Having been asked by Florida Studio Theater not to reveal the identity of the character who gets the action going in Hysteria, as well as not to talk about the play's surreal elements, what's a critic to do? Well, I can tell you that it imagines how, in Sigmund Freud's last days living in London, while suffering from cancer of the jaw, he deals with visits from his doctor, a mysterious woman, and Salvador Dali. With surrealistic principles (if that's what they can be called even as they are called into question) governing, farce rules alongside a serious analysis of the analyst and his theories.
Michael Lasswell's handsome set allows for the admixture of the scholarly (well-used desk, wooden files, walls of shelves filled with books and Freud's collection of art, heavily primitive and phallic) with the doors, couch, garden needed for comic romps.
As for the acting, Michael O. Smith avoids confusing Freud, by accent, toneor gesture, with the last German (Hermann Goering) who last won him many acting honors on the same stage. He seems genuinely ill and convinced of the merit of his findings and assertions, even as his repudiation of the reality and effects of parental sexual abuse comes under attack. Though more than a bit pompous, he's toppled often enough to be pitied. Fast talking Celeste Ciulla comes on like "jung busters" to act out the autobiography of Jessica; or perhaps it's her case history, or maybe to seduce, or because she just wants to shed her clothes -- which Ciulla does as artfully. After all, as Freud says, art works are individual but lose their identity when "wrapped." Ciulla wields a mean razor too.
Also sharp is mustachioed Tom Ford, who caricatures Salvador Dali. Known as a major surrealist artist, yet repudiated by others in the movement, he comes to pay tribute to Freud, whose writings on dreams inspired him. He brings a Dali painting to replace one Freud got from Picasso, only to learn Freud considers surrealistic art a "conspiracy." From this disdain, along with being "kicked in the phallus," Dali is distracted by the woman's armpit, though the funniest surprise is having Freud pull off his pants (don't ask why!) just as Dr. Yahuda walks in. A visitor from, as it were, the real outside world, Freud's physician (Roy Sorensen, impressively normal) keeps trying to persuade him not to publish his book exposing Moses as myth.
It is 1938, and Yahuda argues that they need to promote solidarity with their fellow Jews, many of whom are being forced into death camps. To which Freud replies:"The death of God will leave us to ourselves." Would that be, in light of the goings-on and theories being tossed about relating to life and art and science, funny or tragic? FST doesn't want me to tell you the answer, so you'll just have to find it out by seeing the play yourself.
