A battle of fame over sanity

ADELAIDE FRINGE

Drama

Shellshocked

Holden Street Theatres until March 23, 2025

UK writer Philip Stokes latest play, Shellshocked, continues his investigations of human nature under pressure. He uses language riffing on seemingly insignificant phrases that bounce between the characters and gain uneasy, ominous weight despite their comic twists.

It draws on the kind of dialogue explored by playwrights like Harold Pinter and Samuel Becket indicating repressed power and cruelty.

In Shellshocked we are asked to value the lives of two very different people; Wesley a soldier reduced to a wreck by his wartime experiences, the other Lupine, an artist confident in his power within his domain, a studio featuring a large blank canvas.

Wesley has been invited to an interview to be employed as Lupine’s assistant on the strength of his portfolio.

The struggle starts as a play on words but becomes sinister as Lupine describes Wesley’s art as very humdrum, and announces he has burnt the portfolio because it has more value for heating than art.

The tension struck between Jack Stokes as the gangly and awkward Wesley and Lee Bainbridge as the bullish and dissolute Lupine is palpable and compelling.

As the gloves come off a grander, much darker manipulation becomes apparent. We are looking into two damaged souls and the choices are madness, nihilism, fame and futures, with art as the muse.

The plot skates alarmingly on thin ice as these issues are resolved, and it is down to the force of performances by Bainbridge and Stokes that it doesn’t collapse into some kind of farce.

Instead, Lupine’s pursuit of his Magnum Opus, and Wesley’s fight for his presence of mind are delicate, macabre things hanging in the balance, and providing no end of suspense.

Around these two performers, there is a set and a sound world that nicely hints at the issues at stake. Lupine listening to a documentary on none other than Richard III; Wesley lost in his late father’s oversized suit, a set including furniture from Lupine’s previous calling as an artisan cabinet maker backed by stained drapes.

It is well-realised theatre.