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"When the founding father of psychiatry is left holding a naked woman’s underwear, then Freudian Slip takes on a whole new meaning. Then again, Terry Johnson’s brilliant 1993 play undresses its abundant comedy in mind-altering ways. At first glimpse, it’s an old-fashioned and very English farce, with disrobing of male and female characters, who emerge or disappear through doors with split-second timing; misinterpret each other’s words and generally descend into anarchic chaos. With this potent mix of reality and fantasy, comedy and drama, Hysteria makes demands on its audience. Ged McKenna gives a sardonic delivery of Freud’s character, in sharp contrast to John Dorney’s outrageously physical Dali. As Dr Yahuda, Moray Treadwell paces his routine somewhere between the two. Summer Strallen has the rhythm spot-on as Jessica, a woman who carries the burden of the story’s darker passages. These were four first-class actors in another highly-polished production from London Classic Theatre."
David Upton - British Theatre Guide

"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 cases. 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. 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 gas mask and underpants is hilarious; an image cruelly countered by the whimpering misery of Summer Strallen as fierce but forlorn patient Jessica. Moray Treadwell’s statesman-like doctor is in the audience’s shoes - trying to make sense of it all. It’s a fascinating, 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."
Chris Eldon Lee - Shropshire What’s On Guide

Hysteria

CREATIVE TEAM:
Playwright: Terry Johnson
Director: Michael Cabot
Designer: James Perkins
Lighting: Andy Grange
Sound Design: Holly Curtis
Costume Supervisor: Victoria Smart
Photography: Sheila Burnett

SELECTED VENUES: Malvern Festival Theatre; Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds; Mercury Theatre Colchester; Oldham Coliseum Theatre; New Vic Theatre, Newcastle-under-Lyme.

CAST: John Dorney, Rachael Holmes-Brown, Ged McKenna, Summer Strallen, Moray Treadwell.

THE SHOW:
1938. Hampstead, London. Sigmund Freud has fled Nazi-occupied Austria and settled in leafy Swiss Cottage. The ageing Freud intends to spend his last days in peaceful contemplation, but when Salvador Dali pays a visit, and discovers a naked woman in the closet, eye-popping mayhem ensues.

An acknowledged modern classic, Terry Johnson’s hilarious farce explores the fallout when two of the twentieth century’s most brilliant and original minds collide.

Terry Johnson is one of the UK’s most celebrated contemporary playwrights.  His notable successes include Mrs Henderson Presents, Dead Funny, Insignificance and Cleo, Camping, Emmanuelle and Dick.  Hysteria won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Comedy in 1994.

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