should be), conveying all the sadness, despair and exhaustion of dealing with a young woman who has so much promise yet is destined for a lifetime of struggle. 

There are also some lovely scenes between Ika and the very engaging Gilchrist (yes, the son of cricketing legend Adam Gilchrist) as the pair negotiate the always difficult terrain of first love, with Anna bursting with desire and intellectual energy and trainee locksmith Oliver not quite believing such a volcanic creative force would find him interesting. 

While The Almighty Sometimes is dealing with confronting material — anyone who has dealt with a young person grappling with mental illness or even emotional issues will relate — McLean does an excellent job of keeping things balanced between drama and comedy, making Anna vivacious and charming enough to keep us entertained but always reminding us she has made her mother’s life hell. 

This controlled aesthetic is matched by Fiona Bruce’s minimalist, monochromatic blue set, which can be read in different ways depending on the moment. At times it is the canvas on to which Anna projects her larger-than-life personality, the cool, chic psychiatrist’s office and the colourless world of a deeply depressed patient. 

Best of all is the final scene, a beautifully subdued mother-daughter moment that is completely unexpected in a play about crippling mental illness and explosive creativity, and a reminder that despite the emotional roller-coaster ride of caring for a child experiencing this condition, it is still a family story. 

I won’t give the ending away; suffice to say it is one of the best conclusions to a play I’ve seen on a Perth stage in recent years. 

The Almighty Sometimes is on at Subiaco Arts Centre until July 5.