by Terry Johnson
directed by Jerome Davis
North Carolina premiere of a wild, raving farce. Sigmund Freud is having a recurring dream. In that dream, a crazy Spaniard by the name of 'Salvador Dali' But that isn't all. There is also a scantily clad young woman who has come to exact revenge. But upon whom? And why?.
"Hysteria is an exuberant surprise, but not only because of its wonderfully skewed, not inaccurate take on a couple of 20th-century icons... (It), like all good farce, is constructed with the precision of a watch, though the work is as unexpectedly resonant as a crazy sonnet.
Terry Johnsonis best known in the US for his 1982 play Insignifigance about Marilyn Monroe and Joe McCarthy, which was filmed by Ken Russell. Hysteria won the Olivier Award for Best New Comedy in 1994 and his Cleo, Camping, Emmanuelle and Dick achieved a similar success in 1999..
His play, Hitchcock Blonde perfromed at the Royal Court in London, was nominated for a 2004 Olivier for Best New Play of 2003. He has penned numerous teleplays for British TV and wrote and directed a stage version of The Graduate on Broadway and the West End. |
