Daniel Fraser’s Receiver, directed by Jimmy Sutcliffe, opens with Claire Fisher (Lorraine Chambers) in her flowery living room, with a very stylish old red telephone on the side table. She’s listening to an opera (the Jewel Song from Charles Gounod’s Faust), as she puts on her gardening gloves.  That’s when she gets the first phone call. The music starts to lose its melody, breaking up into discordant noise.

There’s an interesting feeling of disengagement about Chambers’ portrayal of Claire. You get that Claire is lonely, misses her late husband, misses her son Ben (Richard Falkner) and hopes he will call or visit. She’s proud of her dahlias. She’s getting weird calls from Drew (Michael Hebenton) at ‘Mutual Assisted’. Something is amiss. Communication is no longer working for her. Instead of a line to the outside world, her phone seems to be a conduit for something predatory.

Dialogue is sparse and therefore each line seems crucial. Disorientation builds in her conversations with Ben and her daughter Jess (Franscesca Emms). Are there gaps in Claire’s memory, or is it time that is glitching, like the disintegrating rhythms of the opening aria? What’s going on between Drew (Michael Hebenton) and his boss Cam (Michael Trigg)?

Sound (sound design Daniel Fraser) is an essential partner to the action, interacting with dialogue in a grinding crescendo of unease and some really chilling moments. Given the subtle ambiguities of the plot, and dialogue that hints and insinuates in just the right measures to let our imaginations do the work, I think there are places where the prominence of the sound design could be wound back to better effect. The complete musical breakdown at the beginning, for instance, undermines the tension at an early point – it’s like a sonic spoiler. The aria’s shrillness in the chintzy domestic scene is already creepy enough to foreshadow what is to come.

Receiver treads a territory that is not completely new, but while touching on the odd genre cliché, the play maintains its own voice. The atmosphere is altogether transporting – as affirmed by occasional collective gasps from the audience – with brilliantly innovative set design and use of space and chorus (production design Sherilee Kahui and Jimmy Sutcliffe; chorus Sherilee Kahui, Rachel Massey, Sadie Preval and Brodie Taurima).

The climax is wonderful although it dissipates a little with being too long. I’m not alone in being delighted with the whole paranoid mind-bending spiral of the journey to that point.

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