Mindgame

Anthony Horowitz

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781849436519
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Teatro britannico

When Mark Styler, a writer of glossy 'true crime' paperbacks, tries to get an interview with Easterman, a notorious serial killer, he has no idea what he's walking into. First he has to get past Dr Farquhar, the quixotic head of Fairfields – the asylum where Easterman is kept. But soon he discovers that nothing is what it seems. Who is the mysterious Borson? Where did he get the meat in the fridge? And why isn't the skeleton in the closet? Mindgame is a puzzle-box of a play. A dazzling thriller and a jet black comedy that twists its way towards a shocking conclusion. Reading the text is the only way to uncover all the clues.

Act One

The action of the play takes place during one evening in the office of DR ALEX FARQUHAR at Fairfields, an experimental hospital for the criminally insane. The office is cosy and old-fashioned, chintzy even. It seems to belong to the sixties, perhaps to the world of Hammer Horror.

A large, cluttered desk dominates the room with an old telephone and speaker-phone system to one side and a prominent alarm button to the other. Also on the desk is a Marks & Spencer bag which will be found to contain a box of tissues. Behind the desk, a picture of a distinguished-looking man who will be identified as Karel Ennis, the renowned psychotherapist and founder of the hospital. A window looks out onto fields, trees and a low wall. On the other side, a door opens onto a corridor.

Another picture in the room shows a sweet-looking dog on one side. There is a mirror opposite. A second door, next to a medical screen, leads into a reception room. There are plenty of books in the room. On the top of one low shelf stands a vase of sunflowers and an empty bottle of red wine. There’s a rug on the floor, a couple of armchairs, a plastic wastepaper bin and a wood-steel office chair. Incongruously, a complete human skeleton stands on a frame in one corner.

All this will change…

As the action continues, the scenery will play a game with the audience… parts of it changing while their attention is elsewhere. The aim is to suggest a shifting, faulty perception, a feeling that you cannot trust your eyes. I have not indicated in the text where these changes should take place…it should become evident in the direction. When the audience’s attention is on one part of the stage, changes can be made on the other: the simple misdirection of any sleight-of-hand.

The portrait of Ennis will slowly transform (one feature at a time?) into a portrait of a woman we will come to know as Jane Plimpton. The dog will become a hideous wolf. The mirror will become a second window, this one barred. The low wall outside the window will rise, brick by brick, until it completely obscures the view. The office furniture (telephone, lamps etc.) will become modern and utilitarian. The sunflowers will grow.

Each time the two doors are opened, they will be found to lead somewhere slightly different. These changes can actually be made while the action continues. During the interval, the curtains, wallpaper and rug can all be changed: the patterns can be very similar but somehow distorted. The audience should be aware of the change but should be unable quite to define it.

Sitting in the chair in front of the desk is MARK STYLER, a writer aged about fifty, casually dressed, a man with an air of self-confidence that borders on the smug. His face is pale and his haircut is a little odd…otherwise he’s the archetypal ‘expert’, the sort we’ve seen wheeled onto every BBC documentary late at night. He has a worn leather case by the chair.

He’s been kept waiting. He looks at his watch for the twentieth time. He gets up, examines the room. The pictures. The skeleton. Looks at his watch again.

A pause.

He takes a tape recorder out of his case and switches it on. He moves across to the window and speaks into it.

STYLER: Recording. Six fifteen, Thursday July the twenty-second.

Pause.

First impressions of Fairfields. Note to myself…why that name? The view from Dr Farquhar’s office. (He pronounces it ‘Farker’.) A nineteenth-century manor house set in its own extensive grounds in this secluded corner of Suffolk…if indeed that most ill-defined of English counties could be said to have corners. The wall that surrounds the place may be predictable but the attendant ivy and — I think — Japanese wisteria is surely not. As I drive up the perfectly manicured lawns with rockery to the right and lily pond to the left, it is only the click of the maximum security metal doors automatically closing behind me that reminds me that I am not a guest at some exclusive Home Counties health resort but a writer, privileged to be invited into the country’s most notorious asylum for the criminally insane.

Pause.

Query why sick bastards locked up at the tax-payer’s expense should enjoy perfectly manicured lawns, rock gardens, et cetera. Nice thought about the Health Resort.

Pause.

Easterman is here somewhere. I have come to find him. I must find him. It is the end of a journey that has consumed my life and somehow I will persuade Dr Farquhar to help me. At long last the two of us will be face to face.

STYLER considers what he has just said. He rewinds the tape part of the way and records again.

What does the office of Dr Farquhar tell me about the man who runs Fairfields? (Pause.) Evidently, he has little interest in interior design. Surprisingly chintzy and old-fashioned. Portrait on the wall some major psychoanalyst perhaps, painted by some minor artist most certainly. Picture of dog even worse — surely provided by the NHS in a job lot. Why the skeleton? A complete human skeleton standing in the corner. Did Dr Farquhar once study medicine…anatomy? In the office of a psychiatrist it seems oddly disconcerting but then maybe that is the idea. To disconcert. To keep you off balance.

A pause. STYLER continues his tour of the room.

Books predictable. (Reading a spine.) Group Psychotherapy, Sociometry and Psychodrama. (Continuing along the shelf.) Miller. Milner. Mishler. Moreno. Dr Farquhar arranges his books alphabetically. I wonder if I can trust him? (He picks up the bottle.) One empty bottle of Chateau Mavillion 1966. (Pause.) Chateau Mavillion 1966. It feels as if it’s been placed here like a prop for me to find. It’s a little ludicrous, like the skeleton. No glass. No half-eaten bowl of twiglets. Just the empty bottle. Was 1966 a good year? A good year for Dr Farquhar. The year that he qualified and they gave him a bottle of wine. A personal touch. (He puts the bottle back.) There’s not very much in this room that’...