English farce has a seductive logic and exhibits all the anal obsessions of the English

So goes a quote by the aging Sigmund Freud from Terry Johnson’s metatheatrical farce Hysteria, running from May 13 to June 14, 2009 at the Wilma Theater in Philadelphia (http://www.wilmatheater.org/). In it, the normally very serious historical figure of Freud is portrayed as a character, who says some pretty funny things, unintentionally.

Audiences familiar with early 20^th century English boulevard farce, especially the form known as Aldwych, after the London Theater of the same name, will delight in the marvelously theatrical door-slamming, people-hitting language as well as situational misunderstandings that abound in this play. By sheer coincidence, Terry Johnson, a veritable expert on this style of theater, is currently directing a London production of Rookery Nook, widely considered the classic example of British farce and to which his characters make reference in Hysteria.

Alvin Epstein as Sigmund Freud and Matthew Floyd Miller as Salvador Dalí in Hysteria by Terry Johnson at The Wilma Theater, May 13 – June 14.

Both powerful and fun, the play is soon revealed to be something other than conventional comedy. After the first act unfolds in the convention of farce it then turns dark, then comic again, and finally it becomes literally surrealistic. Johnson creates a daring theatrical experience that is unlike any other in that it seamlessly changes and redefines what it is as it goes from one extreme to the other and turning on a dime between sudden hilarity to sudden seriousness and gravity. The Wilma’s cast describes it as a “farce unlimited” and calls upon metaphors like “the layers of an onion” or the facets of a crystal” to describe the audiences’ discovery of Freud’s theories and his relationships with family and others.

The story is set in 1938 London on the eve of Kristallnacht and takes place in the study and home of Sigmund Freud who has fled Nazi controlled Austria. A mysterious young girl who appears soaking wet in Freud’s garden and demands to be psychoanalyzed causes panic in the old man who is afraid the situation will be misconstrued by his visitors. Visiting him are his disciple Salvador Dali who wants Freud’s opinion on a painting and his friend and physician Abraham Yahuda who urges Freud not to publish a controversial book (Moses and Monotheism) on Judaic belief. Comedy ensues when as both Freud, who attempts to hide the naked girl, and Dali who has created his own embarrassing situations, must keep those involved from discovering each other.

The cast includes Alvin Epstein in the role of Sigmund Freud. Epstein, who started his professional career as a mime, first worked in Philadelphia in 1956 while on tour with Marcel Marceau at the Annenberg Center. He returned over a decade later while performing in a touring Kurt Weill show with Marth Schlamme. Merwin Goldsmith plays the part of Abraham Yohuda, a composite character based on two of Freud’s real colleagues: his doctor Max Schur and the linguistic scholar Yohuda. Goldsmith began his professional career here 42 years ago when he landed his first job in America at the Theater of the Living Arts where he remained for two years before the group disbanded. Mary McCool who appears as the mysterious young woman Jessica –the representation of Freud’s combined female case studies- first moved to Philadelphia nine years ago to create New Paradise Laboratories, which produced the Fab Four Reach the Pearly Gates a play in the fantastically historical style of Hysteria about an after-life interview with the Beatles. Finally, Matthew Floyd Miller, who will be making his debut in Philadelphia with this production plays the flamboyant, passionate and eccentric Spanish artist Dali, comes with many off-Broadway credits.

The unique style of the play creates a forum in which audiences can think about Freud’s life and the history of the 20^th century while all along laughing their heads off. According to Wilma’s dramaturge Walter Bilderback, Hysteria fits well into the theater’s mission in that it is a play that is based on ideas, but that does so in a very vitally theatrical, non-dogmatic, light manner. A number of other theaters in the country have done productions, including Steppenwolf (Chicago) and the Taper Forum (L.A.), but never so close to New York, partly because Johnson himself wanted to direct the first production in that city.

Terry Johnson’s plays have been described as post-Brechtian by his tendency to downplay the intellectual depth to his writing while playing up emotions, in many cases humor. Some positive adjective, due to its style that sets it apart from what else has Terry Johnson written. Though in England his plays enjoy the status of almost classics, the same are lesser known here in the U.S. The intellectually daring Insignificance, his first big hit at the Royal Court in the early 1980s featured four characters very obviously based on Albert Einstein, Joe DiMaggio, Marylyn Monroe, Joe McCarthy. Two others of his plays include Cries from the Mammal House, which tells the spiritual odyssey of a zoo keeper who discovers a village in Madagascar that has been maintaining a small population of dodo birds for hundreds of years; and Dead Funny about the life of Benny Hill.

In this eminently theatrical farce, so much of the comedic timing is in the text and in the punctuation lending a natural rhythm of speech that comes across as intellectual yet, at the same time, very funny. While the play is critical of Freud and his theories, it nevertheless approaches this theme from a method of psychoanalysis and dream interpretation that is both meta-theatrical and meta-theoretical; perhaps best represented when, during the latter half of the play, the audience is thrust into the midst of Freud’s unconscious manifesting itself.

Alvin Epstein as Sigmund Freud, Matthew Floyd Miller as Salvador Dalí, Mary McCool as Jessica, and Merwin Goldsmith as Abraham Yahuda in Hysteria by Terry Johnson at The Wilma Theater, May 13 – June 14.

Several aspects of the play are based loosely on the actual meeting of Freud and Dali. Salvador Dali took much of his inspiration from Freud’s theories and writings about the unconscious. Moreover, bearing along his portrait Metamorphosis of Narcissus, Dali really did visit Freud in London seeking his analysis of artistic style. In that meeting, Freud told Dali that he thought the classic painters expressed the unconscious much more than the surrealists, leading Dali soon afterward to pronounce the death of surrealism. Likewise, Freud was in fact, visited by Yohuda, a Jewish scholar who urged Freud not to publish his last work Moses and Monotheism. Also, as in the play, Freud really did die in London by assisted suicide.

The highly complex interactions between the historical and fantastical characters in Hysteria help contextualize two definitions of farce. The first is “ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances” which certainly fits this play. The second, according to Terry Johnson is that “farce is a metaphor for psychoanalysis”. His play sets about to prove that.

A supposed quote of Freud was, “The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is ‘What does a woman want?’'' Regarding Jessica, the young woman in Freud’s garden, the audience will discover some intriguing truth about her relationship to Freud. But as Johnson keeps us guessing between gravity and hilarity, not only will the true identity of Jessica be revealed, but also a lot more as Jessica takes off Dali’s clothes and her own.

Not just a collection of dumb gags chosen for shock value, the remarkably well written Hysteria will not only entertain audiences, but challenge them to rethink the significance of the legacies left by Freud and Dali.

As part of their symposium series, the Wilma will hold a panel discussion on June 1 at 7:30 PM in the theater. The symposium will emphasize the life and work of Freud with reference to both Dali, the production’s conceptualization of their work. For more information see

http://www.wilmatheater.org/seasons/2008-2009/Hysteria/Hysteria_symposia.htm