The house lights came up; the plunking marimba sounds of Mike Duncan's movie-score music returned. It was intermission at Meadow Brook Theatre, and I was thoroughly spooked.
It doesn't take much time to start wondering what's really going on in Mindgame, the Anthony Horowitz play in its Michigan premiere. Major and minor clues are peppered through the first act, eventually leading one to realize that something is amiss. Writer Mark Styler (Loren Bass) has made the trip to secluded Fairfield, an asylum for the criminally insane, in order to unlock the secrets of the serial killer Easterman for his next lucrative true-crime book. Instead, he's stymied by Dr. Alex Farquhar (Mark Rademacher), who denies Mark access to the patients but keeps him talking, and Nurse Plimpton (Inga R. Wilson), who's both terrified and brusquely insistent that he depart. What begins as a long, indulgent talk between Mark and Dr. Farquhar is in fact laying out the complex groundwork for a reality in which nothing is as it appears. Once the story gets moving, it veers out of control, and — Here's the thing about reviewing a play in which unexpected things happen: you can't talk about anything for fear of spoilers. This one is best kept vague.
For all that Mindgame might ask us to puzzle over the nature of sanity, under the direction of Terry W. Carpenter, this production works better as a psychological thriller than as a head-scratcher. As often as perspectives shift, for the most part, one believable truth is wholly replaced with another; with present circumstances always making the most sense, viewers may get caught up in plot developments with little time or inclination to ponder what it all means. In contrast to the take-it-or-leave-it cerebral element, the urgency and suspense of every new discovery make for a gripping experience — even though I correctly guessed a few twists ahead of time, the pacing and furor that led to their reveals left me shaken. (My suspension of disbelief was so willing, in fact, that I briefly found a Zingerman's sandwich unpalatable. Blasphemy!) Bass and Rademacher expertly steer the primarily two-man show, firmly rooting most of the crucial exposition about madness, Mark's writing, and the history of Fairfield. When their sense of reality skews, the characters become grotesquely distorted, yet their actions remain comprehensible. Wilson brings crucial moments to the heights of panic; her character's iterations throw a figurative wrench into the binary struggle of Mark's reality versus the doctor's, layering on the complexity.
Lighting design by Reid G. Johnson plays with some weird, out-there elements that add to the production's sense of unease. Monika Essen's vast vanishing-point set is a mischievous shape-shifting accomplishment; its combined diagonals and right angles are appropriately foreboding. In a move that makes the Meadow Brook stage seem too big for the play, Carpenter's blocking occasionally feels confined to the few pieces of furniture — in an office as big and open as a hotel lobby, why lurk behind the single chair? However, this is a mere quibble for a supremely paced, titillating production that won't abide a complacent audience. Mindgame had me guessing, dreading, even reeling, but always glued to the action.