The acclaimed London Classic Theatre Company return to the Devonshire Park Theatre, Eastbourne with a new production of the Olivier Award winning comedy by Terry Johnson, Hysteria, from Thursday 16th to Saturday 18th March.
It’s 1938. Hampstead, London. Sigmund Freud has fled Nazi-occupied Austria and settled in leafy Swiss Cottage. The ageing Freud intends to spend his last days in peaceful contemplation but, when Salvador Dali pays a visit and discovers a naked woman in the closet, eye-popping mayhem ensues.
Hysteria is at times both an uproarious knockabout farce and a thought provoking play. All the farce failsafe’s are there; purloined ladies lingerie, cupboards which are big enough for two, mistaken identities, dropped trousers and of course 3-way conversations in which no one is talking about the same thing.
But this production is more than ‘just’ a farce, it’s set against the real-life meeting between the two men, Dali who aged just 34 was already a self-proclaimed legend and Freud was nearing the end of his life – dying just one year later of cancer of the jaw. The Nazi’s were on the rise, it was the year of Kristallnacht and the world was changing.
An acknowledged modern classic, Terry Johnson’s hilarious farce explores the fallout when two of the twentieth century’s most brilliant and original minds collide. The cast includes: John Dorey as Salvador Dali, Ged McKenna as Sigmund Freud, with Summer Strallen (Sound of Music, Love Never Dies) and Moray Treadwell (Beatles LOVE Cirque du Soleil, Pirates of the Caribbean II – Dead Man’s Chest).
Terry Johnson is one of the UK’s most celebrated contemporary playwrights. His notable successes include Mrs Henderson Presents, Dead Funny, The Graduate and Cleo and Emmanuelle & Dick.
Hysteria premiered in 1993 at the Royal Court and won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Comedy a year later and is now considered a modern classic. It combines farce with intellectual muscle to create a thought provoking, affecting and hilarious night out.
London Classic Theatre is one of the UK’s leading touring theatre companies. Recent successes include national tours of The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter and Alan Ayckbourn’s Absent Friends.
Don’t miss Terry Johnston’s Hysteria from Thursday 16th to Saturday 18th March at the Devonshire Park Theatre, Eastbourne with nightly performances at 7.45pm and a Saturday matinee at 2.30pm. Tickets, priced from £15.50, can be booked by calling the box office on 01323 412000 or online at www.eastbournetheatres.co.uk
