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Hysteria
Malvern Theatres
*** BRITISH playwright and director Terry
Johnson’s comedy fictionalises a real-life 1938 meeting between Salvador
Dali and Sigmund Freud, a year before the latter's death to cancer of
the jaw. In the nineteenth century, hysteria was a
disorder that doctors were unable to pin down, due to changeable
symptoms which eluded any physical explanation. A young Sigmund Freud
was inspired by this spectacle, and the very origin of psychoanalysis
itself became his response to the challenge posed by his hysterical
patients. Winner of the Laurence Olivier Award for Best
Comedy in 1994, Johnson’s farce explores the fallout when at nearly
fifty years apart, two of the twentieth century’s most brilliant and
original minds collide. The play begins at night, an elderly man alone in
a room wakes suddenly and speaks but no one is there. Sigmund Freud (Ged
Mckenna),who has finally fled Nazi-occupied Austria after the arrest of
his youngest daughter by the Gestapo, has settled in leafy Hampstead,
London. The ageing man of science now in his eighties intends to spend
his last days in peaceful contemplation. Instead an exhausted
Freud, trying to put his affairs in order discovers a mysterious girl at
his study window. Jessica (Summer Strallen, BBC’s
Land Girls)
gains access by taking drastic action in the hope to find answers about
the past and in doing so brings serious charges against Freud. A bewildered and morphine confused Freud should
only ask that the young girl put some clothes on and go home which would
solve the problem, but instead he chooses to play the victim, looking
inside himself and in doing so glimpsing a terrible truth. Desperate to keep these damaging claims from his
friend and family physician Dr Abraham Yahuda (Moray Treadwell) Freud
hides the girl in his closet to prevent the respectable doctor getting
caught up in the chaos. But, when well-read student of Freud, the
surrealist painter Salvador Dalí (John Dorney) pays a visit to his study
to discuss unusual ways to access his subconscious to influence his
painting style, the planned meeting instead, turns to mayhem after he
discovers the naked girl taking refuge in the closet. As the story unravels amongst the slapstick
comedy more and more questions are asked which examine the possibility
that Freud doctored his case notes in order to suppress his own sexual
feelings, with the play cleverly becoming an examination of Freud
himself. The cast is outstanding in this thought-provoking
play which has been imaginatively researched and this new production
from London Classic Theatre began its nationwide tour in Malvern. Johnathan Gray 04-02-17 |
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