THE ghosts of Fremantle’s most infamous institution are getting a second life on stage — though this time the patients are actors and the screams are (mostly) scripted.
A new gothic thriller opening at The Blue Room Theatre next month dives headfirst into the unsettling past of the notorious Fremantle Lunatic Asylum, now the much-loved Walyalup Fremantle Arts Centre.
Red Ticket, written and directed by emerging playwright Josie Walsh, follows new mum Lily, who turns to art to cope with post-natal depression — only to uncover the story of Poppy Florence Grey, a woman confined to the same institution a century earlier with the same condition.
Walsh says the work is as much about empathy as it is about ghosts.
“I wanted to honour the stories of women who were ignored in the past,” she said. “And also show that help is out there.”
Built by convicts in the 1860s, the asylum was the colony’s main mental institution for decades.
Conditions were notoriously grim, with patients crowded into wards and people admitted for everything from severe mental illness to alcoholism and what doctors of the era delicately termed “female complaints” — including post-natal depression, then often labelled “puerperal insanity”.
By the late 19th century the institution had become badly overcrowded and increasingly controversial, with public criticism of harsh treatment and poor conditions eventually forcing reform. The asylum closed in the early 1900s.
The production is Walsh’s directorial debut and the third stage development of the work.
Red Ticket runs from April 7–18 at the Blue Room Theatre.
Walsh’s play taps into that uneasy history: d“Be prepared to give your emotions a workout on a roller coaster journey through time, which ultimately lands in a good place,” she said.