"Mindgame" Starring Keith Carradine: A Play Which Plays With Your Mind

Surprises surprise me, and there seem to be so few surprises anymore. I generally try not to find out too much about the a show before I see it whether it's television, the movies or a play, because naturally, I like to be surprised. But on Election Night, I was more preoccupied than usual. And Mindgame, set in a British insane asylum in the bucolic countryside, was the perfect diversion.

Lee Godart plays Mark Styler, a writer who has come to the asylum to score a series of 6 one hour interviews with one of the patients, an infamous serial killer named Eastman. They play opens with him snooping around the office of the hospital's director, Dr. Farquar (played by Keith Carradine) while he waits for him to arrive. Farquar is evasive under Styler's questioning, is reluctant to help Styler with his mission, and despite Styler's pleas, tries to throw him out. Something's also strange about the asylum's Nurse Plimpton (played by Kathleen McNenny), and I'm not just referring to her unconventional hospital uniform of hot pink bobbed wig, latex mini dress, fish net stockings, silver platform boots and a lot of cleavage. The set is expertly and cleverly designed with little details that seem to change ever so slightly throughout. Did that painting just change? Why doesn't the telephone work? Why is Farquar drinking out of a saucer? And forgive me, but why is the nurse wearing a rubber dress again? Who's crazy, the doctor the nurse or the writer? Is it me? At intermission, I thought I had this thriller all figured out, so much so that I was choking on my smugness. But during the second act, I was put in my place. The fella I brought whom I had rebuked for being "slow on the uptake" with the plot enjoyed my having to eat crow, alright. In his words: Mindgame is "So deliciously creepy and twisted! Fun for the whole family!!"

Written by Anthony Horowitz and directed by Ken Russell. Mindgame opens on Sunday, November 9 at the Soho Playhouse.

Special thanks to artmeetscommerce.net!