The Fantasist opens with Theatre Témoin’s signature mix of the realistic and the surreal as the powerfully played protagonist, Louisa, writhes and tosses against the white sheet background that is her bed – a first scene that captures the unease of disturbed sleep as well as creating suspense as to what will happen next. As she performs a piece that’s half a dance, half a realistic piece of acting, Louisa’s changing body shapes suggest attempts to hang onto sleep and hints at the dreams she might be having. Then sheet and pillow are gone and there is a misshapen wardrobe behind her, hinting at secret worlds and desires, dark cupboards and black depths.

The performance twists between the realism of visits from Louisa’s empathetic psychiatric nurse, and another visitor, maybe a friend, who ably demonstrates that sympathy alone is not enough to reach across the storm waters of Louisa’s condition, bipolar disorder. The visions and nightmares that Louisa has are embodied in the show’s puppets: a small anatomical mannequin that squeals and whines for sympathy, and a life-size man in a coat who draws Louisa into his embrace but is ultimately after a destructive control. The production hints at the creativity and aliveness that she experiences in her illness, but does not romanticise or laud this as any compensation. It’s not relentlessly grim – there’s humour here too in the wheedling puppet, in the disembodied heads that doubletalk to each other and to Louisa – but overall the puppets are symbolic of powerful and destructive forces. The small puppet that crawls out of the waste bin it has been dumped in is both amusing and horrifying in equal measure.

There are no answers offered to mental illness – the piece is solely a portrayal. There are moments of sinister joy – but as Louisa says of the larger puppet figure, ‘first he seduced me, then he tore me apart’. The cool and caring voice of reason comes from the nurse – you are going too fast, she tells Louisa, you must slow down. The sedative that she gives her does indeed slow her down, but to Louisa it feels like ice, freezing her into stillness.

The puppets are cleverly worked, the figures in black who manipulate them always visible, but never intrusive and in fact adding to this sense of the dark forces that drive and manipulate mental illness.

The paintings that Louisa creates, born of manic energy, are destroyed by the same forces in their malign aspect. As a living picture of this kind of illness the performance is strong and dark. The decision to use puppets to represent Louisa’s hallucinations and drives is powerfully ironic as she is as much at the mercy of her condition as the puppets are of their workers, an image that is forced home when the larger puppet becomes her puppeteer, making her do as he wishes, pulling the strings of her psyche in a grotesque dance.

It is a bleak picture. The two other characters, the nurse and the friend, are powerless to intervene in the nightmare cauldron of Louisa’s fantasies, as they are unable to see or believe the power of the world that she inhabits. The production of The Fantasist was faultless, the performances from puppeteers and actors polished and incisive, the music original and inventive and perfectly tuned to the action on the stage, but at the end, though I had been given an insight into the terror of suffering a bipolar condition, there was nothing I could do with or about it. The narrative showed the violent see-saw of reality and fantasy that Louisa inhabited, but without any hope of redemption or relief. It was powerful, and I suspect it was based on real or gathered experiences because it had that feel of authenticity, but I felt strangely unmoved at the end, denied any conclusion or happy ending. But, then, perhaps that’s just the way it is. The message seemed to be that you can only view someone in this condition with compassion, but you can seldom help or rescue them – and I’m not sure that is entirely true, that this is the whole story. However, The Fantasist is certainly an accomplished journey into a terrifying and bizarre world that many of us will never experience, and it’s a great performance.