FREUD is as a mysterious figure, a myriad different things all shut up into one man.

He is the founder of psychoanalysis, the Oedipus complex theory, a father and husband. He has analysed and dissected the minds of scores of hysterics in his time, explored their unconscious, uncovered their repressed desires.

But what about Freud himself? What is at the heart of his unconscious and most importantly what is he hiding, if anything?

This is what playwright Terry Johnson sets out to discover in his award-winning Hysteria.

What kind of a man comes up with phallic theories, the premise of the desire for the father and groundbreaking methods to cure hysteria?

The first answer to this is, a very complex man with as many shortcomings and as strong a neurosis as the rest of us.

A weary and frail Freud is in his study in the early hours of the morning when a young woman knocks on his window insisting she must see him.

After telling her in no uncertain terms to leave him alone he finally lets her in for a brief session.

But far from revealing the dark thoughts and deeply buried memories which haunt her, the wayward patient is set on reenacting one of Freud’s most famous cases and one of his biggest success stories—the Rebecca S. analysis.

Freud plays along intrigued but soon the young women’s peculiar interest in this particular hysteric, who was eventually cured and went on to lead a happy healthy life—or so Freud believed—appears clear. The young intruder is Rebecca S.’s daughter, come to ask the psychoanalyst for answers. Her mother, far from cured, relapsed and eventually finished her days in an insane asylum.

Yet, this intense confrontation is soon interrupted by Salvador Dali who has come to see Freud and will not be turned away The surrealist painter and his light-hearted jokes, over the top (and bordering on rude) mannerisms and exuberance lift the mood for a while.

Though he is eventually drafted by Jessica in the reenactment playing the part of Freud—a more surreal and demented one than the original— while she recreates scene by scene her mother’s most crucial sessions with the analyst.

Although the subject matter is heavy and poignant, the play’s farcical elements and constant gags, courtesy of Dali’s effervescent personality, perfectly balance out the tragedy at the heart of the plot.

Without comedy our existences and certainly the lives of the characters would be utterly unbearable the playwright seems to say.

Terry Johnson is an incredible writer and every sentence, every comment bustles with double-entendre and hidden meanings. He and his incredible cast certainly never, even during the purest moments of comedy, offer spectators clear definite answers. That is just not the point.

Indira Varma is extraordinary as Jessica. Her stage-presence is unlike anything I have seen before.

As for Antony Sher and Will Keen, who play respectively Freud and Dali, they made the roles their own and I can’t imagine any other actors impersonating the Austrian father of psychoanalysis and surrealist painter.

This play will make you reassess your life as Freud reassesses his own and look at the founder of the Oedipal complex in a completely new light.

 

Hysteria is on at the Theatre Royal in Bath