New independent company Off the Ledge Theatre launches at The Q on Wednesday with Kendall Feaver’s The Almighty Sometimes, an award-winning play about mental illness.

The company is dedicated to Australian and queer plays that challenge audiences and make them think — “bold, gritty, and contemporary works confronting uncomfortable truths and the complexity of modern life,” founder and director Lachlan Houen says. (Read our earlier story.)

The Almighty Sometimes (19–23 November) sets the scene: it is “a loving portrait of a mother and daughter, a coming-of-age tale exploring the perils of growing up, a bracing look at what it means to live with a mental illness and the ethics of the mental health profession”, Houen says.

Eighteen-year-old Anna (Winsome Ogilvie) was prescribed drugs to treat her severe mental illness as a child, but she wonders if she suppressed her real self, and decides to stop taking her medication, determined to find out who she is without them — despite the opposition of her mother Renee (Elaine Noon). The cast also features Robert Kjellgren as Anna’s boyfriend Oliver and Steph Roberts as her psychologist Vivienne — “a cracking cast”, Houen says.

The play premiered in Manchester in 2018, and won the 2015 Judges Award in the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting (the largest playwriting competition in Europe), the 2018 Best New Play at the UK Theatre Awards, and the 2019 NSW and Victorian Premiers’ Prizes for Drama.

“It’s one of the funniest and most heart-rending plays that I’ve read,” Houen said. “It blew me away.”

When it was staged in Melbourne (Melbourne Theatre Company), The Guardian praised Feaver for making the problem play “searingly contemporary, imbuing it with intellectual heft and emotional complexity … [and] a powerful capacity for empathy”.

Houen saw that performance, and was deeply moved. “Plays will make me cry — I’m emotional; I can’t help it — but it’s not often that I continue crying for half an hour afterwards.”

Feaver was inspired by a “staggering increase” in children and young people being diagnosed with mental illnesses, including bipolar disorder. The play, Houen says, talks about an issue that 43 per cent of Australians deal with in life, and that probably upwards of 80 or 90 per cent experience through their family, office colleagues, or circle of friends.

“It’s almost impossible, in this day and age, to not know either a person with a mental illness or be the person with a mental illness. As a society, we’re getting much better at being open about that: now there’s awareness and acknowledgement, but we have a long way to go. [This play] starts a conversation.”

And Houen wants to put on shows that begin conversations.

“What better way to start than with a play that is probably the best piece of writing I’ve ever read? The focus is on an issue that I care deeply about — as someone who both knows people who suffer from mental illness and who suffers from mental illness themselves. It’s personal.”

While the play is heavy and topical — “It’s so now, so contemporary, and speaks to who we are” — it is also unexpectedly funny, Houen says:

“The humour is so biting: the quips, the back-and-forth between Anna and her mum and Anna and her psychiatrist. It’s witty banter that just makes you laugh.”

It is relatable: “They’re default humans up onstage. They could be any four people… The best type of realistic plays are the slice of genuine, honest life, and these people aren’t saying anything that sounds like a machine would be saying it.”

Winsome Ogilvie, playing Anna, has a “gorgeous authenticity that is rare in humans, especially in actors”. Anna is “brilliant and funny — a mix between being so smart but also figuring out how to grow up, which is hard. Anyone who’s gone through that transition between 17 to 19 knows going from being a teenager to an adult is tricky: a massive jump. We find ourselves in the midst of the transition. How does she handle this coming-of-age on top of having the mental illness, on top of desperately seeking to find her identity? It’s really beautiful.”

And the play’s message is one of hope, Houen says.

“It could so easily end dreadfully, or it could end ‘and they lived happily ever after’. It doesn’t; it sits in the middle: we just keep going; we live; we exist; this is the world that we have; these are the people we have. Let’s find a way to make it through together. How do we support each other, and how do we care for one another in a world that can be cruel?”

He hopes audiences will still be talking about the play as they leave the theatre.

“The mark of a great show [is] you’re still considering it on your way out. I want people to feel — whether that means they cry, they laugh, they get angry at the system we operate in right now, they want to hug their friend or hold their mum… This play allows you to feel and then later to think.”

The Almighty Sometimes, by Kendall Feaver, Off the Ledge Theatre, The Q – Queanbeyan, 19–23 November. Tickets: $30 to $45. Online: https://theq.net.au/whats-on/the-almighty-sometimes/