Freudian Slip-Up

REVIEW: Hysteria

by David Anthony Fox

Jim Roese (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION

"Please remember," says Sigmund Freud to the young woman, "you are in my study, not some vaudeville house!" As usual, the doctor has a point. Terry Johnson's Hysteria, in which Freud and Salvador Dali meet and exchange imagined bon mots, is a confused mix — part pretentious melodrama, part inept farce. Stay away, unless you enjoy watching a third-rate playwright belittle a pair of geniuses.

It's 1938, and Freud, now residing in London, is dying of cancer. Out of the night comes a mysterious woman, who runs around naked a la Benny Hill and later becomes a shrill amalgam of Freud's case studies. (This character, called Jessica, is a grotesque stereotype, further demeaned by Jiri Zizka's insensitive direction.) Freud has other visitors — his physician, Yahuda, who seems to represent Freud's Jewish conscience (oy), and Dali, who represents nothing but has a funny accent.

If any of this went anywhere — or were the slightest bit amusing — well, OK. Instead, it's a mirthless, interminable evening with lots of name-dropping — Picasso, Jung, Moses — meant to make us feel smart. (Don't worry, there's a glossary in the program in the unlikely event you can't keep up.) Will the Wilma never get away from the long shadow of Tom Stoppard and, more importantly, his mediocre imitators?

As Freud, distinguished actor Alvin Epstein manages to come away with his dignity intact. The same goes for Merwin Goldsmith as Yahuda. Matthew Floyd Miller, as Dali, fares best: It's music-hall shtick, but he does it with verve. About Jessica — the character and the execution — the less said, the better.

If you've seen any Jiri Zizka production, you'll know there's a big finish. Sure enough, we get the requisite JZ visual clusterfuck, this time including, among other elements, wall-size breasts, Dali's clocks and nude women in a concentration camp. There's no denying Zizka has style. But shouldn't a director be able to distinguish a good script from a turkey? Hysteria, along with Wilma's recent Ying Tong and Schmucks, completes a trifecta of dreadful British comedy. A group of blindfolded schoolkids could pick better material.

Hysteria | Through June 14, Wilma Theater, 265 S. Broad St., 215-546-7824, wilmatheater.org