Hysteria (Modern Plays)

"One of the most brilliantly original and entertaining new plays I have seen in years: wild, weird and funny, serious, compassionate and shocking, blasphemous and reverential, intellectual and frivolous, a factual fantasy, a demented farce, a black nightmare." - The Sunday TImes 1938. Hampstead, London. Sigmund Freud has fled Nazi-occupied Austria and settled in leafy Swiss Cottage. At 82 years old, he aims to spend his final days in peace. However, when Salvador Dalí turns up to discover a less-than-fully dressed woman in the closet, peace becomes somewhat elusive... An acknowledged modern classic, Terry Johnson’s hilarious farce explores the fall-out when two of the 20th century’s most brilliant and original minds collide. It touches on subjects including Nazi Germany, the Surrealist movement, Judaism, Freud’s theories of the unconscious mind, family relationships, life and death, and love and loss. Johnson's celebrated play raises intriguing questions about Freud’s radical revision of his theories of hysteria.