“What do you think of me?” It’s a question every teenager might think to ask of a friend, or new partner, which takes on a deeper emotional resonance in Black Swan State Theatre Company’s new production of The Almighty Sometimes.

The play, a debut script by London-based contemporary Australian playwright Kendall Feaver, was written about young adults for a young adult audience. While its central character may now belong to the far end of gen Z, her experiences continue to resonate among younger generations and the older humans who help them on their journey.

Perth director Emily McLean says Feaver’s story exists in the impossible space between medical best practice, that gives people agency over their own treatment, and the actions and responsibilities of those who love someone whose illness can lead them into risky behaviours.

It is a love letter to families and a contemplation of the act of letting go.

The Almighty Sometimes also asks its audience some challenging questions about health care, how a young person can exercise their autonomy, what sparks creativity and what happens when a parent’s ingrained sense of responsibility starts to cross the line.

WA Academy of Performing Arts graduate ‘Ana Ika plays 18-year-old Anna in the tender, funny and confronting production of the acclaimed contemporary drama, in which Harry Gilchrist — a fellow WAAPA alumnus — makes his professional theatrical debut.

Anna has spent most of her life taking a revolving range of medications to help manage severe mental health challenges — that began with occasional temper tantrums, aggressive behaviours towards friends and family, and some brilliant but macabre stories written in her childhood.

But transitioning into adulthood and a short-lived relationship with former school-mate Oliver, prompts her to make a life-altering decision to stop taking her medication. Struggling to start writing again, Anna questions whether it is blocking her inspiration and creativity. She wants to find out who she really is without it and decides to take a break from her prescription regime.

As her behaviour spirals into a significant mental health episode, Anna’s mother Renee, Oliver and the teenager’s psychiatrist Vivienne, convincingly played by Amy Mathews, find themselves navigating a fast-changing situation. They face some impossible choices trying to protect the teenager from harm while respecting her wish for freedom.

Ika’s Anna is fast and furious. She delivers a rapid-fire dialogue that gets more intense as her character’s health spirals. Anna’s intellect comes across in her writing and obvious extensive reading. Her sharp mind grabs facts seemingly from thin air — all while the dopamine hits of new knowledge, experiences and encounters increasingly overwhelm her brain’s processing receptors. The character’s emotional and physical transformation is alarmingly real and frightening.

Gilchrist comes to the play with an open, still-boyish physicality that he transforms into a deeply emotional portrayal of a young man under pressure at home and in a new relationship. His Oliver, bravely finds the strength to call out Anna’s hurtful behaviour and stand his own ground.

As a parent of two impressively tall sons on the same transition to adulthood, it as easy to relate to Alison van Reeken’s Renee. She is an archive of everything her daughter has felt and experienced — by turns brave, compassionate and calming.

But as Anna questions her mother’s past decision-making around her illness with a laser-like precision, I was left comparing Renee’s behaviour with my own parenting. Renee is so familiar with her daughter’s medical needs, her huge feelings and mood swings, that she habitually and inappropriately steps in to advocate and arrange on her daughter’s behalf, creating spiralling tension among the play’s four strong characters. Her alternating love, compassion, desperation and frustration are palpable.

The Almighty Sometimes premiered in Manchester in 2018, as the winner of the 2015 Bruntwood Prize for playwriting, and relates its mother-daughter story with moving insight. Feaver wrote the piece so that it could be localised to where it was produced, meaning it finds “new life” each year in different places, she says.

McLean’s physically and emotionally intimate staging for Black Swan State Theatre Company is backed by Fiona Bruce’s minimalist, monochromatic blue set that shape-shifts to support Feaver’s storytelling. Lighting and a series of nightmare-like graphics, projected onto a theatre wall next to the stage, heighten the dramatic tension.

The Almighty Sometimes makes for a heartbreaking journey, told with compassion and insight as well as moments of real humour and witty dialogue, that will have you in conversation long after the theatre lights go back up.

Five stars

The Almighty Sometimes by Black Swan State Theatre Company is at Subiaco Arts Centre until July 5.