Bedlam, Shakespeare's Globe

Nell Leyshon’s new play takes place in a mental asylum closely based on London’s notorious Bethlem Hospital. Set in the 18th century, it is a bizarre fusion of farce, drama and drinking songs. Bethlem, of course, gave its name to the term “bedlam”, and bedlam certainly ensues in this rather chaotic and unfocused work.

The play attempts to evoke a Hogarthian vision of gin-soaked dissolution. Visually, at least, it succeeds: the stage is beset by a panoply of misfits, “lunaticks”, the wrongly certified, street musicians, down-and-outs and perpetrators of bizarre curatives for the mentally deranged – usually all at the same time. Bedlam – as it's officially named in the play - is presided over by Dr Carew (Jason Baughan), a “mad doctor”, who himself eventually goes mad from the “gentleman’s disease". He is determined to teach his imbecile son the tricks of the trade, so that the hospital can remain a family concern.

His approach relies on what must now be seen as a cruel regime of purgatives, containment and public parade before a paying crowd. It is not what might be considered enlightened, though when under attack he is quick to defend his methods, if not entirely convincingly, then in a way that attempts to give modern audiences pause for thought: if it were not for Bedlam, suicidal patients would otherwise be dead, and, since it caters for the poor, the hospital has to secure much-needed funds in order to survive; hence the gawping crowds seeking a Sunday afternoon’s worth of entertainment and/ or moral education.

The supposedly humane and thoroughly decent Dr Maynard (Phil Cheadle), newly appointed to the board of governors, thinks otherwise. Learned in his approach – he produces a dissertation on the nature of madness and actively listens to the patients – he sets about challenging the outmoded regime. In the end, however, his own methods seem hardly less suspect: seeking to remove Bedlam’s patients from the public gaze, he proposes that they must now remain locked in isolation in their cells, thus “calming” body and mind. Despite this, all is wrapped up in a neatly resolved comedy denouement.

None of this offers a serious meditation on the treatment of the insane. But, since this isn’t a “modern” play in that sense, but rather a pastiche of an 18th-century moral satire, this isn’t the play’s main problem. The play’s problem is that there are several mini-storylines, and nothing emerges amid the clutter of unmemorable ditties, saucy ballads - whose lyrics are barely audible in the acoustics of the Globe - and slapdash dancing routines, to quite engage our attention.

Jessica Swale’s direction could have provided a tighter focus, but instead each strand is given equal time and treatment. Do we really care what happens to any of these sad, incarcerated creatures? There is lovely-looking country girl May (Rose Leslie, main picture) who becomes the endangered object of much-craven male lust; there is Stella (Lorna Stuart) the young woman wronged by her lover, Richard (Sam Kearns), who now inflicts his romantic, bad poetry on the alabaster-complexioned May; there is saucy, swaggering Phyllis (Ella Smith, pictured right) whose constant companion is a bottle of gin and who enjoys a lusty relationship with Dr Carew. And there’s half a dozen other characters, all of whom provide nice visual tableaux for a play that relies quite heavily on the spectacle of farce, but is incredibly sloppy in delivering anything of memorable substance.

• Bedlam at Shakespeare's Globe until 1 October