We were met with a simple set; a table adorned with a few office-like accessories, a woman in period clothing standing behind it, and a gauze curtain in front to distance the stage from the audience. We were in Nelly Bly’s Ten Days In A Madhouse, writes Michael Holland.
Nelly (Lindsey Huebner) put forward her case for employment to a prestigious New York newspaper owner. Her interviewer had already ignored her previous attempts for an interview, but she had tricked her way in to see him. The bigwig magnate admires her pluck but because this is the 19th century when women were supposed to, well, not have pluck – or ballbearings as this man alludes to – he gives her a hard time. The interview is a test but Nelly passes, so he sets her a task that she must pass to get regular employment; Nelly Bly has to convince the authorities she is mad enough to be sent to the asylum where rumours have been leaking out about mistreatment of the patients. This is far from what she was hoping to sign up for…
He was actually setting Nelly up to fail to justify his own outlook on life and the role of women in it. This was a time when women could be sectioned for just about anything, by any family member that didn’t like them, so this was a story that needed to be told, but Nelly, now being put on the spot, summoned up her inner strength and went for it in order to get that job at the end. Fortunately for her being a woman meant it wasn’t that hard to be locked away. Unfortunately, she soon found that it might not be that easy to get out again. And so the ten days begin.
Under extreme stress on admission to the ‘madhouse’, Nelly forgot her prepared fake name so made up another one with a fake Spanish accent to go with it. Straightaway she had made it difficult for her boss to find her in the mental health system at the designated time they had agreed on.
Nelly began each day by telling the nurse (You could never see a doctor) that she is sane and should not be there, not realising that every patient in there will be saying the same thing and that the nurses have a stock answer and response for these patients that don’t toe the line. There was a routine at Bellevue and God forbid anyone that upset the equilibrium set by the staff.
Nelly pretended to take the medication they gave her, which seemed designed to merely keep the patients quiet and no trouble. Nelly was trouble and she saw women in there who should not have been there She empathised with their plight and wanted to save them from this man-made hell. At least Nelly had pretended crazy for a reason, these were innocent women caught up in a patriarchal nightmare.
Before long the staff got fed up with Nelly’s attitude and she was dragged off for the water torture. From then on it was downhill for Ms Bly. This woman of sound mind was eventually sent insane by a system set up to keep women subdued rather than helped and encouraged to get well. Nelly, like the women she had befriended, was in a no-hope situation with no escape. And we were there with her.
With much difficulty, Nelly was eventually rescued, but her fellow patients were not. She was not the same woman that went in.
Amazingly, all this is a one-woman show. Lindsey Huebner worked only with projected graphics for her tormentors, balloons on strings for her fellow patients and a psychedelic soundscape and video to take us into her world. It worked. And adding to the claustrophobic terror of a system where you were regularly beaten and told you are never getting out, we, the audience, were given headphones so that we were also trapped in Nelly’s world. All this was created by the So It Goes Theatre team who have made something very special.
Huebner goes through the whole gamut of life’s emotions in the 90 minutes she is on stage talking to nobody, like a mad person, with the projections dragging us into her madness. Ten Days In A Madhouse is not an easy ride but it is a ride worth taking.
This multi-sensory immersive experience is a true story about the pioneer of investigative journalism. See it and live it in Douglas Baker’s adaptation of the report Nelly published from her time in the madhouse.
Brockley Jack Studio Theatre, 410 Brockley Road, London, SE4 2DH until July 2nd. Time: Tues-Sat 7.30pm. Admission: £16, £14.
Booking:www.brockleyjack.co.uk or 0333 666 3366 (£1.80 fee for phone bookings only)
Phtos: Davor @The Ocular Creative