There are some plays you leave shaking your head, wondering if you have just seen a work of great complexity or something that was just trying too hard to be different. After sleeping on it, Wake Less falls somewhere between the two.

The Binge Culture Collective has always pushed the envelope, never more so than with this work. It plays with the theatre conventions, smashing down the third wall and taking audience participation to a whole new level. This is where it is at its absolute best and most absorbing.

One of the two actors, Simon Haren begins by touching members of the audience, invites them onto the stage. Isobel McKinnon (Linda) reminds us that we have paid to see him do something on stage and we are therefore encouraging his behaviour. They then get into character, with the help of Johann Nortje’s gorgeous audio visuals and a can of talcum powder, becoming Karori couple, Reg and Linda. They are able to fulfil Linda’s dream of visiting Cairo with Reg’s redundancy payout.

Now this is where things go from enticingly curious to impenetrably bizarre. Masked characters, attempted hypnosis suggesting we the audience were all expecting babies, a speech supporting Palestinian liberation – what the? Still puzzling but more engrossing is the supper scene where the audience sits at a table for a meal of popcorn under the initially benevolent gaze of a masked person.

Part three returns to Reg and Linda with Linda belly dancing on the table representing her now found sense of liberation.

So, it’s a conundrum, fascinating at times, interminable at others, definitely original, not for theatre goers who dread being part of the on stage action.

Haren and McKinnon are excellent in their multiple roles, and Rachel Baker and Theo Taylor do a superb job with scene changes and talcum powder. 

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I found Wake Less was like being in a dream in which I was caught up in an extended Monty Python sketch to which I reacted like I do to most Monty Python sketches by laughing and at times nonplussed as to why I was laughing and why others were laughing when I wasn’t.

It starts with Simon Haren dressed like a 1960s Public Servant in summer uniform of shorts, long socks, sandals, and short-sleeved shirt who warms up the audience with some acceptable touchy-feely interaction until a distraught Isobel MacKinnon arrives. In revenge for her lateness Simon organises – and thereby further uniting the audience – into tricks to upset her.

Then the scene changes and we meet Reg (Simon Haren), a surveyor just made redundant, who lives in a large house in Karori with his wife Linda (Isobel MacKinnon) of thirty years.

Instead of wanting to watch re-runs of Ghostbusters or clean up Bats Theatre they take a journey to expand their spiritual horizons in Egypt but they end up in Gaza by mistake – Michael Palin crops up on the way – and for a brief time a projected backdrop of the West Bank barrier (as the BBC calls it) and a stage Arab with a stagey beard (Simon Haren) bring a note of seriousness to the dream without it turning into a nightmare.

An interval follows during which ushers offer refreshments to the audience and then a long table is set up at which 13 members of the audience are invited by a bossy head waiter to dine. Then Reg and Linda end up in Pepe’s Night Time Swingers Club with Reg playing a card game with a member of the audience as he chatters on about the meaning of theatre. Meanwhile Linda strives for our attention by dancing on a table.

Two masked figures and two ‘sceneographers’, one of whom instantly ages Reg by sprinkling talc on his head, provide the fluidity of the dream-like state as does Johann Norge’s impressive AV designs as they flow from a Karori home to a map of the flight to the Middle East, the barrier and the Swingers Club.

The problem of interpreting dreams is that just when you think you have pinned them down they escape and you’re off on another journey. Binge Culture to its credit offers many journeys about life, theatre, the future. Take your pick.  

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The logical corollary to ‘wake less’ is ‘sleep more’ – perchance to dream?  Deep down this surrealised blend of the conflicts inherent in theatrical creativity, suburban domesticity and the Middle East explores dreams of escape, discovery and even, just possibly, resolution.  

And as in a dream, any grasp on ‘reality’ is as elusive as the performance elements are allusive. Just as you think you might have a handle on what exactly is going on, everything changes. But while it is a ‘make of it what you will’ experience in many respects, it does turn out to have an inner coherence that means you can trust it to deliver on your investment of time and attention.

Meanwhile we are treated to an engaging range of unusual experiences.  While a silent and ever-smiling Simon Haren – dressed in Roman sandals, longs socks, walk shorts and a short-sleeved shirt – awaits the arrival of someone, he dabbles ever-so-nicely in invading our comfort zones.

When Isobel MacKinnon arrives, late, from her “other job” and seamlessly recites her litany of ideological / moral dilemma-inducing / guilt-ridden angst, while preparing, onstage and off, to perform, Simon gets us to collude in some disorienting activities which, on opening night anyway, increases the sense of fun and bonds us all even more. Thus the central conflict theme of individual moral responsibility versus group behaviour is established.

The sudden jump to a suburban domestic setting – purported to be in modern-day Karori although the projected backdrop image is more Victorian era – is surprising. Reg (Haren) attempts to pontificate on “journeys” while Linda (MacKinnon) reveals this relationship has gone sour – until he reveals the double-edged circumstances that allows her to fulfil her dream of ‘escape’, albeit with Reg in tow.

The third layer of Wake Less is an evocation of a typical tourist trip to Egypt and the Gaza Strip involving some unexpected exotic experiences and confrontation with the political realities.

A variation on the large white Basel or ‘larval’ mask (not fully defined in its facial features) is employed to suggest some Middle Eastern characters while a more defined mask may or may not be closely related to intrepid traveller Michael Palin.

The prosaic, sublime, ridiculous and magical interweave as the 90-minute theatrical journey transports us to other climes and states of being only to jolt us back into the here and now, at Bats, before launching us back into elsewhere. As we abandon ourselves to it all, we may or may not choose to interrogate the artefact that is Wake Less and place ourselves and our own lives in its context.

As with the Binge Culture Collective’s previous shows, Drowning Bird, Plummeting Fish (2009), Animal Hour (2009) and This Rugged Beauty (2011), the normal conventions of plotting, structure and pacing are eschewed – allowing, in this case, for some sequences that take the time physically necessary to set them up and play them out (e.g. a shared meal at a long-table, presided over by an enigmatic host whose attitude to the ‘foreigners’ at his table is ambivalent).  

Staging elements and incidental roles are handled with dexterity by ‘sceneographers’ Rachel Baker and Theo Taylor, while black-tie waiters and sweet-sellers, who greet us in the foyer then become part of the later action, are wrangled by ‘FOH Creative’ Hannah Banks.

Director of Design and lighting designer Marcus McShane has reconfigured Bats to seat us in an L-shaped auditorium facing an L-shaped scrim on which scenes are projected and though which some action is perceived. The AV design, by Johann Nortje, becomes more and more sophisticated and – abetted by McShane’s lighting and Stephanie Cairns’ music composition and sound design – transports us to different realms and ways of seeing with dream-like ease.

It would be easy to say some sequences appear not to earn their keep given the content, thematic relevance or time it takes to play them out, but I doubt a poll of audience members would agree on exactly what should go and why. This is an experience to which you must abandon yourself, for better or worse, then – as with waking from a dream – evaluate it according to whatever principles you deem appropriate.

The ending is clever, with a bumbling Reg/Simon drawing the disparate elements together by attempting to articulate the lesson his journey has taught him and the vision he has for their future. But is Linda/Isobel buying it – are we? – or is he dreaming?

The opening night audience was warm, friendly and receptive. It’s tempting to wonder how the show might fare attended by total strangers. But I think, by its very nature, it will ride whatever waves, shallows or depths it finds itself in. Given these variables it may well be worth a random second visit. Meanwhile, book your first visit now.

The way Wake Less plays with, subverts and reconfigures theatrical conventions is invigorating. 

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