Chris Eldon Lee reviews ‘Hysteria’, which is at Shrewsbury’s Theatre Severn until Sunday 9th April and at Theatr Hafren in Newtown on May 12th.
The key to comprehending Terry Johnson’s play ‘Hysteria’ lies concealed in just three words. “You may hallucinate”.
It’s a warning given by his doctor to Sigmund Freud as, in 1938, he administers yet more morphine into his famous patient’s cancer-riddled body. Freud admits that he never liked waiting for a train … and waiting for death is even more tedious. So, he’s spending his time trying to tidy up his reputation.
Having moved to London to escape the Nazis, Freud discovers that the surrealist artist Salvador Dali is elsewhere in Hampstead escaping the Spanish Civil War. Johnson has them meet. But is it a meeting of minds … or a meeting in the mind?
With licence to do as he pleases, Johnson creates a curious and at times calamitous collision of sentiment and style. The play is marketed as a comedy but the laughs come cheek by jowl with very dark deeds. All the hallmarks of a classic farce are present and correct; including ladies undies, dropped trousers, swinging doors and swapped envelopes…which all happen whilst Freud ironically states how much he hated seeing Ben Travers’ farce “Rookery Nook”. But, with the father of psychoanalysis centre stage, there’s also deep, searching discussion about penis envy, child abuse and the Oedipus complex. So, it’s an uncomfortable comedy, to say the least.
A young woman arrives in the rain at Freud’s French windows threatening to strip naked and kill herself unless he analyses her. She seems to have an intimate knowledge of one of Freud’s most controversial case. Dali arrives, asking him analyse his art. And his doctor arrives to try to make sense of it all.
All four actors are on top form….especially as their character’s marbles disintegrate. Ged McKenna makes a fine Freud; a piercing mind in a bumbling body. John Dorney’s dashing Dali arrives like a firestorm with a following wind and flips tragedy into lunacy. The sight of him in gasmask and underpants is hilarious; an image cruelly countered by the whimpering misery of Summer Strallen as the fierce but forlorn patient Jessica. Moray Treadwell’s statesman-like doctor is in the audience’s shoes – trying to make sense of it all. For the warning about possible ‘hallucinations’ comes very late in the play.
‘Hysteria’ won an Oliver Comedy award in 1993 and parts of the play certainly deserve the accolade. But the dark recesses do disturb and I found myself wishing I’d read more about Freud’s work; especially regarding his reversal of philosophy late in life. Johnson worries at this. Why did Freud change his mind? Did he have pangs of guilt? Curiouser and curiouser.
It’s a fascinating and intelligent piece of theatre. I don’t recall ever watching a play in which high farce and personal tragedy become such uneasy bedfellows. It’s well worth seeing for that alone.