It's a mad, mad, madcap world on view in Philadelphia as the Wilma Theater closes their thirtieth season with Terry Johnson's play Hysteria, a romp through the lower depths of psychoanalysis and surrealism (to 6/14).  With the principals in the characters of Sigmund Freud and Salvator Dali, who met in 1938, whatever the premise, the play would seem to have dramatic and comedic possibilities galore: the foremost surveyor of the unconscious, a dour and cerebral analyst, paired with the premier illustrator, a shameless self-promoter.

Directed by Jiri Ziska as part mystery, part comedy, the play alternates between a detective story, yielding several discoveries from the past, and low humor with elements of farce, slapstick, sight gags, and camp. 

Freud (Alvin Epstein) has recently relocated to Vienna, one step in front of the Nazis, and is suffering through the last stages of cancer. Deep in thought, a young woman named Jessica materializes (Mary McCool) - perhaps conjured up is the better expression - at his door seeking treatment.  He will later be joined by another unannounced caller, Dali (Matthew Floyd Miller), likewise in flight from the fascists by way of a civil war in Spain, paying homage to the master while looking for validation and fresh material for his avant-garde art.  Serving as a buffer and nudge is Freud's personal physician Abraham Yahuda (Merwin Goldsmith), intent on having him suppress a monograph unfavorable to the Jews, especially considering the times.

The play's conceit becomes apparent: at the end of his life, all of the hypotheses and their manifestations he let loose on the world return to haunt him.  Jessica is the imaginary figure representative of theories of paternal sexual abuse he ultimately discarded, Dali an imp of the perverse and a false turn in art Freud seemingly unleashed, Yahuda is the stand-in for the religious and social world of the Judaism he renounced, and the never seen but always present Carl Jung, appears to hover over this play like a curse. A Pandora's Box of past and feature horrors is discharged in Hysteria's shocking finale.    

The play came out (1993) when repressed memory syndrome was all the rage, and the idea was inspired by Jeffrey Masson's anti-Freudian book The Assault on Truth.  This theory stands on the same flimsy ground as psychoanalysis and surrealism.  Research has shown that contrary to popular belief actual traumatic events are not suppressed, if anything they are intensified or  focused; while distressed subjects and patients who are highly suggestible will act and tell authority figures and therapists what they think they want to see and hear, becoming convinced of the truth of their recollections along the way.  For examples of how the human brain actually performs during stress, see Eyewitness Testimony by Elizabeth Loftus (Harvard UP: 1979) and Try to Remember: Psychiatry's Clash Over Meaning, Memory, and Mind by Paul McHugh, M.D., (Dana Press: 2008)    Despite the suggestion that Freud flipped on his views of hysteria, he had good reason to distance himself from his slightly cracked friend Wilhelm Fliess, who had a penchant for numerology and thought the royal road to sexuality lay not through the unconscious but the nose - now that might have drawn a few laughs if included in the play! 

The acting is uneven in this often slowly paced show.  It is difficult to say whether it was occasioned by the play, direction, performance, or circumstance.  The absence of the talented Mr. Epstein, who just returned to his role after a week and a half illness, and alternates matinees with an understudy, may have upset the timing.  He downplays Freud in a querulous or hang-dog manner, tending to the sheepish as various stages of exhibitionism are paraded in front of him.  These come chiefly from Ms. McCool, who plays the character with an attitude of moral superiority, either coming from the script or the direction, which grates on you from her first appearance, and continues when she drops her pose along with her clothes.  Better is the quirky and offbeat portrayal of Dali by Mr. Miller who kick-starts every scene he is in and whose costume alone will tickle your funny bone.  Yahuda - at times the outraged man of moral rectitude who sees only too clearly what's coming down the road, at others the dimwitted practitioner who misses what is directly in front of him - is played tentatively by Mr. Goldsmith and seems to drift aimlessly in and out of the action. 

An ensemble of actors (nine) wander onto the stage as symbolic elements of Freud's past and Europe's future at the play's conclusion.   You feel a bit of intellectual and artistic piling on of the poor cowering Freud, who has become the cultural bogeyman of modernity, as the ending transforms itself into a Daliesque landscape. 

The design elements are powerful, perhaps too powerful.  A stunning set (Mimi Lien), replicates Freud's Viennese study, with brown-beamed molding and scores of figurines (some in curio cabinets) suggesting multiple realities being framed, compartmentalized, and examined; and color palette shading from salmon to burgundy.  Just as the ideas, bold costumes pour forth from the designer (Janus Stephanowicz), the entire tableau brought into HD by the lighting (Jerold Forsyth), with sound reminiscent of old time horror show venues (Nick Rye).

Dramaturgically, farce has a long tradition in English theater that never seems satisfactorily realized before American audiences.  I'd try to slant the humor toward noire and play Jessica as a femme fatale, while using sound effects to emphasize the comic and the transition to serious scenes. The design had a tendency to overwhelm the "voices" of the characters; I'd tone down the spectacle and amp up the performances with a quicker tempo in a smaller space.    

Freud understood that what could not be proved, could not pass muster as science and would be in accord with his compatriot, the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, who famously said, "What we cannot speak of, we must pass over in silence."  Artistic license aside, this is a part of his legacy worth preserving.  

The Wilma Theater is an excellent venue to keep on your radar.  See http://www.wilmatheater.org/ for performance dates and time for this season and next.  Situated on Philadelphia's Avenue of the Arts, it is close to the Kimmel Center and the Academy of Music.  We stopped to take in the Seventy-Sixth Annual Rittenhouse Fine Art Show on our way to the theater (to 6/7), but you are sure to find plenty to do on other days in our Nation's second capital city. 

Sound check: low to moderate, but reaching high decibel levels at the conclusion

Program notes: Excellent - both hardcopy and online

Applause meter: *Recommended with reservation for those who enjoy farce and have had little exposure to Freud and Dali, the overall design and stage business in the finale are something to see, 2 ½ hands, mature themes