The Eradication of Schizophrenia in Western Lapland employs an ambitious, ingenious split staging to produce an experience of auditory hallucination. A startling and transformative theatre work, it stages the first psychotic episodes of a mother and son; with fantastical results involving Finnish Folk, roast vegetables, Adolf Hitler and a knitted toilet roll cover.

Informed by the Finnish ‘Open Dialogue’ treatment method, The Eradication of Schizophrenia in Western Lapland conjures both a comic, delusional nightmare and a hopeful world of polyphonic uncertainty. Based on the idea that psychosis happens ‘between people’ and not ‘within’, Open Dialogue focuses not on ‘curing’ individuals but on the network of relationships surrounding them.

Flagship UK company Ridiculusmus began as a rabble of graduates adapting comic novels and has evolved over 25 years with the aim of being both serious and funny. This unique show is definitely both – blurring the ‘mad’ and the ‘sane’ in an unsettling, electrifying theatre experience.