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There’s a real live exorcism happening each night in Melbourne. And it’s as frightening and funny as you might expect.

Furious Mattress — a new Australian play at the Malthouse Theatre — is a maddeningly uncomfortable experience. From the moment the curtain slides across, as if the audience is peering through the window of this vaguely familiar slice of small-town suburbia, there’s a palpable sense of unease.

This is a story loosely based on true-life events in rural Victoria in the mid-1990s, so shocking the humour writer Melissa Reeves imbues in a farcical story is delivered with guilt for laughing. Else has the dreaded demon in her, it is decided, and devoted husband Pierce invites the local religious community to save her soul.

At its core it’s an Arthur Miller-esque examination of heathenistc paranoia. While our revulsion swells in The Crucible, Furious Mattress never lets it settle. The ground shifts quickly, transcending time (the story opens on a lifeless body before we learn what happened) and reality. Let’s just say you haven’t seen anything like this on a stage before. Trust me.

The two leads, particularly, are brilliant: Robert Menzies balances Pierce’s comic naivety with a heartfelt love and sense of duty; TV star Kate Kendall, as the all-too-willing victim, is unglamorously and agonisingly effective as Else. Director Tim Maddock instills a rhythm, however deliberately uneven, to keep the audience on the edge of their seats. And you will be — just don’t expect it to be comfortable

The details: Furious Mattress plays the Beckett Theatre at CUB Malthouse until March 13. Tickets are available from the venue.