TERRY JOHNSON’S Hysteria is a very clever, thought provoking play. It isn’t a farce although it makes an ingenious use of those elements of farce we are familiar with - multiple entrances and exits, dropped trousers and a naked girl in the WC. At heart, though, it is a far more serious play, exploring and satirising Freud’s work and theories.
It is 1938 and Freud, having escaped Nazi Europe, has set up his consulting room in Hampstead - lovingly recreated by designer James Perkins and complete with psychiatrist’s couch and desk laden with ethnic figurines.
The unexpected arrival of Jessica, played by Summer Strallen, soon has Freud on the defensive. Jessica’s mother, one of Freud’s patients, has committed suicide and she wants to know why. With the entrance of John Dorney’s suitably manic and surreal Salvador Dali, the play moves firmly into farcical mode and it is not long before Dali has lost his trousers and Freud, reaching for the telephone, mistakenly picked up a bright red lobster.
Caught in the middle of this mayhem, and trying desperately to defend himself, is Ged McKenna’s near-exhausted Freud; his own death not far away.
A more detailed knowledge of Freud’s life and work would have helped the appreciation of this piece no end, although under Michael Cabot’s direction the cast move assuredly through Johnson’s intellectual gymnastics. It is just the moments of farce that need to be given a quicker pace. Farce after all is said to be tragedy played at full speed.
Laurence Sach
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